Submitted by: Submitted by darruhe
Views: 628
Words: 778
Pages: 4
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 06/12/2013 08:21 AM
Weighted competitive strength assessment
Chipotle operates in a highly competitive industry, in which they compete both with other fast casual restaurants, as well as less directly with fast food restaurants and casual – dining chains.
In sub – category for fast – casual Mexican restaurants, Chipotle competes with Qdoba Mexican Grill, Moe’s Southwest Grill and Taco Bell. Fast-casual Mexican restaurants account for over $6 billion of the $22 billion fast casual market. Chipotle is the largest player in the fast casual Mexican category, with $2.3 billion in sales in 2011.
Chipotle also competes within the larger market for fast food restaurants. While the company’s focus on higher quality ingredients (using organically grown local produce and naturally raised meats) and having a customer’s order ready quickly differentiate it from many of the other fast food restaurants, many of the fast-food chains, including McDonalds are increasingly focusing on healthier and higher quality food. In addition, many other fast food restaurant chains are looking to improve the quality of their food and restaurant decoration. At the same time, there has been a push in the fast-casual market towards keeping prices low and providing better value to consumers (such as Taco Bell’s introduction of a new Cantina Bell menu and set the price below similar types of Chipotle products). These two forces serve to bring Chipotle and other fast-casual restaurants in more direct competition with the larger fast-food chains.
It can be seen from the table of the comparison among Chipotle and its direct rivals in Mexican fast casual category, Chipotle reaches the highest competitive strength rating over other restaurants. Therefore, Chipotle has a net competitive advantage over all of its rivals with the strongest set of resource strength and competitive capabilities which leads to achieve the best financial performance with $2.3 billion revenues reported in 2011.
In detail, Chipotle has the...