Gap model : Dominos

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2.6. Relationship Marketing: Building Services Profit Chain Through Customer Loyalty

In order to describe the relationship marketing and understand how the internal, external and interactive communication of the company helps to deliver its promise to customers, we used Services Marketing Triangle model.

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Overall, to summarize the second part of our research paper, we have created Services Marketing Mix (7 Ps), that in general includes all the main points discussed above (See Appendix).

2.7. Customer Journey

Before assessing Domino’s services quality, customer journey was designed. Customer journey of Domino’s Pizza is composed of several steps in which consumer interacts with employees, service intermediaries (such as online platform, website, etc.) and products:

Type of the service

Store

Delivery

Step 1

Customer needs food (fast service, qualitative food, for a reasonable price)

Step 2

Customer finds a store

Visits a web-site or mobile app

Step 3

Customer chooses a product and makes an order

Step 4

Customer makes a payment (based on promotions, discounts, special offers)

Step 5

Customer finds a place to sit

Step 6

Customer waits for the order to be prepared (or to be arrived)

Step 7

Customer receives an order and enjoys the meal

Step 8

Customer cleans a table, leaves the store

Step 9

Customer leaves a feedback, suggest the company to others

Customer journey reflects basic customer actions that should be made by an individual in order to receive the service. However, looking from the company’s perspective, for the process to run smoothly there are several visible, invisible and support activities performed by the company. Therefore, we created Services Blueprint for store and delivery operations of Domino’s Pizza (see Appendix) that helped us to diagnose service encounters aka “moments of truth” (see Appendix).

3. Domino’s Pizza Belgium Services Quality Assessment

GAP Model

Gap 1: Knowledge gap

For Domino’s Pizza this gap is not big because the firm uses several tools to constantly examine and control customer expectations. Since Domino’s Pizza is highly recognized brand, it is a reference for many customers (they have already certain perception about the company before trying its services).

- The company has developed a strong database thanks to the website and digital ordering platform which constitutes as a big source of information about the customers and their preferences.

- Once the customer is registered in the system, the company sends regular feedback surveys to the customers. Domino’s Pizza is constantly analyzing dissatisfied customers and their service points of failure.

- Good customer segmentation and customer relationship marketing thanks to the personal link between the company and customers (by having the information on customer living location, the company sends regular promotions from the closest Domino’s store).

- Company creates good financial bonds (promotions etc.), social bonds (direct relationship, personal attitude).

- Customization bonds could be improved, because currently there is no real differentiation between customers (looking from the customer pyramid point of view).

- Company manages to define zones of tolerance thanks to standardization (the firm determines the zone of tolerance, not the customers).

- In Europe they apply new services that were tested in the United States of America.

Gap 2: Policy Gap

For Domino’s Pizza this gap is very small because every shop or franchise obey to a strong policy from the firm. All processes are standardized and correspond to the brand vision.

- Domino’s Pizza has a well-developed service design which is applicable in all of the company franchises

- Servicescape and physical evidence promotes the brand and is standardized

- There is an absence of real customer driven standards, the customers should adapt themselves to the predefined process flow of the company

- Servicescape plays its role very well: digital ordering platform facilitates the customer journey, consistent packaging conveys customer expectations, strength of the brand plays as the differentiator, and friendly environment works as socializer

Gap 3: Delivery Gap

For Domino’s Pizza this gap is bigger because of some inefficiencies in delivering the promise according to service designs and standards.

- Inefficiencies in the Human Resources policies – the company fails to provide necessary resources for employees to perform their job properly (does not provide smartphones to delivery drivers)

- Potential failures in not being able to match supply and demand, therefore it overpromises the delivery time

- Difficulties with services recovery in the case if pizza is not delivered in time (customer does not have any possibility to receive service recovery in case of failure)

- Potential problems might occur in employee work performance (having the wrong address and without a mobile phone, not being able to call to customer to specify the information

- Lack of employee empowerment, since sometimes employee is not highly involved in the decision