Online Distribution Process Design of Fresh Coffee Shop

Abstract

The study, namely “Online Distribution Process Design of Fresh Coffee Shop”, was an operation research, which investigated a case study of Donut Coffee Shop. The objective was to design the online distribution process of fresh coffee shop. Research tools included questionnaires, interview forms, and flow charts. The study's informants consisted of the Donut Coffee’s shop owner, 2 coffee shop employees, 100 customers, and 5 motorcycle taxi riders. The research procedures, based on Deming’s cycle concept (PDCA), had the following steps: 1) investigating the existing process and related environments from stakeholders, 2) designing and implementing the online distribution process, 3) collecting and comparing data between those before and after implementing the improved process, including finding opportunities for process improvement, and 4) justifying the properly improved activities and standardizing the newly designed process. The results showed that 1) the customers, which were mainly in the local community, were in the primary phase of demand for online distribution; 2) personal social media was selected to be the main channel of online distribution, and the drafted process was divided into 4 sub-processes, namely, preparing online distribution channels and public relations, processing of receiving orders and customer information, payment processing, and delivery process; 3) after new process implementation, the average satisfaction level of customers had a 12.96% higher than those of the previous process, and the shop had more sales; 4) the standardized process included 20 activities, categorized into 4 sub-processes. The research suggested business owners the new process design methodology to regularly keep improving the organization upon the dynamic external environmental changes.