...Case Study 1 - Trader Joe’s Patrice Coleman BUS520 – Leadership and Organizational Behavior Instructor: Dr. Anthony Muscia January 11, 2015 1. Examine the approach Trader Joe’s uses to promote a positive work environment for its employees. Trader Joe’s is able to increase job satisfaction and performance in the following ways. I. Compensation Trader Joe’s offers new employees a generous compensation package inclusive of above market wages, retirement contributions, medical benefits, dental vacation, paid vacation time and a 10% discount. The competitive wages offered to part-time and full-time employees alike makes Trader Joe’s one of the highest paying employers in the retail grocery store industry, with part-time employees earning close to 20k annually, full time employees earning between 40k to 60 annually and store managers average compensation over six figures. “According to Glassdoor, the average Trader Joe’s crew member earns $13.20 an hour. Pay starts at around $9, but raise opportunities come often, and employees have the opportunity to earn a $2 per hour raise every year.” (Mazzoni, 2014) II. Collaborative Environment The overall work environment at Trader Joe Markets is very informal with employees donning Hawaiian Shirts as part of their work uniform, and a smile as they greet and engage customers to enhance their overall shopping experience. Daily tasks are routinely shared amongst all staff, and it is not uncommon to see store managers...
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...John Smith MGT 280 20 January 2016 Case 1 Analysis Questions 1. Trader Joe’s demonstrates the importance of each responsibility in the management process: • Planning- Trader Joe’s demonstrates this in its ‘Cost Control’ section. The company prides itself on its thriftiness and cost-saving measures. The company does this by providing delicacies from all around the world in small stocks making each product fight for its place on the shelf. This process enables customers to make easier decisions on which item to purchase. • Organizing- Trader Joe’s demonstrates this in its ‘From Corner Store to Foodie Mecca’ section. The company states that many different individuals are attracted to the delicious foods and the laid-back but enthusiastic customer service. The company also states that its employees and managers greet customers with smiles and are quick to engage in friendly conversation. This allows the customers to enjoy the atmosphere of the store and as stated by the company, “Shopping at Trader Joe’s in less a chore than it is immersion into another culture”. • Leading- Trader Joe’s demonstrates this in its ‘Strength from Within’ section. The company inspires its employees to work hard to achieve high performance by providing numerous benefits for them such as medical, dental and vision insurance. In addition to this, employees earn up to 20% more than other chain grocers. • Controlling- Trader Joe’s demonstrates this in its ‘Customer Connection’ section. The company...
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...Currently Trader Joe’s have no YouTube, Instagram, online blog or Pintrest. There is an unofficial company Twitter and Facebook account. No control over social media sites like their Facebook and Twitter” Trader Joe’s list” more of a product review accounts to share their experiences, which are operated by their fans. Need to become more active on the social media platform: For example use twitter to interact with customers on a daily basis, addressing needs and concerns. Also gives customers the ability to ask questions about specific products and recipes Or for both twitter and facebook should post daily about new products, the variety/uniqueness of products, possible recipes and what they are doing in their communities. Social media accounts can help build close customer relationships and helps show that are engaged/listening to their customers. Entice them to get involved. Run and contest and promotions through these accounts. Want them connect on several platforms so we want to add YouTube- can watch recipes being prepared, Instagram and Pinterest : encourage people to post pictures of products they bought from Trader Joe’s and meals they made with them. We have come up with some improvements that will lead to greater customer loyalty and relationships. We suggest a loyalty point program. Every dollar spent is equal to one point. Customers will get rewarded for a certain amount of points they have accumulated. This will encourage more loyalty to Trade...
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...Trader Joe's Keep Things Fresh Leslie Taylor Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Organizational Behavior MGMT 317 Dr. Dwayne Thomas June 6, 2015 Trader Joe's Keep Things Fresh 1. How does Trader Joe’s design jobs for increased job satisfaction and higher performance? Trader Joe’s success with their employee’s is based on hiring individuals who are “ambitious and adventurous, enjoy smiling and have a strong sense of values” (Uhl-Bien, Schermerhorn Jr., & Osborn, 2013, p. 98). Trader Joe’s employees’ exhibit job satisfaction and higher performance because they are compensated very well in their earnings, benefits and professional growth opportunities. Employees’ that are based in California stores “can earn almost 20 percent more than counterparts at supermarket giants Albertsons or Safeway” (Uhl-Bien et al., 2013, p. 98). 2. In what ways does Trader Joe’s demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the management process: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling? Management promotional opportunities are given solely to employees from within the company. To ensure managers are running the business from both the company expectations and the customer expectations, training programs are made available to crew members that guide in the planning and leading of future managers. It is most important that managers keep the customer focus in leading crew members for customer satisfaction. 3. Describe the methods that show Trader Joe’s knows the importance...
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...Cherie Heng Yi Ting (A0131713U) MNO2009 Individual Analysis Tutorial H01 The market for digital financial services is on the rise with a strong potential in creating an online platform to promote gamified social trading platform in a relatively unsaturated financial technology (Fintech) market. Current competitors Trade Hero and Ayondo (TechinAsia, 2016) focus on risk-free stimulated trading aimed towards competition and real life trading connection respectively in the mass market. Thus, in this online trading field, there is a missing social network that integrates gaming features for trading and education through forum sharing for youths. Insights from TradersHub, a failed start-up with a similar business model by Travis Ong (Annex A), can be adopted to understand how to successfully penetrate Singapore’s fintech market and be a recognised player in virtual trading, before extending and monetising the business. The main reason for TradersHub’s failure is due to their idealistic causation approach not bound by a realistic understanding of the industry. This exemplifies the need to balance the approach in an effectuative way by firstly analysing the fintech ecosystem for external factors that will shape the positioning of the business model (Forbes, 2016). Singapore has cultivated a conducive market that provides fintech start-ups with high availability of financial and developmental support. The high penetration rate of technology encourages the scalability...
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...Global Economic Climate-China’s Perspective * Chinese Stocks Have Further To Fall * Negative wealth effect on Chinese households * Financing Channels Now Closed * Property Market Stability At Risk * Renewed stability in the property market in the past * The weakening stock market reflects poor incomes and housing affordability * Banks become increasingly risk averse * Recession And/ Or Financial Crisis Risks Growing * Economic growth structure too reliable on debt * Excess Capacity of Manufacturing industry * Chinese demand is underperforming the bullish expectations Details With the Chinese equity bubble finally bursting in line with our expectations and likely to continue declining much further from still-extreme valuations, we are assessing the potential for either a recession or a financial crisis, which we believe are growing risks. * Chinese Stocks Have Further To Fall * Negative wealth effect on Chinese households * Financing Channels Now Closed * Property Market Recovery At Risk * Renewed stability in the property market in the past * The weakening stock market reflects poor incomes and housing affordability * Banks become increasingly risk averse Given that the property market and the upstream industries supplying it (cement, metal etc) accounts for almost 30% of GDP, and property and land prices are a major source of loan collateral, the housing market remains a crucial factor in China's...
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...Questions: ETHICAL ISSUES Q1. How serious were Stephen Richards’ actions? If Computer Associates achieved the same financial results within “allowed accounting flexibility”, will this change your answer? Q2. Richards describes how difficult it is to operate in the “gray areas of accounting” and wanted more guidance from senior management. Do you agree or disagree with him? If you were placed in the same position as Richards, how would you handle the situation? What are the options that you think you would face in deciding what to do? Q3. Step back and consider management’s incentives and choices. What are Computer Associate’s motivations to manage earnings and the financial value represented by the statement of financial position? What type of corporate governance structures in firms have been identified by the research as a flag, or indicator, that a firm is more likely to manage/manipulate financial accounting outcomes? ACCOUNTING ISSUES Q4. Comment on the GAAP standard that allows software firms to recognize the entire value of the licensing contract as revenue in the quarter that the contract was affirmed. Do you think this accounting treatment contributed to the culture at Computer Associates? Why or why not? Q5. Exhibit 4 provides an overview of the inflated recorded revenue and EPS. Is it important for Computer Associates to meet analyst estimates? Why or why not? Q6. Does accounting management/manipulation have an impact on stock prices? (Hint:...
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...Naomi Piché Professor John Burtt BUS 114 Management May 21, 2013 Case Study 1 : Trader Joe’s 1. In what ways does Trader Joe’s demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the management process-planning, organizing, leading, and controlling? -Trader Joe’s demonstrates planning by intending to carry unique products at a low cost within a fun, relaxing environment. Their organizing skills were apparent due to their approach to find unusual foods from around the world, contract directly with manufacturers, label their products with catchy phrases and by maintaining a small stock of each product. Their leadership was exemplified by hiring employees with job skills such as being “ambitious and adventurous” and providing a laid-back atmosphere both for their workers and customers. Their employees had higher pay rates than those that worked for their competitors and had great benefits. Because managers were hired from within, they had an ultimate knowledge-base of how the system works. Also, the employees were encouraged to taste and learn about the products to be able to share with their customers, creating a more involved employee to customer relationship. Regarding Trader Joe’s control, they were able to control real estate costs by buying smaller stores and staying away from “prime” locations. Their “one in, one out” policy to get rid of poorly selling products or have rising costs replaced by new products helped to control costs and also showed their customers...
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...Satisfaction Trader Joe Kimberly Love Dr. Thomas Schaefer Business 520 Leadership and Organizational July 20, 2014 Trader Joe’s founder had a perception for his stores after vacationing in the Caribbean. He perceived that the customers would try new things while on vacationing. Also realized that less is better. Many time customers buy more when there is less to choose from in that store. Their attention is only selective when there is not a big variety of supplies. Trader Joe case describes the business practices and how they reinvented themselves. Trader Joe’s set themselves apart from the 7- Eleven style store they had and they became top competitors to Whole Foods and Dean and Deluca giants. The case gives a description on the history of the retail chain and various aspects of its unique business practices. The retail store offered a selection of exclusive, which were mostly private-labeled products, and replaced poorly performing products with new ones. Trader Joe’s is a small supermarket chain which offers a limited selection of unique food products at reasonable prices. It sales most of its products under the private label 'Trader Joe's' and its variants. T.J. targets its stores at highly educated and travelled, but not necessarily wealthy, segments of the population. Trader Joe has a team of experienced buyers, who does extensive traveling and research before bringing new products into the stores (Palmeri, 2008). Trader Joe also avoids the...
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...Differentiating Between Market Structures in Trader Joe’s ECO/365 Differentiating between Market Structures in Trader Joe’s Trader Joe’s is a grocery store that offers upscale grocery fare such as; organic produce, nutritional supplements, and health foods. Trader Joe’s was founded by Joe Coulombe and started in 1958 as a small chain of convenient stores in Greater Los Angeles Area called Pronto Markets. Since then, Trader Joe’s has expanded and now has around 375 stores in 30 or more states ("Trader Joe's Company Competition", 2012). Trader Joe’s focuses on providing customers with great quality foods that are hard to find, but at a great value that will save customers money. Trader Joe’s has its own specialty line of private label products, their stores are about 12,000 to 15,000 square foot, and have no service departments. This makes it possible for Trader Joe’s to keep costs down. Some of the products sold include, organic foods, unusual frozen foods, gourmet foods, imported foods, vegetarian food, imported and domestic beer and wine. In addition, Trader Joe’s sales non-food items such as; household cleaners, personal hygiene products, pet food, vitamins, and plants. In addition, many of Trader Joe’s products are environmentally friendly ("About Trader Joe's", 2013). Below is an evaluation of Trader Joe’s market structures, competitive strategies, and recommendations. Market Structure Trader Joe’s market may be viewed as a monopolistic...
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...In what ways does Trader Joe's demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the management process—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling? Trader Joe’s is a company that many fellow corporations aspire to be because of their ultimate success. But how did Trader Joe’s get so successful? Trader Joe’s success built from their understanding that a good team can only succeed if that have a good leader, as in leader I mean manager (which is one of the duties managers are suppose to be on top of). Managers are taught to comply with the four functions that make up the principles of management. These four functions are planning, organizing, leading and controlling. One could say that if a manager does not follow this guideline or a similar personal version of their own, they will not succeed in the management field. So how did Trader Joe’s understand the importance of these functions? First, Founder Joe Coulombe realized there was a gap in the market for grocery stores that offer quality products at low prices. At the time, all competitors either focused on one of the two. One example would be, Whole foods, which focuses on the quality of their food rather than the cost, giving them the nickname of “Whole Paycheck”. Another example, which focuses on minimizing the costs of the food would be Wal-Mart, which promises “guaranteed lowest prices” rather than top quality products. After realizing the need for an improved market, he started the planning to take his little...
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...the basic server market share. Performance of the Zink is approximately equivalent to that of the Tronn without PESA. Ontario’s mode of sales is mostly done online as their business model aims at providing leading technology to customers by way of the most flexible and innovative supply chain strategy possible. This has led to Ontario being able to drive out non value added costs and compete on price ($1,700) since it is able to produce at a lower cost ($1,214), indicating operational efficiency. Pricing Strategy for Atlantic Bundle After careful observations of the facts surrounding our competitor as well as consumer behavior in the target market segment (refer to Appendix 1), we hereby propose for Jower to give a price of $2,436 to Day Trader Journal.com using the Value –in-use pricing strategy which is a method of setting prices in which an attempt is made to capture a portion of what a customer would save by buying Atlantic Bundle (refer to Appendix 2 for calculations). Atlantic Bundle at this Price would lead to a cost saving of $3,591.14 for DayTraderJournal.com should they purchase 2 Atlantic Bundles as against 4 basic web servers (Zink). The basic assumptions made for this pricing strategy are as follows: • A 50-50 sharing of the...
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...supermarkets tend to sell products grown or manufactured locally. So what sets these regular supermarkets apart from one another? Aside from price differences and a few differing product offerings from store to store, there aren’t very many differences. This is where stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s come in and break the “boring” grocery store mold. Unlike other chain supermarkets and grocery stores, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s are specialty foods stores. They offer a variety of the freshest foods and ingredients grown both locally and from around the world. These stores are also very popular for their sustainability efforts that range from the organic products they sell to the paper bags they use when bagging customers’ purchases. These companies are also very well known for not only satisfying their customers, but they pride themselves in how they treat their employees. Although both of these stores have become more popular over the years and have generated considerable profits, Trader Joe’s has made its way to the top of the best grocery stores list and its loyal customer base is continuing to expand. In a 2014 survey of more than 27,000 Consumer Reports subscribers, Trader Joe’s...
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...Trader Joe’s is a privately owned American specialty grocery store chain that specializes in private labeling and providing a unique and fun shopping experience for their customers. The chain comes from humble beginnings as a convenience store in southern California. Joe Coulombe founded the first store in 1958, but at that time it was called Pronto Markets and it was a convenience store in the greater Los Angeles area. In 1967, the name was changed to what we know it as today by Joe himself. This is when he also decided to change the direction of the business away from convenience store products into more of a grocery supplier (“Our Story”). This change was sparked by the rise of the 7-11 convenience stores. Coulombe was worried that those stores would put him out of business so he decided to take a different route and venture into the world of the grocery store (Moskin). The store is known for its’ hawaiian shirt clad employees and the fun, beach and tiki theme that plays heavily into the decor of the store. Coulombe has said that he was inspired while he was sitting on the beach trying to decide how to best handle the new 7-11 competition (Seattlepi). That is where his ideas of tiki torches and hawaiian t-shirts were born. He changed the focus of the store towards low priced gourmet items without any frills to keep it simple. He made his stores small to help keep prices low (Seattlepi). The concept of making the shopping experience a fun and tropical adventure is where Joe...
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...ways does Trader Joe's demonstrate the importance of each responsibility in the management process planning, organizing, leading, and controlling? A: There are several ways to demonstrate the importance of each responsibility. first, the buyers will travel all over the world to search the great foods and buying direct from the producer to lower the costs. Second, Trader Joe's carry only 1500-2000 products so that the customer are easy to choose. Third, Trader Joe's managers are hired only from within the company. The future leaders should be enroll in training programs such as Trader Joe's university the foster in them the loyalty necessary to run stores. Fourth, when something happen, Trader Joe's will quick to respond and post their action alerts on their web site. Q: How has Trader Joe’s developed its brand? A: Trader Joes focused on the in‟-store experience by designing interiors to be similar to a beach scene. It trains its employees to be helpful. The company has strengthened its brand by ensuring its products are high quality and reasonable in price, which increases customer trust. There is no reason to go to an overpriced specialty store, nor is there any reason to get lost in a conventional grocery store with mundane products, when Trader Joes is Internal resources (Ch. 04) Isabel * What are Trader Joe’s intangible resources? 1. Brand. It started as a small chain of specialty grocery store, named Pronto Markets since 1958. Then the founder Joe Coulombe...
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