Case 10: Cooper Ice’s Center
Cases overview:
Cooper’s Ice Center is an ice-skating rink with a conventional hockey rink surface. It is the only indoor ice rink in a northern U.S. city of about 450,000. The city’s recreation department operates some outdoor rinks in the winter but they don’t regular ice skating programs because of weather variability. To try to increase the profits, Claude is trying to expand and improve his public skating program. As his calculator, he could have 700people in a public season at one time, and he could got 3500USD for two hours period (charging 5usd/person) replace for 200USD an hour. But unfortunately, it is not like Claude thought. Only few times seem likely: Friday and Saturday evenings and Saturday and Sunday afternoons. In total, he generates a little more revenue are extra costs but he need to pay more money for hire more people like guards, a ticket seller, skate rental, and more concession help. That means the net revenue is the same.
Next action is he could cancel some of the less attractive public sessions and he also recognize the different public skating sessions do seem to attract different people and really different kinds of people. The Saturday and Sunday afternoon public skating sessions have been the most successful, with an average of 200 people attending during the winter season. Typically, this is a “kid-sitting” session.
In the spring and fall, however, attendance drops by about half, depending on how nice the weather is. The Friday and Saturday evening public sessions are a big disappointment. In fact, Claude has seen quite a few young couples—and some keep coming back. But he also sees a surprising number of 8- to 14-year-olds who have been dropped off by their parents.
Claude also tried to attract more young people and especially couples by bringing in a local rock radio station disc jockey to broadcast from Cooper’s Ice Center—playing music and advertising the Friday and Saturday evening public sessions. Cooper’s son even set up Facebook and Myspace pages for Cooper’s, but only a few people joined the groups. He has already invested over $3,000 in lighting changes and over $9,000 promoting the sessions over the rock music radio station, with very disappointing results.
Solution
1. Promotion
For now, Claude has 14 public skating sessions per week. But so far, it has not attracted as many people as they hoped. Saturday and Sunday afternoon public skating has most been successful with most of customers going with their family, but for noon-time daily session, it has not been successful. Friday and Saturday evening are the best disappointment with couple skate (appeal many children who affect the whole atmosphere). So, they can introduce some programs to attract people.
And Friday evening (8-10pm), and they should not limit the children who is under 14 years old because they bring 25% revenue during this peak time. Instead of focusing on couple in this time, they can run public weekend program for all people with some social activities or funny games, or some special events to give their customers a happy night.
Saturday afternoon is a successful public session with many children and families. So I think we can exploit this strength by running family fun skate session which is focused on group of families(for example: games with rewards for families and children…) On Saturday evening, session for couple and teenagers was failed because of allowing under 14 years old children who hinders the atmosphere. I think Scooper can change a little bit strategy. For example, he can change the time from 9pm to midnight and age-restrict the arena to people 14 and older. Moreover, because young girls want the good fit and boys want to catch the girl’s attention by doing sports, so Scooper can make a strategy to attract those teenagers. They can hire a trainer and hold a competition which can appeal teenagers to exercise in the rink. Scooper also can give a discount for groups or “bring your friends” program (discount for people who bring their friends).
He can also have a professional DJ on Friday and Saturday nights, and the two together have been instrumental in resurrecting our public skating.
Daily-noon skate session is also not attractive many people, so Scooper should cancel some session that is not attractive customer in noon or wrong time. Instead, he can give specific public skate sessions like family fun skate session (with discount for families and some activities for families, give out "fun stuff" to the kids which is inexpensive goodies like a pencil, change purse, water bottle, keychain, etc. with his logo, phone number and Web site printed on it.), learning skate session (learn to skate program for all ages) and run birthday party program. We also vary our music selection for different age groups during different times of the week to keep the public skater groups happy. In the spring and fall, attendance drops about in half. To attract this product market and its loyal groups, he should propose monthly or annual membership to reward royal customers. A membership is an economical way to satisfy the customer’s needs to feel appreciated and the membership offerings are recognitions for their membership fees. Also membership fees are great way to generate cash flow faster. Moreover, they can hold some special events like winter holiday, Sunday snowdays (on winter), Spring holiday… to attract people. 2. Advertising channels
Advertising banner in schools, roller-skating shops, churches…
Sending each person away with flyers on upcoming events along with brochures on hockey and skating classes.
Working with a local radio station, which targets young families, to help promote his public sessions.
Working with local fast-food restaurant which can provide kid’s meals for his rink in exchange for advertising at this restaurant.
Building a website that people can book in advance and also can give some services like book hotels (if customer needs).
Advertising by poster in elevator in building, supermarket (attract families).. or by public LCD monitor.
Online advertisement through advertising websites.
Case 12: DrJane.com – Custom Vitamins
Cases overview:
Dr Jane Chung received the letter from her customer and passed it to Prince Zimbalist, firm’s customer service manager, to get his recommendation. Dr.Chung has a reputation as a health and nutrition guru. Her fame grew after she published two books. The complaint letter and reply from Zimbalist follow:
That is a longtime fan of DrJane’s books and visit the website for health tips. She recommend for everyone about the website and the experiences she got. But she lost the loyalty to the website and DrJane’s company because of a story from 6 months ago. She want to buy the vitamins and supplements, when she was ordering, she also filled the survey in the website and after all she got an offer and she saw the money higher than she want to order. After the waiting time, she has called and was offered to refill order but refuse to use automatic refill. But when she receive double identical order and can not understand, she was not get any support and services of the company. The problem is the third time she got email about the order because the system said that she chosen automatic fill at last time and received the call from director of customer service said that this is her fault.
Now she want to receive a formal apology from Mr.Zimbalist and free 90 supply to continuous be the customer of that company or she will change to other supplier.
Prince Zimbalist sent to DrChung concerning Maxine Slezak’s letter explain about the problems and also offer a 20percent off but can not agree about the free 90 supply. After all, he said that is not the company’s mistake.
