Case Study: Donatos- Finding the New Pizza
Reagan Ream
School of Business, Liberty University
BUSI 600: Business Research Methods
Dr. Michael Walker
February 13, 2022
1. Map the research design used by Donato’s for new product development.
Donatos faced the situation that most businesses, especially restaurants face on a
daily basis, a new trend or fad coming through. According to Karniel (2011), developing
a plan for new product development is absolutely essential because if the business does
not have a plan set in place to at least guide them the process can become extremely hetic
and unproductive for the business. Donatos established the research question at hand and
determined what they wanted to find out with their study. They noticed there was a
potential market for a low/no carb pizza and wanted to conduct their own literature
review to determine whether another pizza business has created or even thought of this
concept. Once they conducted their own study, they went and conducted a “Wassup”
meeting with their employees. After determining that this would not just be quick fading
fad that was making its way through the industry, they sat down and followed the process
that any restaurant does when they start to roll out a new product. They went through the
research process of determining what ingredients needed to be in the crust to ensure that
it is a low carb crust, but when others tasted tested the product, it did not meet the mark.
They continued to test through trial and error, but ultimately made the decision to move
onto their “no crust” idea that was their future success.
2. Evaluate the Wassup meetings as an exploratory methodology to help define the
research question.
In any type of business, it is difficult to make those tough decisions of when
