Chipotle Mexican Grill in 2016: Can the Company Recover from its E. Coli Disaster and Grow Customer Traffic Again?

Outlines students must provide in their papers.

1- Please write introduction and brief history for each company you write.

2- Assessing how companies balance duties to engage in socially responsible and sustainable business practices with economic responsibilities to shareholders

3- Identifying and critiquing the policies, practices, principles, and approaches management is using to implement and execute the company's strategy

4- Determining if and why a company's system of incentives and rewards promotes adept strategy execution and operating excellence n Identifying the key features of a company's corporate culture and assessing if and why a company's culture aids in the drive for proficient strategy execution and operating excellence

5- Students must check insight into the special demands of competing in industry environments where technological developments are an everyday event, product life cycles are short, and competitive maneuvering among rivals comes fast and furious.

6- Competitive capabilities play as large a role in the strategy-making, strategy-executing scheme of things as industry and competitive conditions do.

7- Concerning non-U.S. companies, globally competitive industries, and/or cross-cultural situations; these cases, in conjunction with the globalized content of the text chapters, provide abundant material for linking the study of strategic management tightly to the ongoing globalization of the world economy.

8- Crafting business strategy, reasoning carefully about strategic options, using what-if analysis to evaluate action alternatives, and making sound strategic decisions.

Between the months of October and December, 2015, 60 cases of E Coli poisoning linked to Chipotle were reported to the CDC from 14 different states. This event was immediately picked up by trade associations and mainstream media creating a PR crisis for Chipotle that they are still reeling from today.

The event severely damaged consumer confidence and made even the most fervor Chipotle brand loyalist question their claim of fresh, safe ingredients. The knock to consumer confidence lead to a massive drop in Chipotle sales and stock price. Chipotle immediately tried to mitigate risk with public appearances and later launched a full force marketing and PR campaign with the goal of recovering from the massive crisis. Chipotle Mexican Grill is an American fast-food restaurant chain with a mantra of using fresh and high quality ingredients. Chipotle was founded by Steve Ells in Denver in 1994 and became a public company in 2006. Chipotle now has over 2000 stores in operation globally.

The campaign never publicly released their research regarding who they were targeting for their recovery campaign but it can be safely assumed that their main target were disaffected customers who stopped purchasing Chipotle products after the E Coli outbreak.

Since Chipotle’s E Coli outbreak was a health crisis, customers who value their health and quality of food consumed most likely significantly reduced their Chipotle purchases. Chipotle brand loyalist were the least likely to reduce or eliminate their Chipotle purchases meaning infrequent and less loyal customers were more likely to be affected by the crisis. Finally, Chipotle customers that had easy access to other fast-food alternatives were more likely to replace Chipotle with a competitor, where customers without many other options were more likely to stick with Chipotle.

The target audience was appropriate considering that their decreased consumption of Chipotle directly resulted in tens of millions in sales losses.

A couple hypothetical measurable objectives for Chipotle’s campaign could be:

● Raise 2017 restaurant sales by 20% over 2016.

● Raise positive brand sentiment by 25% among the target audience by end of 2017.