Limited implementation of California’s Healthy Default Beverage law for children’s meals sold online

Objective: To reduce children’s sugar-sweetened beverage intake, California’s Healthy-By-Default Beverage law (SB1192) mandates only unflavored dairy/non-dairy milk or water be the default drinks with restaurant children’s meals. The objective of this study is to examine consistency with this law for meals sold through online platforms from restaurants in low-income California neighborhoods. Design: This observational, cross-sectional study examines beverage availability, upcharges (additional cost), and presentation of beverage options consistent with SB1192 (using 4 increasingly restrictive criteria) within a random sample of quick service restaurants (QSRs) in SNAP-Ed eligible census tracts selling children’s meals online from November 2020-April 2021. Setting: Low-income California neighborhoods (n=226 census tracts). Participants: QSRs that sold children’s meals online via a restaurant-specific platform, DoorDash, GrubHub, and/or UberEats (n=631 observations from 254 QSRs). Results: Seventy percent of observations offered water; 63% offered unflavored milk. Among all beverages, water was most likely to have an upcharge; among observations offering water (n=445), 41% had an upcharge (average $0.51). Among observations offering unflavored milk (n=396), 11% had an upcharge (average $0.38). No observations upcharged for soda (regular or diet). Implementation consistency with SB1192 ranged from 40.5% (using the least restrictive criteria) to 5.6% (most restrictive) of observations. Conclusions: Based on observations from restaurant websites and three of the most popular online ordering platforms, most California QSRs located in low-income neighborhoods are not offering children’s meal beverages consistent with the state’s Healthy-By-Default Beverage law. As the popularity of online ordering increases, further work to ensure restaurants are offering healthy default beverages with children’s meals sold online is necessary.

Platform Business in Korea: Advent and Growth of Kakao

With the rapid development of ICT technology, a platform business is exerting a dominant influence in various fields. This type of a business has a great ripple effect in that it creates value by engaging and connecting various market actors such as producers, suppliers, and business partners to the platform ecosystem, rather than directly selling independent products or services. In this vein, the current study introduces the emergence and growth process of Kakao, which has a monopolistic dominance in the Korean mobile messenger market, as an example of a platform business. This company started to be distributed to Korean consumers in 2010 and is currently exercising its market influence in various fields such as commerce, entertainment, finance, and transportation, and more growth is expected in the future. Based on the case investigation, the background of Kakao’s success can be interpreted with a combination of various reasons, such as Korea’s developed ICT environment, a large game users’ population, quick service launch, the strategy to utilize the founder’s previous work experience, and service development geared towards Korean consumers.

„Man muss monatelang Arbeit investieren“

Bringoo liefert aus lokalen Märkten des Discounters Penny und selbstständiger Kaufleute online bestellte Lebensmittel zu den Kunden nach Hause. Damit unterscheidet sich das Hamburger Startup von Quick-Service-Anbietern mit eigenen Lagern.

Mcdonald’s versus Vikram Bakshi

Learning outcomes The case illustrates the challenges of managing JVs in emerging markets. specifically, after going through the case, students should be able to: i.Analyze the contexts in which firms need to form JVs and evaluate this need in the context of emerging markets such as India; ii.Understand how multinational corporations can achieve success in emerging markets, specifically the role of strategic (broader than the product) adaptation in success; iii.Evaluate the impact of conflict between partners on the short-term and long-term performance of a JV; and iv.Create alternatives, evaluate each alternative’s pros and cons, and recommend appropriate decisions to address the situation after a JV unravels and the organization is faced with quality and other challenges. Case overview/synopsis McDonald’s, the global giant in the quick service industry, entered India in 1993 and formed two JVs in 1995 one with Vikram Bakshi (Connaught Plaza Restaurants Ltd or CPRL) to own and operate stores in the northern and eastern zones, and another with Amit Jatia (Hardcastle Restaurants Private Limited or HRPL) to own and operate stores in the western and southern zones. Over the next 12 years, both the JVs made steady progress by opening new stores while also achieving better store-level metrics. Though CPRL was ahead of HRPL in terms of the number of stores and total revenues earned in 2008, the year marked the beginning of a long-running dispute between the two partners in CPRL, Bakshi and McDonald’s. Over the next 11 years, Bakshi and McDonald’s tried to block each other, filed court cases against each other and also exchanged recriminations in media. The feud hurt the performance of CPRL, which fell behind HRPL in terms of growth and other metrics. On May 9, 2019, the feuding partners reached an out-of-court settlement under which McDonald’s would buy out Bakshi’s shares in CPRL, thus making CPRL a subsidiary. Robert Hunghanfoo, who had been appointed head of CPRL after Bakshi’s exit, announced a temporary shutdown of McDonald’s stores to take stock of the current situation. He had to make a number of critical decisions that would impact the company’s performance in the long-term. Complexity academic level MBA, Executive MBA and executive development programs. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 11: Strategy.

Feasibility of collaborating with independent Latino-owned restaurants to increase sales of a healthy combo meal

Americans spend the majority of their food dollars at restaurants and other prepared food sources, including quick-service and fast-food restaurants (PFS); independent small restaurants make up 66% of all PFS in the US. In this feasibility study, 5 independent and Latino-owned PFS in the Washington DC metro area worked with academic partners to start offering healthy combo meals with bottled water and promote these using on-site, community, and social media advertising. The number of healthy combos sold was collected weekly, showing that the new combos sold, and customers in all 5 sites were surveyed as they exited the PFS (n=50): >85% had noticed the combo meals; 100% thought it was a good idea to offer it, 68% had ordered the combo (of these, >94% of customers responded that they liked it). Results suggest that it is feasible to work with independent Latino-owned restaurants to promote healthy combos and collect data.

“Actions speak louder than words”: an impact of service recovery antecedents on customer delight in quick-service restaurants

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to conceptualize and analyze a framework that provides greater understanding toward the impact of service recovery antecedents such as role clarity, customer service orientation, employee empowerment and employee relational behavior on customer satisfaction and customer delight in the context of quick-service restaurants (QSRs).Design/methodology/approachA self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 408 participants who had experienced service recovery efforts by leading QSRs on social media. The current paper draws upon the prevailing literature to test a series of research hypotheses through structural equation modeling.FindingsThe findings of the study have confirmed that antecedents of service recovery are good to describe customer satisfaction and customer delight in the setting of QSRs. Besides, the study provides an understanding on how monetary compensation moderates the relationship between customer delight and customer satisfaction.Practical implicationsThis study carries an understanding on how frontline employees must operate in a non-conventional and innovative way to resolve customers' issues and show commitment with truthfulness to provide excellent services to make customers feel delightful.Originality/valueThis is a unique study to understand the role of service recovery antecedents to describe customer satisfaction and customer delight in the social media environment. In addition, the results support the possibilities of implementing prompt service recovery efforts using social media.

Selection Criteria for Conventional and Islamic Banks: An Empirical Analysis

The current study investigates the bank selection criteria used by the customers of both the conventional and Islamic banks of Pakistan. From six different cities, a sample of 1000 customers was selected in order to find out the factors influencing their selection of a bank. The results showed that “Security of Money” was considered as the most important factor in the selection of banks, both by the customers of conventional and Islamic banks. The results also revealed that the customers of Islamic banks ranked “Competence of Staff”, “Online Banking Facility”, and “Confidentiality of Information” as the second, third and fourth most important factors in the selection of their respective banks. On the other hand, the customers of conventional banks emphasized “Availability of ATM Machines”, “Quick Service”, and “Friendly Behavior of Staff” as the second, third and fourth most important factors in bank selection. Further, the customers of Islamic banks ranked “Shari’ah Compliance” as the seventh most important factor, while the customers of conventional banks ranked it as the twentieth important factor out of the total twenty-five factors. Thus, to retain the existing customers and to attract new ones, both Islamic and conventional banks need to focus on customer preferences when offering their products.

Marketing Cardiovascular Mortality? Healthy vs. Unhealthy Food in Television Advertising

Background:Cardiovascular disease has been the leading killer of Americans since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, social distancing and stay-at-home requests, there has been increased television (TV) engagement, and marketing has become more impactful in modifying consumer behaviors. Objective: We evaluated the healthfulness of food marketing, based on commercials most frequently aired on American primetime networks during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Methods:We reviewed a total of 104 TV commercials, 89 chosen randomly during TV watching and 14 targeted to enrich the sample with the leading quick service restaurants (“fast-food chains”). The commercials fell into 4 categories: 1) fast-food chains, 2) brand-recognized individual items, 3) grocery chains, and 4) home-delivery meals. The food items displayed in each commercial were recorded and scored based on the previously validated healthful versus unhealthful nutrition scoring system, assigning either positive or negative values for each food item in the commercial. Results:We found that 58% of the commercials advertised fast-food chains (mean score = -3.1, i.e., 3.1 more unhealthy than healthy items per commercial), while 27% were brand-recognized individual items (-0.82), 9% were grocery chains (-0.4), and 6% were for home-delivery meals (0.83); each was less unhealthy than fast-food (p< 0.0001). Conclusions:Commercial TV in the US routinely promotes the consumption of foods that are known to be unhealthy, particularly those underpinning cardiovascular disease and its risk factors. Regulation and/or legislation to curtail the frequency and/or content of these commercials, and consider a ban on such advertising to children, similar to that previously employed in Canada and the European Union.