Overview
Business professionals must be able to create customer value by understanding the challenges in the marketplace and devising solutions to those challenges through strategic marketing. This traditional framework for attracting consumers must further incorporate new digital tools as appropriate, including e-Commerce, online, mobile, and social media modes for engaging customers.
The purpose of this assignment is to consider whether market positioning and business practices were consistent with Chipotle’s stated business purpose, and how these considerations may affect future decisions. Based on market information and ethical considerations, students will define performance indicators for measuring success, explain how these indicators reveal ethical behavior to stakeholders, and recommend strategies that are aligned with Chipotle’s present or a proposed new business purpose.
Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants advertise “Food With Integrity”, appealing to specific market segments. Chipotle exhibited significant growth since its first restaurant in 1993 to nearly 2,500 restaurants in 2015. In 2017, Chipotle became involved with several food-related disease outbreaks that sickened customers and caused a significant reduction in stock price.
Refer to content covering:
Sustainable marketing: social responsibility and ethics
Business markets and buyer behavior
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.: Food with Integrity (attached pdf)
Assignment Identify 3–5 performance indicators for Chipotle which will best monitor the success of any new market strategy and which are consistent with the company’s slogan. The product segment annual revenue growth percentage is an example of an applicable indicator. For each performance indicator, address the following:
Explain why it uniquely monitors market strategy success and consistency with Chipotle’s slogan.
Identify how the reactions of Chipotle’s stakeholders and market segments to this market strategy might be monitored by the performance indicator and explain why.
Define your basis for assessing ethical behavior.
Using your basis for assessing ethical behavior, evaluate whether Chipotle was or was not unethical in its marketing and business practices before, during and after the food disease incidents.
Assume that you, as the marketing manager, are asked to sustain the rapid growth of Chipotle’s restaurants but are advised that this may require a change in Chipotle’s slogan.
Using the performance indicators and ethics considerations described above, recommend and evaluate at least three sets of strategic actions for improving Chipotle’s market performance, including any changes in Chipotle’s slogan if appropriate.
Assignment Requirements
Recommend and evaluate 3 strategic actions to improve market performance that incorporate performance and ethics considerations.
Select 3–5 performance indicators, indicating why you believe these indicators are important for monitoring market strategies and actions.
Discuss how each indicator might monitor the reactions of the key market segments and stakeholders to a market strategy.
Discuss the ethical behavior and evaluation of Chipotle’s ethical behavior during and after the food disease incidents.
Citation requirements: 2 authoritative sources per case study
Word count: 500-750 words for each case study response
APA formatting
Title page
Reference page
Plagiarism submission
