A Restaurant in the Era of Customer Experience Focus: A Study on the Significance of Core Competencies in Enhancing Customer Experience

Abstract

The customer experience is distinctive from a product and service, it is a novel concept accentuating customer focus in a firm's every day processes, while managing and developing core competencies to strengthen the firm's market position and enhance customer experience. Infusing this principle into business models results in customer-centric business models. The interplay amongst core competencies, competitive advantage and customer experience is, however, underexplored. Therefore, the thesis intends to analyze how core competencies can become a source of competitive advantage and enhance the customer experience from the resource-based perspective.
The analysis of the case company Haidilao International Holding Ltd. (Haidilao) has been performed to answer the research question. Haidilao is a Chinese hot pot chain restaurant which provides customers with culinary experience worldwide by a strong focus on its customers. This research has analyzed Haidilao's business model, identified its core competencies, and investigated the significance of these competencies in enhancing customer experience. Consequently, the details of the role in becoming a source of competitive advantage have been analyzed through the resource-based view.
This finding shows that the relationship between core competencies and customer experience is related due to the firm's nature of customer-centric business model and that the focus on customer journey and its touch points should be perceived as a continuous action to ensure the high level of customer satisfaction and strong intensity of customer engagement.