Debonairs Pizza Case Study

Operations Management: In the Debonairs Pizza Context

Introduction

Debonairs Pizza was formed in 1991 by Craig Mackenzie and Andrew Harvey, two varsity students who noticed a flourishing market in the United States that was not being catered for in South Africa. The main opportunity that was discovered was the possibility of baking pizzas from Mackenzie’s family bakery in Pietermaritzburg and delivering these pizzas to customers at no additional cost. The organization was acquired by the company Famous Brands in 1996, a company that owns a wide variety of successful franchises such as Steers, Wimpy and Fish Aways. Ever since its establishment, Debonairs Pizza has since been known as South Africa’s leading pizza restaurant and has thus become a popular franchise. This essay will be exploring this particular organization’s business strategy, operations strategy, how they ensure quality in their processes and also highlight the difficulties of managing quality in service organizations.

Debonairs Pizza Business Strategy

A business strategy is a plan developed by an organization to formulate a way to achieve organizational objectives such profitability in operations as well as make it adaptable to future trends. It needs to incorporate all the organization’s stakeholders i.e. shareholders, employees, suppliers and customers for it to be a success (Kourdi, 2010).

Debonairs Pizza is a local organization that credits most of its success towards its innovative relationship marketing over the years. This success has enabled the organization to become a popular franchise in South Africa with over 400 outlets and an expanding menu with ground breaking ways of making pizza. Relationship marketing is a marketing concept that relates to integ...

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... easily spot inconsistencies as opposed to a tangible product where standardization makes it easier to assess different attributes and notice inconsistencies. The uniqueness factor of services which relates to its varying product definition also makes it difficult to measure quality because customers will not each get the exact same service due to various factors unlike when they purchase a product that has been produced through a standardized process e.g. when it comes to car insurance companies, a 22 year old female will not pay the same premium as a 45 year old male based on various factors and the company might respond quicker to smaller claims than they will to larger claims. Services also vary according to customer preferences therefore quality in the customer’s eyes can only be based on their expectations of services versus their experience of these services.