Voice Ordering on Your Phone: A Revolutionary New App

Domino's Pizza App

There's good news for those of you out there who are fans of the scalding hot disc of cheese that Domino's calls a pizza. Thanks to the new and improved Domino's app, you can now order a pizza using voice ordering! The voice of the new app, Dom, acts in a way similar to Siri. You tell Dom that you would like to order a pizza and then he helps you with the steps almost as if you were ordering a pizza over the phone. But since this is the year 2014 and calling is almost an afterthought function of our cell phones, Domino's has created the voice ordering capability to keep up with the times. Domino's has created an app where you're able to talk into your phone and order pizza, because dialing dialing the number was a task just a little too complicated to the average American consumer. 

Strategies Used

In all seriousness though; Domino's is using the mobile applications strategy that we talked about in class. Mobile apps could include game apps as an example or utility apps. Utility apps are very specialized and can only perform a couple of tasks, just like our Domino's app. After I downloaded the app, I saw that there were only a couple of things that I could do on the app. Dom, the personal assistant for the app, does make the app a little more of a complex utility app. So why would Domino's create the app? It comes down to a matter of convenience. From Mobile Marketer's, "Classic Guide of Mobile Commerce," case studies of other companies has shown that creating mobile apps where the customer can shop has increased sales considerably. The guide gives two examples of companies who have used this strategy successfully: OfficeDepot, and StubHub.

The tool that Domino's is trying to focus our attention on now in their advertising is the voice ordering function. The typical use of voice is to allow for users who are less tech savvy, an opportunity to be more engaged. After downloading the app and speaking with Dom I realized that I was having some technical difficulty getting Dom to order me a pizza. I don't consider myself to be extremely knowledgeable in technological terms, however I do think that I can operate an app better than an old person. I should note that while I was using the app I didn't dig around enough to see whether or not they were offering coupons for their food through the app in a way that similar apps like GrubHub do.

Goals for the App

The goal of the app is pretty simple; try to get people their pizza in the easiest and the most convenient way possible. I commend Domino's for what they're trying to do with their app. I think that they saw how smartphones have moved towards having these personal assistant like the iPhone's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, and tried to capitalize on the convenience that people were gaining from them. Like I mentioned before I'm sure that one of their main goals was to try to increase the number of sales in Domino's pizza the way that StubHub and OfficeDepot had seen increases in sales from their mobile apps. 

Domino's could have been trying to increase the number of people to use their Domino's app. After watching football for the past couple weeks and seeing their commercials for their app it made me curious. I became curious to the point that I actually ended up downloading the app and trying to see how responsive Dom was to my voice. If their goal was to get people to download their app, well it sure worked on me.

Finally, I think that their third goal for the app was to make sure that the fans of their style of pizza would remain loyal to the brand. Domino's is the second largest pizza chain in the United Staes with gross sales roughly $4 billion lower than the top selling pizza chain, Pizza Hut. Domino's probably doesn't want their customers sneaking off to try whatever Pizza Hut is cooking up in their kitchen, so they lure them in with the convenience of technology and the curiosity that enticed me to try their app. 

Evaluation

I think that it will be interesting to see how well Domino's sales does after introducing Dom. We should also look out to see if others like Pizza Hut or Papa John's tries something like what Domino's has done if they start to notice a slight dip in the numbers. I can see why Domino's thought that this was a good idea, but I think that they didn't ask themselves whether or not they should. I find it much more easy and convenient to be able to type in exactly what I want on apps like GrubHub instead of having to hope that Domino's app can understand what I'm trying to order. The reviews of the app that I've read on Apple's App Store have all seemed to really enjoy the app as it has a four out of five star rating from customers. Many of the reviews center on the availability of coupons and not the voice functionality, but I have to imagine that they've had better success than I did when using it. Overall my impression is that the voice ordering is a fun new way to order pizza on your phone, but then again you can use your voice to actually call someone; you know, and actually use the phone for the purpose that it was originally designed for. While the commercial did show the app almost having a conversation with the man, I could not get Dom to do the same for me in my limited amount of time spent with him. My lasting impression is that this is not really anything but a cheap gimmick that Domino's has created that will ultimately end up in a lot of people downloading the app to see how unnecessary voice ordering is on an app when you can easily do a voice order using your phone's most basic capability.

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Sources used:
http://www.pizzatoday.com/departments/features/2013-top-100-pizza-companies-list/
https://sakai.ithaca.edu/access/lessonbuilder/item/225890/group/37b46def-e3c8-4bb5-885d-19fdce7bbbdc/Mobile%20Marketing/Mobile%20commerce%20guide.pdf