Free WiFi as Strategic Competitive Advantage for Fast-Food Outlet in the Knowledge Era

Lee Kok Tiong, Zahurin Mat Aji, Mohd Khairudin Kasiran and Nor Iadah Yusop

American Journal of Economics and Business Administration, 2011, vol. 3, issue 2, 352-357

Abstract: Problem statement: The growth of food outlets in Malaysia brings about the stiff competition among the players in food industry. To remain competitive, each outlet needs to adopt its own strategy in order to secure their return on investment and profitability. In knowledge era, technology has become an added value in achieving competitive advantage. The aim of this research is to assess whether providing free WiFi can be a strategy to remain competitive. Porter’s 5forces competitive model is adopted as the basis for the assessment. Approach: Two phases of data collection using qualitative methodology were planned and rolled out. The first phase involved surveying and observing three regions within a selected state, while the second phase involved interviewing the identified food outlet’s manager. A set of interview questions was formulated based on the 5 areas of porter’s model which includes bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers, threat of substitutions, threat of new entrants and existing rivalries. In addition to the existing five forces, information regarding government policy and initiatives was also collected. Results: Result has shown that by that offering free WiFi to meet the customers’ needs, it can help to generate revenue increase of as high as 50% thus ensuring the food outlet to stay competitive. Conclusion: This is more visible when dealing with case of food outlets at same area are targeting the same group of customers as what had been observed in this research. This research provides a good reference to other food outlets that yet to adopt any strategy in order to stay competitive.

Keywords: Wireless technology; porter’s 5forces model; k-society; strategic competitive advantage; knowledge era; Internet Service Providers (ISP) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://thescipub.com/pdf/ajebasp.2011.352.357.pdf (application/pdf)
https://thescipub.com/abstract/ajebasp.2011.352.357 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:abk:jajeba:ajebasp.2011.352.357

DOI: 10.3844/ajebasp.2011.352.357

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Economics and Business Administration from Science Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jeffery Daniels ().