Trends

Trends – 2011: What I have so far... (mentioned 2011 treating this service as it is today. followup for a "mature" Phenu can come later if we need it--though it would essentially be the same)

__** Trends – 2011: (in progress) **__ Something a service like Phenu needs to follow very closely are trends: including eating trends for the year, the season and location, as well as technological trends. What is Phenu’s target market using to search for their restaurants and locations? For now, the internet is very popular for searching for restaurants because of the detailed information available and customer review pages. Up-and-coming trends are mobile applications that strive to provide very similar types of information to the palm of users’ hands. Other trends Phenu must consider are those of social networking: Facebook fan pages, twitter updates, etc.

Becoming current requires direct, ongoing anthropological research. In early stages this is (was?) more difficult for Phenu because of a lack of customer base in both its B2B and B2C markets. Instead of going out and asking members of their target markets which restaurants they like most, Phenu researchers must go out into the world and observe for themselves. Interviewees have a notorious knack for providing idealistic responses to survey questions rather than realistic ones. By observing which restaurants are “trending” i.e. the most popular ones in which we can find our target market, Phenu will have a starting place with which to enter (as opposed to shooting for any restaurants they can see that may show some interest). While these secondary restaurants are important for the future of Phenu, they are not the way for Phenu to make its presence known. -- however, should negotiations fail, they may need to come to secondary resources to build a reputation good enough with which to enter bigger restaurants -- After this most important step, surveying the intended demographic for their input will also be a good idea. It will build awareness within the market and source more potentially vital partnership opportunities with restaurants that may not have yet been discovered. It will be necessary to collect more partnerships with time.

Market segmentation is also necessary to spot trends within the various segments of Phenu’s target markets. This is most easily done based on ethnic groups, such as Canadian-white and European-white, Chinese and Korean, brown and black, etc. While this may seem like racial profiling, it can’t be ignored that trends are vastly different between these groups. If Phenu can keep on top of this, they can likely expand their B2C market exponentially. Once these things have been established, it will be easier for Phenu to monitor trends through their customers’ behaviour (reservations, use of coupons, etc.). However, there are chances that target markets can expand, or new profitable markets for Phenu may arise. The same goes for potential business partnerships with other restaurants. For this reason, anthropological research must be ongoing.

On top of monitoring trends, Phenu needs to keep up with trends in which it needs to be relevant; most notably social networking. Creating accounts/ fan pages on websites like Facebook and twitter and constantly updating them with new deal opportunities and interactive contests for customers is a sure way to keep people thinking “Phenu”.