Taking A Look At Papa John's

Papa John’s Pizza

For over 30 years, Papa John's has been bringing high quality pizza and customer service to the restaurant market. While other companies only focus on the sales of their products, Papa John's is also intently focused on the quality of their products. You will hardly find an industry quite as saturated as the restaurant industry, simply due to Papa John's philosophy, they have managed to shine in this competitive field. (Morrison, 2012)

The first view to take when studying this industry is the rivalry amongst the competition, which is immense in the restaurant industry. While there is an abundance of pizza restaurants, Papa John's main concern is that of other major pizza chains such as Dominos and Pizza Hut. At that place

3 pizza chain has been trying hard to hold the line on discounting, rather sticking with its long held premium products at premium prices message. While leader Pizza Hut pushes its 10 dollars Dinner Box (one medium one-topping pizza, five breadsticks and 10 cinnamon sticks), No. 2 Domino's markets its new artisan pizzas for 7.99 bucks, and fourth-ranked Little Caesars continually offers 5 dollars large carry-out pizzas, Papa John's has largely resisted drastic discounts and generally relied on milder deals, such as 11 dollars’ large pizzas. (Brandau, 2013)

Its conundrum is faced by many marketers, especially in this economy: How do you gain share without relying on heavy discounting, a trend that could harm the long-term brand image? Deep discounting "doesn't build loyalty or consistency-it's cheapening your product," said David Hale, CEO of Good Eats, a fast-food consultancy. "The problem with discounting is that people will buy the products while the prices are down, but if they go backwards up, they'll hold off on buying until prices come back down again." (Brandau,

Janney analyst Mark Kalinowski noted in a recent report that "positives include strategic emphasis on high-quality pizza." His risk factors included "losing market share to larger competitors and unfavorable commodity costs. "During its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call, Papa John's founder John Schnatter said rivals' deep discounting created uneven results for the company in 2011. "Our rivals are so profound and they spend so much money that from time to time they do things that make… not as easy to be as uniform as we'd like," he said. Mr. Vargas said that even though Domino's overhauled its pizzas, Papa John's isn't concerned about the competition, adding that consumer satisfaction and brand impressions are at "all-time highs." (Brandau,