Hungry Cows

The following post is a theory by Mr.BADARI KUMAR ALAPATI who is pursuing MBA in MARKETING from CHRIST UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT.

HUNGRY COWS
 A theory proposed by Badari Kumar Alapati, for the "analysis of franchise location".

Introduction:

When a company wishes to open a franchise, it will consider many factors like:

• Ø  The potential power at the place?
• Ø  The Source from which we get customers?
• Ø  The Competitors.
• Ø  Types of customers.

and so on.....

                                          Whenever, I visit any franchise; I used to do a thorough study of the factors that affect the business due to the location of the franchise, and this thorough study was made as a project. Any business firm before starting a franchise or to improve business (if a franchise is already existed) can use this theory to do an analysis of their franchise location.

Theory:

Assumption:

1.     .  The Hungry Cows Theory consider customers as cows, that are hungry (hungry refers to the need of the customer).
2.        Cows go in various paths on their own, when there is no cowherd to tend them.

Terminology:

S Strength:  Shed of Cows

The source from which, the franchise get customer called shed of cows

Eg. Bus stops, colleges, offices etc., are the sources from which, we get customers.

Figure 1: shed of cows

W  Weakness: Other Gardens

Each competitor is called a garden,  that attracts cows (customers) that are hungry. When cows move in random paths, the gardens along their paths will attract them, hence these are called competitors.

Figure 2: cows grazing gardens

O Opportunity: Path

The path in which, cows move out from the source. This helps any company to know how customers are distributed from the source(shed of cows.) and can consider as an opportunity for the company to focus, on the path through advertisements, offers, decoration etc, to change the cows path to our garden.

Figure 3: Path in which cows move:

T Threats: Circle of Competitor
The strength of the competitor is always a threat to your franchise. Also, the strength of the competitor will be identified by circles(the concept of circles will be explained in coming lines).Hence, the competitor circles are named as threat.
Description of Theory:

Whenever a franchise wants to study about the benefits and its affects on the location, they can use this theory and can go with a few changes required to improve the business. Also this theory helps in measuring the potentiality of a location. The theory is more relevant in analyzing the location of food and coffee outlets.

In general, whenever cows are on roads, without any cowherd to tend to them they will move in random paths and go towards gardens in such way that, few cows will go to the gardens nearby, a few cows will go to the gardens which are fresh, and a few cows will go towards a bigger garden etc. The customer also considers same many factors.like franchise near by, franchise of big brands, franchise with offers etc. before customer into a franchise.
so as a franchise manager, need to possess few competitive advantage features, to make customers to step-in.  




 Advantages of this theory:

1. 1.       To know themselves.
2. 2.       To know/ locate competitors.
3. 3.       To identify customer source.
4. 4.       To know, how customers are distributed from source.
5. 5.       To know the potential of your franchise location.
6. 6.       The strength of your competitor.

How this theory works:

Gardens attract cows that are hungry, in the same way franchises attract customers who are in need. Cows are attracted towards gardens, because of its greenery, because of no fencing around the  garden and even because of garden in the vicinity. So every garden attracts cows in its own way. These attraction around every garden are simply represented as circles around it.

So, every franchise/Store has circles around it. circles are simply a kind of vibrations responsible to bring customers in to your store. 

These invisible circles have strength that makes customers to step in to your store. The strength of the circle depends on  many factors like, highly established brand in the market, less pricing than competitors , franchise located on correct side of lane, huge space for customers to hang around, huge offers, and decoration of franchise.

So, it’s up-to the franchise to know the strength of its franchise to consider the circles of your competitor, to know the paths in which source is distributed, to know where the sources are located. And can improve the strength of the circle, to attract cows by building brand image, adding more offers, improving quality, promotions more at sources of customers, Shifting the location of franchise etc. It’s important to know the problem of your franchise by this theorem and to choose the correct solution for it. 

Copyright ©2011 Badari Kumar Alapati.

Images are not my  own, used under copyrights.

Thanks to my friends Guru, Gaurav, Naveen, Zubin and my mentor :vedha balaji, for helping me to convert idea to theory.

http://www.ultimatemoneyindia.in/2011/06/hungry-cows.html#links