African Cuisine and Culture – Kinshasa

Kinshasa Abroad – African Cuisine and Culture Jennifer Johnson MT/355 – Marketing Research Theodore Alex 5/1/2012 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to refer to the case Kinshasa Abroad – African Cuisine and Culture, define the problems that appear regarding this case, and trying to find answers and solutions to these problems. As it can be noticed in the case, there are marketing problems regarding this business. There are two questions that need to be addressed.
The first question is about the type of information that needs to be collected to help diagnose the marketing problem in this case. The second question, however, it is interesting because it asks to create a list of probing questions that should be asked the owner of the restaurant to help him specify research problems and also the manager’s decision problem. Kinshasa Abroad The case goes this way. Youlou Kabasella is an African entrepreneur that had a business running in his own country.
It was a restaurant that was opened for more that 14 years. However, since the political context was not advantageous, the owner decided to move with his family in the United States. He manages to open the same business he had in his home country, in the downtown area of Columbus, Ohio. However, the strategy chosen by the entrepreneur with respect to his business may not be appropriate since it does not show any positive results. He considered keeping most of the aspects of his business similar to his home country.

The paper tries to identify the problem and spot certain solutions through marketing research. Before getting deeper into this concept, the term marketing research must be defined. According to Churchill, Brown, and Suter (2008), marketing research represents the function that connects the consumers to the marketer through information that is used in identifying and defining marketing problems and also opportunities. Marketing research helps generating, refining, and valuating marketing actions; it helps monitoring performance and it enhances the understanding of marketing as a complete process. A research consultant requires various valuable data from Mr. Kabasella to identify the problem of his inefficiency. At first, a marketing consultant would require Kabasella information about his advertising and promotion practices, about the local customer preferences and habits, precise information about the prices and his menu and business activities, and other information as well.
Here is a list of questions that a marketing consultant addresses Kabasella to help him with his business problems: 1. How come most of your products are African based? 2. Why did you choose to advertise without using the most important advertising mean which is the Internet? 3. Did you consider doing a marketing analysis to determine your potential competition in this area? 4. Did you consider offering free meals or other points of attraction to try and increase the number of customers? 5. Did you consider selling more local products?
Conclusion These from above are only few of the potential questions that a marketing researcher needs to ask the employer to help him with his problems. The marketing researcher needs to focus identifying the competition for this company; it also needs to focus on advertisements and promotion to include the company in the list of the customers. The will have to find the proper marketing mix, which refers to product, place, price, and promotion (the four Ps of marketing) to help the company become more efficient and profitable.
It clearly needs to add more local meals and drinks to its menu; it needs to use and promote local bands in the restaurant because clients would come and serve meals that they are aware of (at first), and then they may try to choose the African specialties. There are many elements to be considered; the solution to this case is not difficult to be identified and implemented. Reference Churchill, G. A. , Brown, T. J. , & Suter, T. A. (2008). Basic Marketing Research (7th Ed. ). Cengage Learning.