Tim Hortons Essay

One of the recommendations that I would give to Tim Hortons would be to complete a thorough market research report whenever they can and as well as a competitor analysis of the major companies that are achieving great success in the industry, such as Starbucks and McDonalds. By analyzing the ways in which the competitors are adapting to the constant changes in the market today and figuring out the major moves they’ve made in terms of marketing and strategical planning and execution, while at the same time evaluate their customer segmentation techniques (qualitative versus quantitative) and who they’re specifically targeting in terms of attracting the customer’s attention and persuading the customer to buy and product, or if they did an exceptional

job, figure out how these companies were able to make the customer have the urge to want to buy their products. By evaluating what their competitors are doing right, Tim Hortons can start to replicate their actions and narrow the gap between the companies and overall, stay adjacently competitive with the corporations at the top of the industry.

The graphs below correspond to the survey questions in which I created, and furthermore responded by Canadian undergraduate university students spanning from ages seventeen to twenty-two. As one could see from the first graph (located on the left), the majority of students (71%) are either frequent or occasional consumers at Tim Hortons. By conducting this survey among students in the local community, I was able to gain valuable information regarding customer insight concentrating on a very specific group of students but however, an important group of individuals. Post-secondary students are

notoriously known for drinking copious amounts of coffee throughout their time in university or college as there are often many late nights in studying and stressing during the academic year and the provided caffeine in coffee helps the students to have the ability to stay up late. As we take a glance at the second graph located on the right, it indicates the average satisfaction the customer gets from their overall experience when they are at Tim Hortons, which includes both the enjoyment of the product or products and as well as the service provided. As we take a closer look at the graph, we can see that 71.1% of students (satisfaction from 3-5) who moderately enjoy their experience to other entities who absolutely enjoy their time at Tim Hortons are the clear majority in comparison to those who’s experiences were not as appreciated. Overall, Tim Hortons is able to attain the adoration of students through their intelligent marketing strategy and targeting. One of the reasons how the company is able to do this is by establishing a Tim Hortons installment at each university campus in the country.

Although it is clear that Tim Hortons attracts many customers that tend to stay loyal to the brand, it was personally shocking to see how so many of these people did not express Tim Hortons as being their favorite place to grab coffee (indicated in the graph below).

With Tim Hortons being the prime Canadian coffee brand for so long, I would have expected a much more different result in contrast with the current given data. When looking at the second graph, many of the consumers agree Tim Hortons has a good variety of products as they offer and serve both hot and cold meals, whether you want a filling sandwich for lunch or a few Timbit’s as a quick snack. This in essence signifies that a lack of variety in products is not an issue provoking the

company.

Through investigating and evaluating the information by way of publications of the many sources and conducting a survey segmenting a prime customer target segment of Tim Hortons, I can conclude based off my assumptions that Tim Hortons is not necessarily doing a terrible job of creating and executing their marketing strategy but the other giants in the industry are simply performing a finer job in doing so. I assumed this is the case because it is clear that Canadian customers still have a connection with the brand and are still putting their time and money into the company just like they have in the past. However, with recent studies conducted by MacLean’s, recent SWOT analyses and other methods of research, I saw that Tim Hortons is not growing at a rate like they have in the past but instead are staying constant in terms of their customer satisfaction and overall profits. On the other hand, their competitors are expanding into Tim Hortons territory or in other words, expanding onto Canadian soil and are beating Tim Hortons at their own game through clever innovations concerning their marketing game plan and how they’re administering their plan.
As McDonalds and Starbucks expanded into Canada, they provided to the Canadian consumers a number of products that are solely unique to Canada. This is through them researching the Canadian culture and implementing items that would catch the Canadian consumer’s attention. This also implies that the corporations are eager to show a sense of interest in Canadian’s wants and needs and going above and beyond the call of duty to make customers happy and not ignoring customer insights and opinions. An example of this is would be McDonalds implementing a poutine option to the Canadian menu.
In recent years, Tim Hortons were forced to close numerous stores within the North-Eastern states of the United States due to a lack of interest from customers, a lack of innovation in the menus and a lack of product differentiation, particularly concerning commoditizing. With other brands such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks around, Tim Hortons weren’t able to innovate well enough to compete against these companies. With Starbucks releasing weird and fun inventive products such as the “Unicorn Frappuccino” and Dunkin’ Donuts’ coming up with “Bacon, Egg and Cheese Croissant Sandwiches”, Tim Hortons menu options simply could not compete.
A recommendation that I would give to Tim Hortons would be for them to develop and enhance a strong marketing strategy (product, price, channel, marketing communication) after performing a strong segmentation of multiple regional areas and promote and innovate a product that would catch the consumer’s attention. This plan is analogous to the one McDonalds and Starbucks used in expanding to the Canadian market. I believe that if Tim Hortons wants to expand to other parts of the world, they must come into the situation with a brand-new mindset in regard to their approach towards a new market.
Overall, the most important recommendation that I would give to the Tim Hortons corporation is for them to put more emphasis and focus towards their plans in innovating new products and innovating new ways in marketing these ideas because at the end of the day, the customer should be any company’s main focus, and in general is the key to any company’s success.