Sell pancake or service in twenty-first Century

shimmy

With the development of internet, how to use the internet on marketing has become a significant issue in twenty-first Century. Under this circumstance, Internet thinking theory successfully brainwashed Chinese market into believing internet thinking is the first thing companies need to do.

What is internet thinking?

The internet thinking is relative to the industrialized thinking. Unlike ‘pay for it and take’, companies put customer as the top priority and profit from providing high-quality service or product for free to appealing customers to share their favorable comments to attract more customers.

Sell service or pancake

Pancake, as chinese traditional cheap breakfast, can be seen every morning in the street. But Huang Tai Ji, who make Pancake into fast food, has been valued at 120 million yuan by some analysts recently, and it was regard as a model of practicing internet thinking to follow.

Huang tai ji did an excellent job in serving customers and attracting customers from online to offline. They provide free parking, free WiFi, free candies, free tea, free smile, free well-decorated place to meet friends to keep customer patronize regularly. However, nowadays it facing a dilemma, on the one hand, customers praise its’ service, on the other hand, consumers blame its’ ordinary taste.

Believe it or not

I am sure it would be a disaster for a traditional restaurant If consumers evaluate the food does not taste good. Apparently, not for Huang tai ji, investors still choose to invest for Huang Tai Ji. And from their perspective, taste of pancake can be changed later, what matters is service.

So I start to think Would it have worked if Pancake restaurant no longer put the taste of the food in the first place but the service? Huang tai ji is popular since there are few companies make a great effort to do service and customers is not that hard to delight now. What if more companies join the service battle, the taste of food can be of importance. In addition, consumer service, like any other skills, can be learned and easily to copy, but the taste of food is how a restaurant different from other restaurants. In my opinion, the reason Huang Tai Ji gains much attention and investment mostly result from the choice of market. With the develop globalization, china need a ‘McDonald’s’ which may be not good at cook but selling around the world and ‘ Internet talent ’ Huang Tai Ji is undoubtedly the best choice. Huang Tai Ji is popular now but have not benefited from the internet thinking. It is hard to say whether this theory works or not.

It is undeniable that internet thinking play an essential role on engaging consumer, but it is not for every company. Some small companies need to calm down from the internet thinking boom, finding their situation in the marketing, do not lose on the internet thinking.

What do you think? Would you focus on the consumer service or the taste of pancake, if you have a restaurant?

List of reference:

picture1:http://andytedd.com/2010/05/12/is-the-internet-changing-the-way-we-think/

Picture2:http://www.domarketing.org/html/2013/observe_0831/10201.html