Chick-Fil-A Identifies Analyzes Important External Environmental Factor

Chick-fil-A

Identifies analyzes important external environmental factor remote, industry, external operating environments o Identifies analyzes important internal strengths weaknesses organization: Include assessment organization's resources.

Chick-fil-A: A forward-thinking, old-fashioned restaurant

Chick-fil-A: A forward-thinking, old-fashioned restaurant

Chick-fil -- A is a rare type of fast food restaurant. Like In-and-Out Burger, it attracts the patronage of many loyal 'foodie' customers who would otherwise not darken the door of a franchise. Chick-fil -- A is known for its high standards of quality and service. Founder Truett Cathy created a sandwich made of high-quality white breast meat that was then fried in a pressure cooker with peanut oil, placed on a fluffy white bun, and seasoned with a unique blend of spices topped with a signature pickle. The company's owner has also assumed a high degree of personalized control over the evolution of the company, which is unusual in a fast food enterprise (Chick-fil-A, 2010, Company histories).

External operating factors

Remote

On a macro level, the fact that America is still widely perceived as being in shaky economic straits could prove beneficial for Chick-fil-A's future health. People are going out to eat at fancy, sit-down restaurants far less. Eating a Chick-fil -- A is an ideal opportunity for people to enjoy an 'affordable luxury' in the form of a fast food chicken sandwich. Fast food is widely regarded as 'recession proof,' and often people turn to comfort food in hard times, like fried chicken. Fast food is cheap and filling, albeit not particularly nutritious (Kordares 2009).

Industry

Within the fast food industry, since the recession there has been a renewed focus on low-cost menu items. Despite highly-publicized efforts to encourage Americans to eat more healthfully, it was Dollar Menu sales of burgers, nuggets, and fries that enabled McDonald's to register a 5.4% sales increase during the height of the credit crisis (Kordares 2009). Healthy foods tend to cost more, even at fast food restaurants, and offer more caloric bang for every buck spent. Additionally, when people are stressed, they are biologically speaking, more apt to crave high fat foods.

While not as famous as McDonald's, Chick-fil -- A also lacks some of the 'bad' brand associations of McDonald's, and to a lesser extent KFC and Pizza Hut, as these enterprises have often been the targets of anti-American protests internationally. McDonald's was also the focus of Super Size Me, a documentary that portrayed the filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock, growing fatter and fatter on an all-McDonald's diet. While still fast food, Chick-fil -- A has never attracted the focus of anti-fast food campaign.

External

In addition to nutritional concerns, the fast food industry has been under widespread criticism for poor food, poor labor practices, and unsustainable environmental attitudes. Despite its success, Chick-fil -- A remains a big company with a 'small' company feel. Its stores do not open on Sunday, because of the spiritual convictions of its founder that people should have Sunday off to go to church and be with their families. Even today, the company holds true to the principle that workers deserve the right to have at least one day off, once a week. Chick-fil-A's focus on good food, wholesome ingredients, and its willingness to provide nutritional information on its corporate website while not offering 'mega-supersized' burgers all bode well for its sustained growth in the future.

Internal

Chick-fil -- A closely monitors its brand. When opening up a new restaurant, the company usually recruits the franchise operator from within its corporate structure and asks the franchisee to invest a relatively small sum of money vs. The usual required investment of a quarter of a million dollars (Chick-fil-A, 2010, Company histories). The company also offers six weeks of paid training, in addition to the training the operator has already received as part of his or her employment. Chick-fil -- A generously offers the franchisee a salary year, plus half of the franchisers' net profits which gives additional motivation for the operator to work hard and make the business profitable (Chick-fil-A, 2010, Company histories). This is in the company's interest, as it ensures that franchise operators will maintain high standards of quality and service, without constant monitoring from corporate headquarters.

SWOT

Strengths

Chick-fil-A's reputation for quality and its devoted fans are its clear strength as a brand. It has a tight-knit business structure that encourages intense loyalty amongst employees, even from non-family members at this family-run business. The company stresses religious values in terms of how it treats customers and employees, because of the devout Christianity of its founder, even though it does not actively preach to the public and simply tries to sell good food.

After a period of difficulties in the early 80s (which was brought on, not due to declining demand, but an unexpected increase in demand and construction costs that taxed the company's resources) Chick-fil -- A began to focus more on advertising. It gained attention through its clever, edgy campaigns, portraying cows asking consumer to eat chicken, in desperation. The cow campaign was widely regarded as one of the most successful marketing campaigns for any fast food restaurant in recent memory, given the sharp upturn in sales after it was run (McDaniel 2006:1).

Although the company has expanded its outreach of free-standing stores, it began in many areas as a 'mall' food chain, which still gives it an automatic, captive walk-in audience, when people are shopping.

Weaknesses

Chick-fil -- A lags behind KFC and Popeye's in terms of market demand. Popeye's also has a substantial array of loyal fans, who swear by its spicy chicken. Chick-fil-A's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Its exclusive focus on chicken means that as consumer palates grow more diverse in their tastes, it might fail to find a secure niche in the future.

Threats

One of the company's previous strengths was its near-exclusive focus on locating its stores in shopping malls, which had very few food courts when the company was beginning (Chick-fil-A, 2010, Company histories). However, although the store has expanded to include free-standing structures, its core mall locations are less valuable in terms of their placement, as more people surf the Internet than shop in the 'real world.

Opportunities