Case Study #2
You will complete a short case study of a business situation.
Situation: Decision Time for a Small Business
Rest Assured
is a small retail business specializing in bedding and bedroom accessories: mattresses, comforters, blankets, pillows, sleep ware, and small decorator gift items for the bedroom. The store’s goose down materials and high quality synthetic fabrics, along with its clear focus on customer service, has made the store a successful enterprise…until recently. The store opened eight years ago within the only shopping mall located in a small coastal town in the Northwest. The town has 8,000 people, but it swells to double that size in the summer when families and retirees make their way to the coast to enjoy the beautiful Pacific Ocean for a week or two.
Rest Assured
leases space in a rear corridor of the local shopping mall, back from the area that gets the most mall traffic. An advantage to their leased space is its large size that enables the store to display more of its product line than it would have if it leased one of the smaller spaces in a higher traffic area in the mall. It also costs less than spaces closer to the high traffic area.
The store is owned by a husband and wife. It employs three full-time people, and the store owner and his wife fill in when employees are ill or off on vacation. One of the store employees has been with the store since it opened; one was hired five years ago; the third came on board as a replacement hire for a person who left the store two years ago.
The store is advertised through the mall’s regular advertising programs. The owners of Rest Assured also purchase an ongoing ad that is run in the local movie theater in advance of the movies.
About a year ago, sales began dropping off, and expenses began outpacing revenues. Even the Christmas season, which is usually a tremendous boost to store sales, wasn’t enough to make up for the losses last year. One major issue at the heart of the downturn in sales was the addition of a new discount store in the mall. The new store specializes in discounted house wares including discounted bedding materials. This store largely relies on synthetic bedding materials made by Chinese workers, and it offers its products at significantly lower prices than the products offered by Rest Assured.
Another cause of Rest Assured’s drop off in sales has to do with the local economy. It was dealt a major blow when the national economy slumped. Tourists pulled back on their beach vacations and retirees opted to stay at home for a while until the economy became more stable. The past few months have shown some evidence of increased visitors to the town and to the mall, though potential customers don’t seem to be visiting Rest Assured as they have in the past.
When the owners of Rest Assured planned for their business, they developed a list of fundamental objectives important to them. Over the past eight years, they have tried to operate with these objectives in mind. The objectives are:
- To achieve and sustain a profit level in the business that will help the owners fund their current lifestyles and prepare for their future retirement plans;
- To offer Made-in-the-USA products as a way to express support for the country and its workers;
- To demonstrate respect and appreciation of customers by seeking to understand their needs, offer products at reasonable cost that meet those needs, and interact with them in ways that ensure their long-term satisfaction and loyalty as customers.
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Required Elements to include in Case Study #2:
- Come up with four alternatives Rest Assured might consider in dealing with its financial problem. “Do nothing” can be one of the alternatives.
- For each alternative, describe in general terms the consequences that would flow from its being implemented.
- Select ONE alternative you think the owners of Rest Assured should implement and:
- explain why you are recommending this alternative;
- identify the stakeholders that will be affected by the decision to implement this alternative and the likely impacts the decision will have on these stakeholders;
- identify any tradeoffs the owners might have to make in their fundamental objectives based on the alternative you are recommending;
- Offer any change management suggestions you think might help in order to avoid or minimize resistance to this decision.
Required Formatting of Paper:
- This report should be double spaced, 12-point font, 4 – 5 pages excluding title page and reference page, with the following section headings:
- Alternatives
- Consequences
an lang=”EN-US” style=”font-family: “Times New Roman”,”serif”; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: “Times New Roman”;”> - Recommended Alternative
- Change Management Considerations
- Title page with your name, the course name, the date, and instructor’s name;
- Include an introduction and a summary paragraph;
- Include at least three in-text citations from your textbook. Use in-text citations if you cite additional sources from the Web or the UMUC library;
- This paper is to be written in the third person. There should be no words in the paper such as “I and we;”
- Use APA formatting for in-text citations and reference page. You are expected to paraphrase and not use quotes. Deductions will be taken when quotes are used and found to be unnecessary;
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Jermaine Byrant
Nicole Johnson
OVER
RATING
YEARS
