Chipotle Swot Analysis

Words: 1808
Pages: 8

Introduction
Chipotle opened its doors back in 1993 with a different mentality on what is known as fast food. The organization decided to have a completely different marketing strategy from its competitors. As a consequence, Chipotle has grown to be a serious contender in the fast food market. The organization has been intelligent enough to create their own niche in the fast food industry. Chipotle has used the quality of the products offered speak for themselves. The organization has challenge the concept that Americans have towards fast food, as well as the dynamics of marketing that are typically associated with this sector of the industry. This is the reason why Chipotle’s marketing strategy is not just efficient, but effective as well.
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In order to completely understand the state in which Chipotle is in, one must find the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is also known as a SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis points out both internal and external difficulties that the organization can experience.
The internal analysis discloses strength and weaknesses. The organization possesses various strengths which makes it difficult for other fast food restaurants to compete. Brand loyalty is one of the organization’s strengths. Customers perceive Chipotle not as a fast food restaurant, but as an option for social dining. Other strengths that the organization possesses are; high margins (higher profitability), personalized menu (preference options), and store design (higher quality atmosphere). However, the organization also possesses weaknesses. For example, Chipotle is off brand Mexican food. Even though the food is great, customers are not having an authentic experience… similar to Tex-Mex. In addition, Chipotle has limited menu options (lacking variety) and expensive organic ingredients (few sellers for
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However, the major challenge resides in the question of how can sales and growth keep up in what is beginning to look almost like a saturated market, all while facing increasingly difficult external and internal factors? Chipotle has to fight off the substitutes that are available in the market today, which so far they have been successful. Now Chipotle does not only have to compete with the direct competitors of the market at the basic principle of “fast-food,” but they also have to compete with the indirect competitors.
Solution
There are a several in which the organization can start to work on in order to fix the challenge that is facing. Since there is no root problem, Chipotle has the ability to experiment. At this point it all depends where the organization sees itself in the future. Any of the following solutions would work for Chipotle.
• The first option would be to do a market expansion. The purpose of this solution would be to offer the product to a wider section of an existing market. For example, Chipotle can focus on attracting a new demographic, geographic, or psychographic market.
• A second solution would be to keep the word-of-mouth marketing strategy. If the organization decides to do this, Chipotle would have to make sure that the quality of the food is above standards.
• The third option would be to use social media as a tool to attract new customers