Essay on Aisa’s Finest Business Plan: Market Segmentation and Target Customers

Asia’s Finest intends to cater to a various groups of people. The first of these groups is that comprising primarily of people of Asian origin in the country, who long for a dining experience similar to that in their native countries. Other than the quality of food and service, Asia’s Finest also focuses on authenticity of its food. This group is therefore assured of authentic Asian cuisines, and makes up about 62 percent of Asia’s Finest customer base. Customers who fall under this category will benefit from authenticity of our foods. As mentioned, most of them will be residents of our target locations that include Thai Town, Chinatown, and Koreatown. These customers are also characterized by their preference for eating out, a good income that enables them to support this preference, and/or a marital status of single that allows them to do this.

The second group that Asia’s Finest intends to appeal to is tourists. The restaurant’s strategic locations ensure that there is a constant flow of vacationers, especially during the summer months. Asia’s Finest will be an attractive restaurant to vacationers from all over the world who are looking for authentic Asian cuisine and a good dining experience in these regions that contain large Asian populations. Based on our analysis, this market group would make up about 27 percent of our customer base. This group of customers would benefit from exposure to different Asian cuisines and ambiances all within one setting. They are mostly financially well off, are students or middle-aged tourists with children, and come from all over the country and indeed, the world.

Finally, Asia’s Finest also plans on catering to people residing in these areas who are not of Asian origin, but who may be interested in an exotic dining experience. This market would be made up primarily of adventurous people interested in experiencing different cuisines. This segment would make up about 11 percent of our total customer base and would mostly be characterized by young and old adventurous residents of the areas, single or married. Indeed, the main characteristic of this group is that they are adventurous

Competitor Assessment

Asia’s Finest is one of the many restaurants in the United States that is competing in the vast market of the restaurant industry. The restaurant industry in the U.S. is varied with large numbers of styles, offerings, and competition. However, what makes Asia’s Finest stands out is the food it offers to the Asian market. The restaurant serves a variety of the different best-known dishes from different Asian countries including Japan, China, Philippines, Thailand, Korea and India using only authentic and the best ingredients.

The restaurant believes that providing the Asian market in the country with the taste of real ethnic cuisines will be the key to attracting customers because it would customer of their home country. The quality and taste of food that Asia’s Finest serves its customers is complimented by the quality of service that the restaurant and the affordable prices that it provides to its customers.

The restaurant was conceptualized because a large number of Asian migrants in the country. The goal of the restaurant is to make the Asian migrants feel at home in their newfound country by serving them food that reminds them of home. However, the restaurant market in the U.S. is vast and competition is everywhere. In the United States there are a large number of fast-food restaurant chains that dominate the food service industry. Yum! Brands-owned KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell as well as other fast-food restaurant McDonald’s, Starbucks, California Pizza Kitchen are only a few of the many varieties of restaurants in the U.S. market that Asia’s Finest has to face in marketing in the U.S. market.

Yum! Brands, Inc., or simply called Yum!, is a United States-based food restaurant company that operates or licenses Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Wingstreet, and Long John Silver’s restaurants worldwide as well as A&W Restaurants. The Fortune 500 company is based in Louisville, Kentucky. Its global operations amount to almost 38,000 restaurants around the world in more than 110 countries and territories (Yum! Brands, 2011).

KFC Corporation, with its rich 57-year history of success and innovation, is the world’s most popular chicken restaurant chain. Dallas, Texas-based Pizza Hut, Inc. is the world’s largest pizza restaurant company, which specializes in pizzas, has more than 7,500 restaurants in the United States and over 5,600 restaurants in 97 countries and territories around the world. Taco Bell Corp., which is based in Irvine, California, is the leading Mexican-style QSR chain in the United States. The chain has more than 5,600 restaurants in the U.S. since it was founded in 1962 that serves more than 35 million consumers each week.

McDonald’s is the world’s largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving not only the United States but as well as Europe, South America and the rest of Asia. The restaurant chain sells primarily hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken products, French fries, soft drinks and more. The company began in the 1940s and has evolved all throughout the decades to become the number fast-food chain in the world (Stephen Evans, 2004).

Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington that operates with more than 16,858 stores in 50 countries. The company was founded in 1971 by English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegl, and writer Gordon Bowker. Three decades later, Starbucks is now the largest coffee company in the world (Starbucks Corporation, 2011). The company offers more than coffee as the company has begun to expand its offerings with delis and even packaged-goods products.

Another potential competitor is California Pizza Kitchen, Inc. or more commonly-known in the food industry as CPK. The company is a US-based dining restaurants chain that principally offers various assortments of hearth-baked pizzas. The restaurant chain also offers a wide array of distinctive appetizers, desserts, pastas, salads, soups and sandwiches. The company is known for its variety of pizza flavors that captures the flavors from different countries such as The Greek Pizza, Jamaican Jerk Chicken and Thai Chicken (California Pizza Kitchen, n.d.).

The primary competitors of Asia’s Finest are the fast food chains that are prevalent in almost every corner of major cities and non-major cities in the U.S. The term competitors are used because these fast-food chains have all the characteristics that define fast-food, which is convenient food at a lower price. The customers that these companies cater to range from people with average income to people with above-average income, who are primarily people from different ethnic backgrounds and social status in life. Since many of the Asian immigrants are trying to assimilate themselves in the American society, many can’t help but become attracted by the offerings that these American brands have to offer them.

Despite Asia’s Finest having a different set of offerings from these competitors, the fact still remains that these fast-food chains are competition for the company. But what makes Asia’s Finest stand out is the authentic Asian food it offers that cannot be found in any of the restaurants mentioned above, which gives the company a competitive advantage. Additionally, with all the concern about obesity and the risks associated with it, there is a large chance that many Asian migrants and non-Asian customers will try Asia’s Finest.

Many of the customers that are catered to by Asia’s Finest’s competitors are basically the same people that Asia’s Finest also caters to. Although Asia’s Finest has its own niche market, the niche market that Asia’s Finest caters to are also influenced by these fast-food chains because these fast-food companies are the norm in the American society and once this niche market, the immigrants from Asia have assimilated themselves in the American society, chances are, their eating habits may also be influenced by the American way of eating.

This impacts the company immensely. With this kind of stiff competition, Asia’s Finest needs to reinforce its marketing strategies to win over its competitors in its niche market. However, since many Asian immigrants have great affinity to their culture, and the food that Asia’s Finest offers will remind them of home, the niche market will have a great chance of choosing Asia’s Finest over competitors.