...Elektra Products, Inc. CASE ANALYSIS 1 - PRIMAN PROBLEM: The 80-year old company has lost its position as the leading manufacturer and retailer of electrical products and supplies. DIAGNOSIS / ANALYSIS OF CAUSES: Market share is down due to * Increased competition from local and international companies * Lack of new products from the company * Inefficiency due to the lack of inter-department communication * Low employee morale A. Goal: - To give the market lead back to the company B. Objectives for Problem Solution: 1. To develop inter-departmental communication and teamwork 2. To improve employee morale 3. To encourage product creation and innovation ALTERNATIVES: I. Maintain the status quo II. Re-introduce and improve the Empowerment Campaign to make it successful III. Revitalize the organization DECISION: To revitalize the organization by: * Updating its mission and vision to conform with the current market situation * Implementing team-building activities to foster camaraderie and communication among employees * Upgrading the employee benefits package to include career development and training * Providing skills training to inspire new products, boost sales, and recapture its domestic and international market lead “Changing company structure – such as who reports to whom – won’t accomplish much and can be very disruptive. A reorganization has to aim for something bigger – such as changing...
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...Electra Products, Inc. is 80-year old company that lost leadership in manufacture and retailing electrical products and supplies. The biggest company issue is innovation and very low morals of employees and managers. Condition in the company has to be radically changed. The leaders have to understand that in these days you have to be open into new technology, increase the efficiency of employees, control economic and political environment. Traditional way of running company will not keep organization as a leader anymore. New CEO, Martin Griffin has to confront all companies problems. At the first meeting he had to confront employees disinterest and skepticism to the new idea. He tries to motivate employees with a fresh new approach. Empowerment and involvement were associated more as a problem for employees than new opportunity and chance to increase efficiency. Barbara Russell was the only enthusiastic employee. She was excited about new idea, teamwork and chance on putting manufacturing section once again on track. Her excitement turned to the other workers. They put a lot of effort to do their project, for the first time they felt important and for the first time they really start trust to each other. Barbara’s team shows that people in the company can make changes. They are very good employees, but because of company situation and low morals nobody is putting more effort to their jobs. They need a leader that will mobilize them and show them right way to fallow. Managers...
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...Questions 1. Why is innovative management important and how have Walmart’s leaders demonstrated innovation throughout the company’s history? Innovation management is the discipline of managing processes in innovation. It can be used to develop both product and organizational innovation. Innovation management includes a set of tools that allow managers and engineers to cooperate with a common understanding of goals and processes. The focus of innovation management is to allow the organization to respond to an external or internal opportunity, and use its creative efforts to introduce new ideas, processes or products. Importantly, it involves workers at every level in contributing creatively to a company's development, manufacturing, and marketing. By utilizing appropriate innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative juices of the whole work force towards the continuous development of a company. The process can be viewed as an evolutionary integration of organization, technology and market by iterating series of activities: search, select, implement and capture. In 1960s, Sam Walton (founder of Wal-Mart) achieve higher sales volumes by keeping sales price lower than his competitors by reducing his profit margin. He relied on them to give customers the great shopping experience that would keep them coming back. “If we work together,” he said, “we’ll lower the cost of living for everyone… we’ll give the world on opportunity to see what it’s like...
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...CASE STUDY 12.1 PROFITEL INC. By Steven L. McShane, University of Western Australia As a formerly government-owned telephone monopoly, Profitel enjoyed many decades of minimal competition. Even today as a publicly traded enterprise, the company’s almost exclusive control over telephone copper wiring across the country keeps its profit margins above 40 percent. Competitors in telephone and DSL broadband continue to rely on Profitel’s wholesale business, which generates substantially more profit than similar wholesale services in many other countries. However, Profitel has stiff competition in the cellular (mobile) telephone business, and other emerging technologies (voice-over-Internet) threaten Profitel’s dominance. Based on these threats, Profitel’s board of directors decided to hire an outsider as the new chief executive. Although several qualified candidates expressed an interest in Profitel’s top job, the board selected Lars Peeters, who had been CEO for six years of a publicly traded European telephone company, followed by a brief stint as CEO of a cellular telephone company in the United States until it was acquired by a larger firm. Profitel’s board couldn’t believe its good fortune; Peeters brought extensive industry knowledge and global experience, a high-octane energy level, self-confidence, decisiveness, and a congenial yet strongly persuasive interpersonal style. He also had a unique “presence” that caused people to pay attention and respect his leadership. The...
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...Retail Advertising and Marketing Association Gen/200 Retail Advertising and Marketing Association "Consumers know precisely what's wrong with advertising. Be it TV or print or whatever, they know that advertising is never creative enough ... never as witty, inspiring, sophisticated, entertaining and downright likable as they would like it to be” (Phil Dussonberry, former BBDO advertising executive). In the world of retail things are ever changing there is a constant need for new advertising or marketing to grab the consumers attention. Without these tools a retailers profits can quickly dwindle leaving them in the dust. One great tool for retailers is the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association(RAMA). This paper will explain what RAMA is, how it can increase my professional knowledge and abilities, and how perfecting my knowledge and abilities can affect my career success. The Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA) is a trade association of retail marketing and advertising professionals, plus their counterparts on the agency, media and service-provider sides of the business. RAMA is a division of the National Retail Federation, the world’s largest retail trade association (National Retail Federation, 2011). RAMA also is the producer of the annual Racie Awards Competition, the industry’s most prestigious creative contest for retail broadcast, web and print advertising (National Retail Federation, 2011). RAMA is an innovative association that connects retailers...
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...the strategic life cycle challenges for Paramount's current products as well as for Clean Edge? Changes in Non-Disposable Razor Category: The non-disposable razor category has seen changes in the recent years. A 5% growth per year from 2007 to 2010, attributed to innovations and product introductions, has to be the biggest change that the category has seen. Advertising expenditures increased dramatically for several non-disposable razor companies over the last couple of years because of the need to promote new benefits from advances in razor technologies. Changes in retail channel distribution have also been noted in the category. Male-grooming products seemed to be a bright spot in the industry from 2007 to 2010 and the segment saw more growth because shaving became more than just shaving – it started to include body spray, shower gel, etc. Channel distribution for the razor category has become increasingly important, with the recent re-introduction of Old Spice; there has been quite the demand for male-grooming products. Competitive Position: Paramount has established itself as a global consumer products giant with over $13 billion in worldwide sales and $7 billion in gross profits for 2009 since its entry into the market in 1962. Paramount established itself as unit-volume leader in 2009 based on non-disposable razor sales. The non-disposable razor category market is entering a new phase with technology products and new competitors entering the market, posing a threat to...
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... How Our Marketing Research Lead To A Position So Compelling That Consumers Chose Our Client’s Product Over A Larger, Wealthier Competitor CASE STUDY #64 “We are not as broadly distributed as our competition. What can we say - other than „free‟ that will convince consumers to inconvenience themselves and leave (or “walk”) from a retailer that doesn‟t carry our products to a retailer that does?” POINT OF VIEW We never lost sight of the mission: GET THE CUSTOMERS TO PREFER US, EVEN THOUGH WE AREN’T AS WELL DISTRIBUTED OR WEALTHY. The actionable marketing research we conducted enabled us to leap over our competitor’s entrenched, better-distributed brand, craft a message that resonated with the audience, and build preference for our client’s product. Win / Win for everybody except the competition. Situation The client had a great product, but was being outspent by the competition, which also had broader distribution. Our challenge was to craft a concept for the product so unique and compelling, it would encourage consumers to “walk” from a store they typically shop at that carries only the competitor’s product and go to a store that carries the client’s product. Approach Quantitative, qualitative and ethnographic research enabled us to uncover aspects of the client’s product that made it stand out over the competition’s. Then we developed a unique marketing research measurement that tracked awareness, interest, and the actual shopping trip. Result ...
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...potential customers. You have to figure out who your going to sell your product to and how to reach these individuals. The third challenge I see with setting up a business is coming up with the capital to start the business. It takes money to make money. Unless you have a nice savings account, you will probably have to get a business loan or find people who are willing to invest in your company. 2. Define what a “niche” product is. Give at least three examples of niche products. A niche product is something designed to appeal to specialized interests. Not for everyone, but a specific customer. Examples; speakers at the Bose store, Starbucks Coffee, a restaurant that sells Chinese food. 3. Explain why a niche company might have an advantage in a market. Would price necessarily be an advantage? Explain why or why not. A niche company has an advantage in the market because the customers are coming to the store specifically for a product that the company sells. If a woman walks into Victoria’s Secret, she’s shopping for women’s underclothes and she’s completely surrounded by women’s underclothes from the minute she walks into the store. Price might be an advantage if the company has a large enough surplus of the product, like Victoria‘s Secret. The product can be cheaper. But if the product is a specialty item the price might be higher. I think that the customer will be willing to pay more for a product at a niche...
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...STAT2011 Statistical Models sydney.edu.au/science/maths/stat2011 Semester 1, 2014 Computer Exercise Weeks 1 Due by the end of your week 2 session Last compiled: March 11, 2014 Username: mac 1. Below appears the code to generate a single sample of size 4000 from the population {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}. form it into a 1000-by-4 matrix and then find the minimum of each row: > rolls1 table(rolls1) rolls1 1 2 3 4 5 6 703 625 679 662 672 659 2. Next we form this 4000-long vector into a 1000-by-4 matrix: > four.rolls=matrix(rolls1,ncol=4,nrow=1000) 3. Next we find the minimum of each row: > min.roll=apply(four.rolls,1,min) 4. Finally we count how many times the minimum of the 4 rolls was a 1: > sum(min.roll==1) [1] 549 5. (a) First simulate 48,000 rolls: > rolls2=sample(x=c(1,2,3,4,5,6),size=48000,replace=TRUE) > table(rolls2) rolls2 1 2 3 4 5 6 8166 8027 8068 7868 7912 7959 (b) Next we form this into a 2-column matrix (thus with 24,000 rows): > two.rolls=matrix(rolls2,nrow=24000,ncol=2) (c) Here we compute the sum of each (2-roll) row: > sum.rolls=apply(two.rolls,1,sum) > table(sum.rolls) sum.rolls 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 742 1339 2006 2570 3409 4013 3423 2651 1913 1291 1 12 643 Note table() gives us the frequency table for the 24,000 row sums. (d) Next we form the vector of sums into a 24-row matrix (thus with 1,000 columns): > twodozen=matrix(sum.rolls,nrow=24,ncol=1000,byrow=TRUE) (e) To find the 1,000 column minima use > min.pair=apply(twodozen,2,min) (f) Finally compute the...
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...Instamatic – Old Video Cameras Technology has changed greatly over the years. Specifically video cameras, they have decreased in the products size but increased in the quality over time. When video cameras were introduced back in the 1970’s, they were using an old film format as compared to digital in today’s era. As these video cameras were being developed and launched into the market for the first time, it reflected the way retailers could examine buyer behaviour. Even back when the first sets of video cameras were released, retail stores were mounting them on the ceilings not only for security purposes, but to track consumers shopping habits. This helps these stores better understand how consumers are shopping so they can predict the next move. As the format back in the 70’s was film, retailers had to manually view the cameras to predict popular areas in the store, for example. This helped retailers effectively manage their stores as they would place the newest, popular products in areas that attracted the highest number of consumers. Another way video cameras have impacted buyer behaviour is through the product mix. By retailers using cameras to evaluate their retail stores, they are able to evaluate their product density (too high or too low); amount of signage and even the labelling within the store that could’ve been confusing. A retail stores product mix is important to upper management, as they want to ensure the best possible consumer experience. In order for the customer...
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...Pick Me: Slotting Product “Some have argued that slotting allowances – and a variant known as pay-to-stay fees, paid by manufacturers to keep existing products on retailers’ shelves – harm consumers by, among other things, excluding certain manufacturers and thereby impairing competition that otherwise would take place. Defenders of slotting allowances have asserted that, among other things, they cover the cost of introducing new products to the marketplace and thereby tend to foster entry and innovation”. (ftc.gov 2001) While the Department of Justice concludes that the practice of slotting allowance is not an antitrust issue there is a possibility that there may be issues in the future with anticompetitive exclusion. Slotting allowance is a practice used by manufacturers and retailer to stock certain products on the shelves. It was most prevalent in supermarkets but spread to other store i.e. electronic stores and computer stores. For example, Microsoft pays a fee to have an end cap (spot at the end of an aisle) to display their product only. Some feel that it is an exclusivity practice that leaves out smaller businesses that cannot compete with the fees required by retailers. The process was for manufactures to introduce new product to customers. But it is now a wide spread practice to charge a fee to keep their mature (older) products on the shelf. The practice allows for retailers to build their market power. Pros and cons of slotting allowances: 1) Pros ...
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...Write a short critical essay explaining how the poor economic climate in the UK might affect the marketing mix of a start-up retail venture in the high street. I will look critically at setting up a retail business on the high street in the current economic climate and the affect this may have on the marketing mix. I will first give a brief overview of the economic situation in the UK and high street retail in general. The UK economy has undergone a protracted period of instability since the banking crisis of 2007/08, which sparked economic downturn for the UK and caused a dramatic fall in both consumer and business confidence. Between 2008 and 2012, the UK experienced two periods of recession and has been subject to austerity measures, such as public spending cuts, welfare reforms and increased taxation, imposed by the UK Government in an attempt to reduce the country’s budget deficit and reverse economic decline. These measures coupled with high inflation, rising levels of unemployment and low wage growth have contributed to less disposable household income and subsequently lower consumer spending across most of the UK. The economic constraints of the last five years, such as falling consumer spending, increasing operating costs for businesses (20% rise since 2006) alongside less available, affordable borrowing to businesses have led to large numbers of high street retailers closing their doors. The Centre for Retail Research (2013) reported that 54 retail companies...
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...different strategies. One of Victoria’s secret strategies is not just to focus on a specific group of women but women of all ages. They concentrate on their entire customer base & focus on their 1000 retail stores, $400 mil famed catalogue, & lingerie super brand through the site, victoriassecret.com, where social media is also found, which help Victoria’s Secret stay in touch with their consumers, by making announcements of future new merchandise and offer special promotions. Arguably the most important marketing strategy is Victoria’s Secret fashion show – the epitome of glamour and glitz and a huge marketing machine. The retail chain expands into new products by taking advantage of their brand name, (ex; their new perfume; “Bombshell In Love”. They develop a strong brand and have been able to leverage its name in other products. Ethical & Legal Issues (solutions, perspectives and recommendations) U4 ISSUE: VS brought cotton from a company called Burkina Faso, which had a deal to ensure that the cotton is organic and fair-trade, but in Dec 2011, Bloomberg revealed that Faso was using child labour to gather the cottons. On line of VS that has been contreversal is the line called “Backstage Sexy”, where some stores arranged “mannequins (that were) blind folded and arranged in various sexual positions” in front view of the store. Many consumers began avoiding shopping at the store due to potential negative influence on their young. But the store`s mannequins displays were to...
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...Week 1 – Health Care Marketing Information Matrix Laurie Thompson HSC490 October 8, 2012 Jennifer Pharr Health Care Marketing Information Matrix There are a variety of information sources that may be used by consumers to obtain information relating to the marketing of health care products and services. The following matrix is intended to assist you in organizing the information contained in these sources. Consider the types of marketing messages that these information sources may contain and the reliability of the marketing message. Following the provided example, identify three examples of your own. |Source of Health Information |Type of Health-Related Information |Marketing Messages |How the Consumer May Assess the Accuracy or | | | | |Reliability of the Marketing Messages | |List the information source, such as Internet websites, WebMD, |Type of information provided by the source|List at least one marketing message being |List one approach the consumer may use to verify | |MedLine, or the news media. | |communicated to the consumer within this |the accuracy of the marketing message. | | ...
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...Process Types Job Shop | High Diff. Product | Low Vol. | Batch | Med. Diff. Product | Med. Vol. | Assembly/Workers Line | Med. Diff. Product | High Vol. | Machine Assembly | Low Diff. Product | High Vol. | Continuous | Low Diff. Product | Very High Vol. | Inventory Costs (Financial &) Non-Financial Holding: Obscelence: Tech Perishable Product: Foods Shrinkage/Theft Storage/OH: Insurance, security, real estate Waiting and Quality 5 Reasons to Hold Inventory Pipeline Inventory: Patient Seasonal Inventory Cycle Inventory: Economies of Scale Decoupling/Buffers Safety Inventory: Demand Odds—Find flow rate, then Divide flow rate by Total number of people E.g. If 20 consultant promote, 80 not promote the Probability of getting promoted = 20/100 = 20% Process Analysis Formulas: Setup + First Order Rush Time + (# of Remain Units x CT in Unit/Time) ***Make sure ALL UNITS OF TIME ARE SAME to compute—min:min, hr:hr, day:day Labor Content Formulas: IDLE TIME = Bottleneck Activity Time – Activity Time for that Step **Compute for all steps, then add values if need total idle time. LABOR CONTENT = Sum of Labor Content Time or Sum of Activity Time depends on Prob. DL Cost in WORK CELL: Total time ONE unit (ALSO RUSH ORDER TIME) > Convert to HRS/UNIT then multiply by $/HR > $/Unit which is the direct labor cost Number of Worker X Capacity per worker in UNIT/TIME = Demand Rate in UNIT/TIME Capacity of Given B = 1 Unit/ X Time B/...
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