Essay on Small Business Management

A market place is a particular group of people an investor has identified as a customer base. The investor has to determine demographic features of the market through the research. For restaurant business, different factors have to be identified. First, it to know the business and its concept. An existing operator will not look at the location as a primary factor but will look at understanding the food service business. The site of the hotel will matter when looking into factors like the labor cost, food costs, profits, gross margins among other issues. One will look at the potential a precise location has. The geographical location determines who lives in a given place as they would be the restaurant customers. The concept of the business must be understood as customers are attracted to a restaurant for various reasons. This means that one has to know what customers would prefer a facility and identify the characteristics the most frequent customers (Parsa, Self, Njite, & King, 2005). Having a regular customer and achieving a uniform customer distribution could be a secret to a successful site selection as it targets areas with demographics that match those customers.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Understanding the customer base goes a long way in choosing the location of a hotel. These would include trends, patterns, habit and attitude as they keep changing for a given area. They would be determined by various variables such as the children, age, income, professions, opportunities, aspirations, society trends, household size and composition, lifestyle and revenue. It is important to recognize the present and future trends and habits in considering a locational opportunities. For instance, employed persons have a travel pattern to and from work which when identified can be used to locate a hotel. This means that understanding their activities such as running household errands, chauffeuring the children and shopping can be identified and evaluated (Johns & Pine, 2002). The best location for this restaurant would be an intercept all or a portion of these patterns preferably a shopping mall.

The market target would be families, teenagers and the elderly who have visited the shopping mall. Additionally, it would be a place to relax after a tiresome day at work or after shopping. The restaurant would serve a big trade area as it has addressed various factors such as diverse income, favorable competition, physical and psychological barriers, traffic issues, consumer patterns, market structures and socio-economic characters. It will be able to cover a 12-mile trading area as it is in an urban area.

As the hotel relies on eating-out dollars from the daytime working population, resident population, visitors, and shoppers, data collected from these groups shows it would be a success. There are the right market resources such as the population, age structure, socioeconomic characteristics, lifestyle, income and household size. The data collected has been quantified and shows what the restaurant can anticipate. The restaurant is located in a mall that does not have any other outlet providing the same products which mean that the competition is minimal. It will need to fight other small hotels situated along the highway through better services, ample car park, better dining areas and its proximity to other services and products. Located in a developing area, the restaurant is anticipating to grow and establishment as it tries to maximize the opportunities created along the way.

ReferencesJohns, N., & Pine, R. (2002). Consumer behavior in the food service industry: a review. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 21(2), 119-134.

Parsa, H. G., Self, J. T., Njite, D., & King, T. (2005). Why restaurants fail. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 46(3), 304-322.