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Case Study: Donatos
Olen C. Appleton
Master of Business Administration in Finance of Liberty University
BUSI 600: Business Research Methods
Dr. Michael Walker
Author Note
Olen Appleton
I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Olen Appleton
Email: oappleton@liberty.edu
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Donatos
1. Map the research design used by Donato’s for new product development.
The outline for the research design process is the key to a well thought out
research process. From the textbook, we know that the research process includes 5 stages. The
stages from the textbook include, “Clarify the research question, design the research project,
collect and prepare the data, analyze and interpret the data, and report insights and
recommendations” (Schindler, 2019) The design of this research project falls into the second part
of the research process. The textbook does a good job of describing different factors in research
design, but the case study handles the situation the best and lays out the specifics for this
research design.
Donatos did not settle on just one strategy for their research design when
considering the development and production of their new products. The first part of their
research in the exploratory stages include different kinds of meetings and observations that they
collected data from through various sources. The food and the diet industry began to change and
Donatos noticed it, and this is where they also began to get feedback through emails from
customers.
After the exploratory stages of collecting the information through those various means as
discussed in the previous chapter. We see that in the development stage of this research design
process that the company really wanted to figure out what had the most success amongst the
consumers that would be eating this product. In the case study, we see that the concepts were
built to help successful taste testing within employees and other close personnel to the business.
After this step, they had to resolve on whether to proceed with the concept. The best concept
that had been recognized by the company was the dough free pizza (Schindler, 2004) This
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portion led to two new tests in additional restaurants within the chain. The research design for
this included surveying respondents to complete a survey that could be classified as an intercept
survey to figure out what the customer level of satisfaction was. There were other things that
were conducted like phone calls from random customers as part of this research design strategy.
2. Evaluate the Wassup meetings as an exploratory methodology to help define the
research question.
Them must be a good reason for a company or entity to begin looking for information in
the exploratory phases. Not every research project can have the exploratory parts conducted the
same way and the problem from older projects needs to be adjusted and fixed as research
understanding grows. “As information becomes more ubiquitous and the demands that searchers
have on search systems grow, there is a need to support search behaviors beyond simple lookup.
Information seeking is the process or activity of attempting to obtain information in both human
and technological contexts. Exploratory search describes an information-seeking problem
context that is open-ended, persistent, and multifaceted, and information-seeking processes that
are opportunistic, iterative, and multitactical. Exploratory searchers aim to solve complex
problems and develop enhanced mental capacities. Exploratory search systems support this
through symbiotic human-machine relationships that provide guidance in exploring unfamiliar
information landscapes. Exploratory search has gained prominence in recent years” (White,
Roth, Marchionini, 2009). Understanding how the exploratory methods are supposed to gain
knowledge and add to defining the research question gives us the understanding how Donatos
did that with the Wassup Meetings.
The primary thing that we can see with Donatos using this Wassup meeting strategy is
that they wanted to let some of the company personnel brainstorm and bring their knowledge of
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the trendy diet patterns in culture and apply those effects to help Donato. Donato ultimately
wanted to bring a popular low-carb diet food to the market and address the need for it through
the research into this new product. These meetings served as additional insight into the changing
trends within cultural and social media before strictly reaching out to the customers outside of
the company. The Wasup meetings were supplemental in nature because they were also
receiving information from email and other means in the exploratory process. The feedback was
important to the company because they received crucial information about the market from
immediately affected personnel that would also be involved in the product development process.
Donato leadership would be able to take the information gathered during this Wassup meetings
and blend it with the additional information that was gathered to begin to paint a clearer picture
of what the customer and market really needs. Exploratory stage ultimately wants to find the
research question and one of them that could have been gathered is, should the company
introduce No-Dough Pizza to satisfy the demand from the low-carb diet market?
3. Evaluate the test market Donatos used. What were its advantages and?
disadvantages?
Where information is derived is important to the helpfulness of the information
that was provided. Donatos was seeking reactions to its products from two main outlets in one
market. There are immediate concerns with this test market. Reliability is a concern
immediately when you hear that there is only one city being used as a target market. There is
rarely a market research with only the one variable like one city being used because of the
reliability of data from only one city. Why does a company seek market research to begin with?
“A business may undertake market research to help it make better business decisions. A business
may want to make a change to a product, add a new product to its range or change its location.
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Before it does so it may want to find out whether customers will respond positively to the
change” (The purpose of market research).
There are other concerns with this information and one of them is the way that the
test was conducted. The customers that were being tested on over the course of a several days
were not new and instead were normal typical customers and there was no promotion conducted
to attract any new customers. The introduction of many food products in the market is
traditionally done through some promotion types of events and this brings in information from
many outside sources that is not normally reached by the company. The goal of bringing new
products to market is not just to reach the same customers that you have always reached, but
instead find a new way to reach new customers. Donatos did not try to do this well enough with
this market research strategy. Along with this issue and others that were brought up before were
the issues that this study is not one that was conducted using great control measures at all.
Everyone was new, and lack of controls gives to inaccuracy of results. Not everything was bad.
The minimized research cost, fast data collection rates, small amount of needed manpower and
inexpensive product testing facilities were all good traits of the in-restaurant tests. The good
things that came from the phone calls included reaching some further parts of the market into a
wider range of customers, reached previously unreachable customers from the in-person tests,
and helped keep some anonymity during collection of information. All those things considered
still does not take away the lack of reliability and the other issues that were brought up regarding
the negatives about this one city market approach.
4. What measurement scales would you have used on the survey that was part of the
in-restaurant product tests?
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Before I could choose which type of measurement scale I would use, I had to figure out
what are common survey response scales. I found that there were three common ones. Those
are, “Dichotomous, Numerical or Likert Rating Scales, and Semantic differential scales”
(Birkett, 2019). “Dichotomous scales have two choices that are diametrically opposed to each
other. Is there a difference in the outcome based on which scale you choose? Totally. There is
more variance in larger scales, which has made the Likert scale the most common survey scale.
Dr. Rob Balon advises to “always use the 1–5 scale, with 5 being the positive end and 1 being
the negative end. NEVER use 1 as the positive end. Lastly, Semantic differential scales gather
data and “interpret based on the connotative meaning of the respondent’s answer.” These scales
usually have dichotomous words at either end of the spectrum. They measure more specific
attitudinal responses” (Birkett, 2019). These three types of response scales taught me different
ways that the measurement of the surveys could have been taken for this Donatos case study, but
the specific about which one I should use took a little thought.
For me, the easiest choice was the use the numerical rating scale so that the product could
be evaluated based on how well the respondents liked or disliked the product. They could do this
by simply rating how well they liked it from a number like the one stated by Birkett above on a
scale of 1-5 or something similar. This strategy would work even when comparing it to other
types or products in further studies.
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References
Birkett, A. (2019, October 10). Survey response scales: How to choose the right one.
CXL. https://cxl.com/blog/survey-response-scales/
The purpose of market research - Market research - Edexcel - GCSE business revision - Edexcel
- BBC bitesize. (n.d.). BBC
Bitesize. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z6y9rj6/revision/2
Schindler, P. S. (2019). Business research methods (13th ed.).
White, R., White, R. W., & Roth, R. A. (2009). Exploratory search: Beyond the query-response
paradigm. Morgan & Claypool Publishers.
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