The era of digitalization enabled the incorporation of technologies into every aspect of people’s lives. For example, some companies, like Amazon and eBay, are online businesses, while others, like banks and airlines, need to introduce digital components for their customers’ convenience (Gomes, Santoro, and da Silva, 2020, p. 52). Furthermore, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced business owners to switch to an online mode (Lau, 2020, p. 497). Although the demand for digitation is much higher for the service sector, restaurants lag behind industrial companies (Verevka, 2019, p. 2). Moreover, 96% of Americans bought something online at some point in their life, and 51% were frequent users of digital shops in 2018 (Kingsnorth, 2019, p. 57). Therefore, introducing a digital element to a new small restaurant is critical to broaden the client network and meet digital customers’ needs by adequately managing human resources, budget, and timescale.
The fundamental components of digital marketing for a small restaurant are technologies and resources. Thus, the 3M model, standing for men, money, and minutes, should be utilized to ensure the future success of an organization (Chaffey and Smith, 2017, p. 610). In fact, according to Table 1, 12.5% of the energy can be given to teambuilding, 25% of the effort to control money, and the rest is to building traffic (Chaffey and Smith, 2017, p. 613). This data shows that promotion on social media to attract clients is more important than human resource management. Moreover, the website content should also be high quality and user-friendly to satisfy visitors (Smith and Zook, 2019, p. 937). Another feature of this restaurant can be automated food delivery and artificial intelligence software. Indeed, it is affordable in modern times because these technologies have dropped by 40% since 2005 (Berezina, Ciftci, and Cobanoglu, 2019, p. 211). Thus, it seems plausible to introduce digitalization in this project because it no longer requires significant financial investments.
Table 1. Effort Distribution for 3M Model Activities
In summary, implementing technologies and managing the 3M model can help the new restaurant gain digital customers’ satisfaction and increase the clients’ network. In fact, giving more attention to the speed of introducing the novelties appears logical because qualified employees and good website design may be useless without consumers. Overall, new technologies are an affordable and convenient way to improve customer service in the modern world.
Reference List
Berezina, K., Ciftci, O. and Cobanoglu, C. (2019) ‘Robots, artificial intelligence, and service automation in restaurants’, In Ivanov, S. and Webster, C. (eds.) Robots, artificial intelligence, and service automation in travel, tourism and hospitality. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 185-219.
Chaffey, D. and Smith, P.R. (2017) Digital marketing excellence: planning, optimizing and integrating online marketing. Routledge.
Gomes, S.B., Santoro, F.M. and da Silva, M.M. (2020) ‘An ontology for BPM in digital transformation and innovation’, International Journal of Information System Modeling and Design, 11(2), pp. 52-77. doi: 10.4018/IJISMD.2020040103
Kingsnorth, S. (2019) Digital marketing strategy: an integrated approach to online marketing. Kogan Page Publishers.
Lau, A., 2020. ‘New technologies used in COVID-19 for business survival: Insights from the Hotel Sector in China’, Information Technology & Tourism, 22(4), pp. 497-504. doi: 10.1007/s40558-020-00193-z
Smith, P.R. and Zook, Z. (2019) Marketing communications: Integrating online and offline, customer engagement and digital technologies. Kogan Page Publishers.
Verevka, T.V. (2019). ‘Development of industry 4.0 in the hotel and restaurant business’, IBIMA Business Review, pp. 1-12. doi: 10.5171/2019.324071