Group Evaluation - 林记茶餐厅

• Your group opinion and why you selected 林记茶餐厅

We had chosen Lam Kee Coffee Shop as our visited target as we had heard a lot of favourable comment about the restaurant from friends around us.

Lam Kee was an old coffee shop that well known with clay pot chicken rice in Kampar and attracted tourists who visited to Kampar. The main food which selling at Lam Kee Coffee Shop is their famous clay pot chicken together with traditional home cook soup. Moreover, the reasonable food price is the main reasons that keep their existing customer and attract new customer. Especially we would like to recommend this Lam Kee’s claypot chicken to UTAR students because it is affordable and reasonable for students to consume.

Although we can find in newspaper or social media about Lam Kee Coffee Shop, this is not enough for them to promote their claypot chicken as Kampar signature food. In order to let more people know about the delicious taste of clay pot chicken provided by Lam Kee Coffee Shop, we visited to Lam Kee Coffee Shop to have a taste on their clay pot chicken.

• Its classification of e-commerce by the nature of the transactions or interactions

Lam Kee Coffee Shop is operating its business transaction under business-to-consumer (B2C). B2C means the business sells their goods or services to consumers (Elaine, 2013). As the Internet keeps growing over years, the term B2C has become one of the categories of e-commerce. It is referred to the manufacturers or retailers sell their goods or services to consumers over the Internet. However, Lam Kee Coffee Shop which mainly sells the clay pot chicken rice has kept their tradition. People who wish to have a taste on Lam Kee’s clay pot chicken rice they need to travel down to the Kampar old town and dine in the shop.

• Its business models

Lam Kee Coffee Shop’s business model is classifying as viral marketing. Viral marketing is one of the techniques that using the website or individuals to transmit a marketing message to another website or individual. In general, it is a web based word-of-mouth advertising. Lam Kee Coffee Shop with their strong signature claypot chicken attracted food lover and they will voluntarily promote the food through social media such as Facebook, Instagram, blog, twitter, or newspaper.

Through the widespread of social media, Lam Kee’s claypot chicken getting more famous because people believe that good things will be share among others. Viral marketing do not cost much to the business because it is promoting by the customers.

Although Lam Kee Coffee Shop does not manage a social media to promote the food which they are selling but customers that have tried the claypot chicken will unintentionally recommend to the people around them and ask them for a try. Nowadays, with extensive social media, consumers with smartphone or gadget will share their comment and feeling after they have tasted the clay pot chicken. Sharing among social media has increased the popularity of Lam KeeCoffee Shop.

People can obtain information of Lam Kee Coffee Shop through search engine such as Google, a lot of images and pictures will be shown so that the people will know how the coffee shop looks like and where is the location of the coffee shop. Moreover, we also can see the people who are sharing their comment on the clay pot chicken at Facebook or Instagram together with the photos. In addition, some food bloggers also share their opinion on the taste of Lam Kee’s claypot chicken and recommend to the readers.

• Its basic approach used in marketing and advertising

The basic approaches we observed from Lam Kee Coffee Shop are viral marketing and relationship marketing. Due to it is a small business and lack of additional resources for advertising, they are not doing specific advertising activities.

Their popularity raised mainly cause by relationship marketing. They build their long term relationship with the customers and it leads their customers to share their food among peers and family. Founder of Lam Kee Coffee Shop tried to provide the best taste that is acceptable by the public and maintained the tasty of claypot chicken in order to keep their existing customer and also attract new customer.

Another approach used by Lam Kee Coffee Shop is online word of mouth. Consumers tend to share their feedback on the taste of food provided by Lam Kee Coffee Shop through Internet. Most commonly used online social media are Facebook, Instagram or twitter where these are the people like to share their comment, opinion, feedback on particular issues. Positive feedback for Lam Kee Coffee Shop from the customers or web users has increased the confidence of potential customers.

• Recommendations to improve businesses through e-commerce

As discussed above, Lam Kee Coffee Shop is only using the old marketing method which are relationship marketing and online word of mouth. Nowadays, people tend to use their smartphone and other handheld device to search the famous food. Lam Kee Coffee Shop has a Facebook page but that page was only filled with few photos and few information. After recommended by their friends, people might want to have their dinner in Lam Kee Coffee Shop but when they look at Lam Kee Coffee Shop’s Facebook page they change their mind. The reason behind is Lam Kee Coffee Shop’s Facebook page is lack of information yet not attracting. Hence, we recommended Lam KeeCoffee Shop to improve their Facebook page because a website or web design is a media to convey what their food restaurant is about (Jennifer, 2015). For instance, McDonald and Starbucks have a Facebook page which contains a very attractive design, beautiful photos and up-to-date information.

Moreover, people nowadays are playing the smartphone apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, and WeChat. Therefore, in their mind, photo speaks. Photos are the only way customers can see your products, so Lam Kee Coffee Shopt has to post attractive and professional photos in their Facebook page. In order to do this, they have to put much efforts on their photo shooting skills. Furthermore, Videos are important media to attract customers to visit their restaurant. After permission is granted, Lam Kee Coffee Shop can record their customers when they are tasting their food and describing the taste. After that, they can share it on the Facebook and YouTube. Videos are very impactful because people are more willing to believe the truth rather than the words of owner.

Finally, Lam Kee Coffee Shop should make it easy for customers to contact them. They can make an account on WeChat, so that the people can reach them at anytime, anywhere. By using the advantage of WeChat, they should provide food delivery services with free shipping. At Kampar area, most of the people are busy for their work and study, they prefer to make a call or just send a text message to order what they want to eat. It saves a lot of their time and they will repeat their order in the future.