During this recent recession it wasn't hard to see that many Canadians think the same way. No matter what time it was or what day of the week, I can always enter a Tim Horton's and it is never empty. I hardly ever walk right up to the front and place my order either! There are usually people waiting in line. Drive-thru? Even more people in front of me. Sometimes we would be "stuck" in traffic on our way to the grocery store because there is a line up at the Tim Horton's drive-through!
Certainly one of the many things Tim's does right is to introduce something new every once in a while. Because Tim's has such a big fan base, they basically get advertisement for free every time something new is available. Sometimes the new products are a hit, sometimes a failure. Speaking for myself, when Tim Horton's announced the addition of lemonades, I actually heard that on the radio. It wasn't a commercial either, it was THE NEWS! So sure enough I went straight to Tim Horton's to try the new product and - was disappointed. I didn't like it at all. But since I was there I also grabbed a Donut... Tim Horton's has the ability to have customers come back even if they had a bad experience. The core product group of coffee and donuts is well liked by many Canadians so it doesn't matter if a new addition is a success or a failure. Tim Horton's has the luxury of being able to make mistakes and still have customers come back on a regular basis.
A recent change was the change of the coffee cup sizes. Because us students read so much all the time, I like to provide videos in my blogs as a change. This one is more on the humor side too:
And here is the proof that News channels do the advertisement for the company. CBC news on the day the new cup sizes where introduced covered the story. Other companies pay a lot of money for 2 minutes prime time TV on a national TV station:
The Recession hit late in 2008. So lets look at what Tim Horton's did during this time:
2009
February 2009: Announced co-branding with "Cold Stone Creamery"
2010
January 2010: Announced addition of English muffin breakfast sandwich
October 2010: Announced addition of Real Homestyle Oatmeal
2011
March 2011: Announced addition of Real Fruit Smoothies
August 2011: Announced "Tim Hortons Double Double coffee ice cream" at Cold Stone
November 2011: Announced addition of Espresso machines producing "Lattes"
December 2011: Announced new "Egg white breakfast sandwich on whole grain English muffin"
2012
January 2012: Announced new cup sizes
February 2012: Announced addition of "White hot chocolate"
April 2012: Announced addition of frozen lemonade
April 2012: Announced lattes now available as "iced lattes"
May 2012: Tim Horton's now accepts VISA Cards
Source: http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/about/news_archives.html retrieved June 25th, 2012
As you can see, Tim Horton's kept the attention of it's customers throughout the entire recession with new additions. This again triggered some free advertisement as the word of mouth, not only among the public but in morning shows of radio stations for example.
Not to forget are the "Roll up the Rim" contests in between, that draw a lot of extra coffee drinkers every year.
The prove that this strategy is working can be seen on the Tim Horton's stock price between February 2009 an today. With a value increase of more than 80% and Dividend amount more than doubled, I wish I would have put all my savings in Tim Horton's stocks:
Source: https://www.google.ca/financehttps://www.google.ca/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1340677583864&chddm=323920&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=TSE:THI&ntsp=0&fct=big retrieved June 25th, 2012
The above announcements emphasize how Tim Horton's practiced an "Output Control" by releasing new innovative products at least twice a year and judging by how well the stock has performed - the management team has used this control method very efficiently! Keep posted for the next invention at our favorite coffee store!
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