It is often stated that the world is becoming smaller because today people communicate relatively easily across time and distance.
IIBMS ANSWER SHEETS
IIBMS MBA CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS,
IIBMS MBA CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS,
IIBMS EMBA CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS,
IIBMS EMBA CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS,
IIBMS DMS CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS,
IIBMS DMS CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS,
IIBMS MMS CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS,
IIBMS MIB CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS,
MBA IIBMS ANSWER SHEETS,
EMBA IIBMS CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS.
www.answersheets.in
info.answersheets@gmail.com
info@answersheets.in
+91 95030-94040
Consumer
Behavior
Note: Solve any 4 Cases Study’s
CASE: I
Toyota
Of
all the slogans kicked around Toyota, the key one is kaizen, which means “continuous improvement” in Japanese. While
many other companies strive for dramatic breakthrough, Toyota overtook Ford
Motor Company to become the second largest automaker in the world. Ford had
been the second largest since 1931.
Toyota simply is tops in quality,
production, and efficiency. From its factories pour a wide range of cars, built
with unequaled precision. Toyota turns
out luxury sedans with Mercedes-Benz-like quality using one-sixth the labor
Mercedes does. The company originated just-in-time production and remains its
leading practitioner. It has close relationships with its suppliers and rigid
engineering specifications for the products it purchases
Toyota’s worldwide leadership in the
automotive industry was built on its competitive advantage across the supply
chain. Between 1990 and 1996, Toyota reduced part defects by 84 percent,
compared to 47 percent for the Big 3. It also reduced the ratio of inventories
to sales by 35 percent versus 6 percent. These reduction advantages occurred
despite the fact the Big 3 relied on identical suppliers. A study by Jeff Dyer
of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Kentaro Nobeoka of
Kobe University attributed Toyota’s success partly to its implementation of
bilateral and multilateral, knowledge-sharing routines with suppliers that
result in superior Interorganizational or network learning. Toyota uses six
approaches to facilitate knowledge sharing: (1)a supplier association;(2) teams
of consultants;(3)voluntary study groups;(4)problem-solving teams;(5)interfirm
employee transfers; and (6)performance feedback and monitoring processes. This
effort also involves intense levels of personal contact between Toyota and its
suppliers.
Toyota pioneered quality circles,
which involve workers in discussions of ways to improve their tasks and avoid
what it calls the three Ds: the dangerous, dirty, and demanding aspects of
factory work. The company has invested $770 million to improve worker housing,
add dining halls, and build new recreational facilities. On the assembly line,
quality is defined not as zero defects but, as another slogan puts it,
“building the very best and giving the customer what she/he wants.” Because each
worker serves as the customer for the process just before hers, she becomes a
quality control inspector. If a piece isn’t installed properly when it reaches
her, she won’t accept it.
Toyota’s engineering system allows
it to take a new car design from concept to showroom in less than four years
versus more than five years for U.S. companies and seven years for Mercedes.
This cuts costs, allows quicker correction of mistakes and keeps Toyota better
abreast of market trends. Gains from speed feed on themselves. Toyota can get
its advanced engineering and design done sooner because, as one manager puts
it, “We are closer to the customer and thus have shorter concept time.” New
products are assigned to a chief engineer who has complete responsibility and authority
for the product from design and manufacturing through marketing and has direct
contacts with both dealers and consumers. New-model bosses for U.S. companies
seldom have such control and almost never have direct contact with dealers or
consumers.
The 1999 Harbour Report, a study of
automaker competencies in assembly, stamping, and powertrain operations, stated
that the top assembly facility in North America (based on assembly hours per
vehicle) is Toyota’s plant in Cambridge, Ontario. In this plant, a Corolla is
produced in 17.66 hours. Toyota was also rated number one in engine assembly,
taking just 2.97 hours to produce an engine.
In
Toyota’s manufacturing system, parts and cars don’t get build until
orders come from dealers requesting them. In placing orders, dealers
essentially reserve a portion of factory capacity. The system is so effective
that rather than waiting several months for a new car, the customer can get a
built-to-order car in a week to 10 days.
Toyota is the best carmaker in the world
because it stays close to its customers. “We have learned that universal mass
production is not enough,” said the head of Toyota’s Tokyo Design Center. “In
the 21st century, you personalize things more to make them more
reflective of individual needs.”
In 1999, Toyota committed to a $13
billion investment through 2000 to become a genuinely global corporation
without boundaries. In this way, it will be able to create worldwide
manufacturing facilities that produce cars according to local demand. Its goal
is to achieve a 10 to 15 percent global market share by 2010.
Why the drive towards customization
of vehicles? Part of this is due to fierce competition that provides consumer
with a multitude of choices. The Internet enables consumers to be more demanding
and less compromising. They now have access to the lowest prices available for
specific models of vehicles with all of the bells and whistles they design.
From the comfort of their homes, they are able to bypass dealers and still find
the vehicle of their dreams.
Senior management at Toyota believes
that kaizen is no longer enough. The
senior vice president at the Toyota USA division, Douglas West, states that his
division is committed to both creating and executing a new information system
to drive the fastest, most efficient order-to-delivery system in the North
American market. Toyota management has come to realize Kaizen alone can no longer predict business success. The sweeping
changes taking place in the business environment can no longer rely on the kaizen philosophy of small, sustained
improvements. In fact, one expert in the industry believes that “pursuing
incremental improvements while rivals reinvent the industry is like fiddling
while Rome burns.” Competitive vitality can no longer be defined by continuous
improvement alone.
Question:
1. In what ways is Toyota’s
new-product development system designed to serve customers?
2. In what ways is Toyota’s
manufacturing system designed to serve customers?
3. How does Toyota personalize its
cars and trucks to meet individual consumer needs?
CASE: II Exposure, Attention,
and Comprehension on the Internet
The
Internet universe literally grows more cluttered by the minute. According to
Network Solutions, Inc., which registers the vast majority of Web addresses
around the world, about 10,000 new addresses are registered each day. That
means by the time you finish reading this case, about 60 new domain names will
have been gobbled up. With all the clutter on the Web, how have some firms been
able to stand out and attract millions of customers?
First, there are some basics to
which online firms must attend. These cost little more than some time and a
little creativity. The first is creating
a good site name. The name should be memorable (yahoo.com), easy to spell
(ebay.com), and/or descriptive (wine.com—a wine retailer). And, yes, ideally it
will have a .com extension. This is the most popular extension for e-commerce,
and browsers, as a default, will automatically add a .com onto any address that
is typed without extension.
The second priority is to make sure
the site comes up near the top of the list on any Web searches. If you use
Lycos.com to perform a search for “used books,” you get a list of more than 2.6
million websites. Studies have shown that most people will look only at the top
30 sites on the list, at most. If you are a used-book retailer and you show up
as website #1,865,404 on the search list, there is a very good chance you will
not attract a lot of business. A 1999 Jupiter Research study reveals that
“searching on the Internet” is the most important activity, and Internet users
find the information they are looking for by using search engines and Web
directories. A good Web designer can write code that matches up well with
search engine algorithms and results in a site that ranks high on search lists.
Virtually all popular websites have
those basics down pat. So the third step is to reach out proactively to
potential customers and bring them to your site. Many companies have turned to
traditional advertising to gain exposure. Television advertising can be an
effective option—albeit an expensive one. In late January 1999, hotjobs.com
spent $2 million—half of its 1998 revenues—on one 30-second ad during the Super
Bowl. According to CEO Richard Johnson, so many people tried to visit the site
that the company’s servers jammed. Johnson says the number of site hits was six
times greater than in the month before. A quirky ad campaign may or may not
help. Pets.com, now de-func, built its image around a wise-guy sock puppet.
CNET, a hardware and software retailer, ran a series of television ads
featuring cheesy music, low-budget sets, and unattractive actors. One such ad
featured two men—one in a T-shirt that said ”you,” another in a T-shirt labeled
“the right computer” – coming together and joining hands thanks to the efforts
of another guy in a CNET T-shirt. The production quality was rudimentary enough
that any sophomore film student could have produced it. The spots were so bad
that they stood out from the slick, expensive commercials to which viewers were
accustomed. Critics ripped the campaign to shreds, but CNET called it a
success.
Other Internet firms have used
sports sponsorships to increase visibility. CarsDirect.com, a highly rated site
that allows consumers to purchase automobiles online, once purchased the naming
rights to NASCAR auto race (the CarsDirect.com400). Lycos also has tried to
make the most of NASCAR’s increasing popularity. It spent hundreds of thousands
of dollars to have its name and logo plastered all over the car of popular
driver Johnny Benson. Meanwhile, online computer retailer Insight and furniture
seller galleryfurniture.com each targeted football fans by purchasing the
naming rights to college bowl games.
Of course, if you can reach
consumers while they are in front of their computers rather than their
television sets, you may stand an even better chance of getting them to your
site. However, typical banner ads are inefficient, averaging click-through
rates of only about 0.5 per cent (only one of every 200 people exposed to the
ad actually clicked on the ad). Too often, banner ads are just wallpaper;
consumers may see them but they usually are not sufficiently stimulated to
click-through. However, Michele Slack of the online advertising group Jupiter
Communications believes banner ads can be useful if used correctly. “The
novelty factor is wearing off,” she says. But “when an ad is targeted well and
the creative is good, click-through rates are much higher.”
An alternative way to reach people
who are already online is through partnerships. One of the most visible
examples of such an alliance is the one between Yahoo! And Amazon.com. Let’s
say you’re working on a project on the Great Depression and you want to see
what kind of information is available online. If you go to Yahoo! And type in
“Great Depression,” you will not only be presented with a list of websites, but
you will also see a link that will allow you to click to see a list of books on
the Great Depression that are available through Amazon. Another example of a
successful partnership was forged in 1998 between Rollingstone.com and the
website building and hosting service Tripod. Every one of the 3,000 artist
pages on Rollingstone.com contained a link to Tripod. The goal was to encourage
fans to use Tripod’s tools to build webpages dedicated their favorite singers
or bands. According to the research company Media Metrix, during the course of
the alliance Tripod jumped from the Web’s fourteenth most popular website to
number eight. Alliances with nonvirtual companies are another options. In 2003,
the Internet classified firm CareerBuilder kicked off a cross-promotional
campaign with major Internet firms, including AOL and MSN.
A less subtle but nonetheless
effective way to build traffic is to more or less pay people visit your site.
One study showed more than half of Internet consumers would be more likely to
purchase from a site if they could participate in some sort of loyalty program.
Hundreds of online merchants in more than 20 categories have signed up with a
network program called ClickRewards. Customers making purchases at ClickRewards
member sites receive frequent-flier miles or other types of benefits.
Mypoints.com offers a similar incentive program in which customers are rewarded
with air travel, gift certificates and discounts for shopping at member
merchants. The search engine iwon.com was even more direct. It rewards one
lucky visitor each weekday with a $10,000 prize. According to Forrester
Research, companies in 2002 spent about $6 billion annually on online
incentives and promotions.
Finally, some firms rely on e-mail
to thoroughly mine their existing customer databases. The auction site Onsale
(later merged with Egghead.com) proved just how successful e-mail can be. It
sent out targeted e-mails to its customers based on their past bidding
activities and previously stated interests. Click-through rates on these
targeted e-mails averaged a remarkable 30 percent. E-mail marketing also holds
promise for business-to-business firms. The Peppers and Rogers Group is a
marketing firm that gives presentations around the United States. At the end of
the presentations, people are invited to go to the company’s website and sign
up for their e-mail newsletter, Inside 1 to 1. The newsletter invites readers
to visit the Peppers and Rogers website to learn more about various articles,
promote their products and services, and participate in forums. Inside 1 to 1
now boasts a subscriber base of 45,000, but the company estimates that about
200,000 people actually see it because subscribers forward it to their friends
and colleagues. About 14,000 people visit the Peppers and Rogers site each
week, with traffic often peaking immediately after the newsletter is sent.
As you can see, there is no one
effective method for generating interest in a website. The same methods that
have worked for some firms have failed for others. One certainty is that as the
Internet grows and more people do business online, Internet firms will have to
find ever more creative ways to expose customers to their sites and keep their attention
once there.
Questions:
1.
Consider the e-mail campaigns
discussed in the case. Why do you think these campaigns were successful?
Discuss the attention processes that were at work. Do you see any potential
drawbacks to this type of marketing?
2.
During the 2000 Super Bowl, ABC
invited viewers to visit its Enhanced TV website. Fans could play trivia, see
replays, participate in polls and chat rooms, and view player statistics. The
site received an estimated 1 million hits. Why? Frame your answer in terms of
exposure, attention, and comprehension.
3.
Think about your own Web
surfing patterns. Write down the reasons you visit sites. Which of the
marketing strategies discussed in the case do you find most (and least)
influential?
CASE: III Peapod Online
Grocery—2003
The
online grocery turned out to be a lot tougher than analysts thought a few years
ago. Many of the early online grocers, including Webvan, ShopLink, StreamLine,
Kosmom, Homeruns, and PDQuick, went bankrupt and out of business. At one time,
Webvan had 46 percent of the online grocery business, but it still wasn’t
profitable enough to survive. The new business model for online grocers is to
be part of an existing brick-and-mortar chain. Large grocery chains, like
Safeway and Albertson’s, are experiencing sales growth in their online business
but have yet to turn a profit. Jupiter Research estimates that online grocery
sales will be over $5 billion by 2007, about 1 percent of all grocery sales,
while it expects more than 5 percent of all retail sales to be online by then.
A few years ago, optimistic analysts estimated online grocery sales would be 10
to 20 times that by 2005, but it didn’t work out that way.
One of the few online grocers to
survive in 2003 is Peapod, the first online grocer, started by brothers Andrew
and Thomas Parkinson in 1990. However, even Peapod was failing until 2001 when
Dutch grocery giant Royal Ahold purchased controlling interest in the company
for $73 million. Peapod operates in five markets, mainly by closely affiliating
itself with Ahold-owned grocery chains. Peapod by Giant is in the Washington,
DC, area, while Peapod by Stop and Shop runs in Boston, New York, and
Connecticut. The exception is Chicago, where Peapod operates without an
affiliation with a local grocery chain. Peapod executives claim the company is
growing by 25 percent annually and has 130,000 customers, and all of its
markets except Connecticut are profitable. Average order size is up to $143
from $106 three years earlier.
The online grocery business seemed
like a sure winner in the 1990s. Dual-income families strapped for time could
simply go online to do their grocery shopping. They has about the same choices
of products that they would have had if they went to a brick-and-mortar
grocery, about 20,000 SKUs (stockkeeping units). They could browse the “aisles”
on their home computers and place orders via computer, fax or telephone. The
orders were filled at affiliated stores and delivered to their homes in a
90-minute window, saving them time and effort and simplifying their daily
lives. For all this convenience, consumers were willing to pay a monthly fee
and a fee per order for packaging, shipping, and delivery. Since most of the
products purchased were well-known branded items, consumer faced little risk in
buying their traditional foodstuffs. Even perishables like produce and meat
could be counted on to be high quality, and if consumers were concerned, they
could make a quick trip to a brick-and-mortar grocery for these selections.
However, while all of this sounded good, most consumers didn’t change their
grocery shopping habits to take advantage of the online alternative.
Currently analysts do not expect the
online grocery industry to take off in the near future, if ever. Miles Cook of
Bain & Company estimates that only 8 to 10 percent of U.S. consumers will
find ordering groceries online appealing, but only about 1 percent will ever do
so. He concludes: “This is going to remain a niche offering in a few markets.
It’s not going to be a national mainstream offering.” Jupiter Media Metrix
analyst Ken Cassar concludes that “The moral of the story is that the ability
to build a better mousetrap must be measured against consumers’ willingness to
buy it.”
 |
| It is often stated that the world is becoming smaller because today people communicate relatively easily across time and distance. |
Question:
1.
What behaviors are involved in online
grocery shopping? How does online shopping compare with traditional shopping in
terms of behavioral effort?
2.
What types of consumers are
likely to value online grocery shopping from Peapod?
3.
Overall, what do you think
about the idea of online grocery shopping? How does it compare with simply
eating in restaurants and avoiding grocery shopping and cooking altogether?
CASE: IV Sony
In
just over half-century, Sony Corporation has from a 10-person engineering
research group operating out of a bombed-out department store to one of the
largest, most complex, and best-known companies in the world. Sony co-founders
Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita met while serving on Japan’s Wartime Research
Committee during World War II. After the war, in 1946, the pair got back
together and formed Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation to repair
radios and build shortwave radio adapters. The first breakthrough product came
in 1950, when the company produced Japan’s first tape recorder, which proved
very popular in music schools and in courtrooms as a replacement for
stenographers.
In 1953, Morita came to the United
States and signed an agreement to gain access to Western Electric’s patent for
the transistor. Although Western Electric (Bell Laboratory’s parent company)
suggested Morita and Ibuka use the transistor to make hearing aids, they
decided instead to use it in radios. In 1955, Tokyo Telecommunications
Engineering Corporation marketed the TR-55, Japan’s first transistor radio, and
the rest, as they say, is history. Soon thereafter, Morita rechristened the
company as Sony, a name he felt conveyed youthful energy and could be easily
recognized outside Japan.
Today Sony is almost everywhere. Its
businesses include electronics, computer equipment, music, movies, games, and
even life insurance. It employs 190,000 people worldwide and does business on
six continents. In 1999, Sony racked up sales of $63 billion; 31 percent of
those came from Japan, 30 percent from the United States, and 22 percent from
Europe. (To visit some of Sony’s country-specific websites, go to www.sony.com
and click on “Global Sites.”)
Perhaps Sony’s most famous product
is the Walkman. Created in 1979, the Walkman capitalized on what some perceived
as the start of a global trend towards individualism. From a technological
standpoint, the Walkman, was fairly unspectacular, even by 1979 standards, but
Sony’s marketing efforts successfully focused on the freedom and independence
the Walkman provided. One ad depicted three pairs of shoes sitting next to a
Walkman with the tag line “Why man learned to walk.” By 2000 more than 250
million Walkmans had been sold worldwide, but Sony was concerned. Studies had
shown that Generation Y (ages 14 to 24) viewed the Walkman as stodgy and
outdated. So Sony launched a $30 million advertising and marketing campaign to
reposition the product in the United States. The star of the new ads was Plato,
a cool, Walkman-wearing space creature. The choice of a nonhuman character was
no accident according to Ron Boire, head of Sony’s U.S. personal-mobile group.
He wanted a character that would appeal to the broadest possible range of
ethnic groups—thus, the space creature. Boire explains, “An alien is no one, so
an alien is everyone.”
Sony’s current vision, however,
extends far beyond the Walkman: to become a leader in broadband technologies.
Sony looks forward to a day when all of its products—televisions, DVDs,
telephones, game machines, computers, and so on—can communicate with one
another and connect with the Web on a persona network. A Sony executive
provides an example of such technology in action: “Say you are watching TV in
the den, and your kids are playing their music way too loud upstairs,” he says.
“You could use your TV remote to call up an onscreen control panel that would
let you turn down your kids’ stereo, all without having to get up from your
recliner.”
Sony sees its new PlayStation2
filling a major role in the Internet of the future. In March 2000, Sony
introduced the PlayStation2 in Japan and sold 1 million units within a week. Newsweek featured the PlayStation2 on
its cover that spring, even though it wasn’t offered in the United States until
later in the year. Most consumers probably bought PlayStation2 to play video
games, but its potential goes far beyond that. It is actually powerful enough
to be adapted to guide a ballistic missile. Sony envisions consumers turning to
the PlayStation2 for not only games but also movies, music, online shopping,
and any other kind of digital entertainment currently imaginable. Ken Kutaragi,
president of Sony Computer Entertainment, predicts the PlayStation2 will
someday become as valuable as the PC is today: “A lot of people always assumed
the PC would be the machine to control your home network. But the PC is a
narrowband device that… has been retrofitted to play videogames and interactive
3-D graphics. The PlayStation2 is designed from the ground up to be a broadband
device.”
The PlayStation2 also reflects a
changing attitude within Sony regarding partnerships with other companies.
Toshiba helped Sony design the Emotion Engine, which powers the PlayStation2.
In previous years, these kinds of alliances were the exception rather than the
rule with the Sony. Sony was perceived as arrogant because it rarely cooperated
with other companies, preferring to develop and popularize new technologies on
its own. Recently, however, that has changed. Sony has worked with U.S. based
Palm to develop a new hand-held organizer with multimedia capabilities,
cooperated with Intel to create a set of standards for home networks, and
launched a joint venture with Cablevision to build a broadband network in the
New York metropolitan area. Nevertheless, some critics believe Sony remains too
insular, looking on from the sidelines while other companies join forces to
create entertainment powerhouses. Sony has no alliances with U.S. cable or
television networks, raising some doubts about its ability to fully develop its
home Internet services. Sony has talked with other music companies about
possible joint venture, but nothing has come to fruition.
Unlike many U.S.-based
multinationals, Tokyo-based Sony traditionally has marketed itself on a
regional rather than a global basis. For example, Sony has almost 50 different
country-specific websites from which consumers can order products. However,
there are signs that strategy may be changing, at least to some degree. Sony
launched www.Sonystyle.com, a website that is the company’s primary online
outlet for selling movies, music, and electronic products. Sony also plans to
provide product service and support on the site, and eventually software
upgrades as well. The current main website (www.sony.com) is mainly a source
for corporate and investor information. Also, in 1997 Sony embarked on a
worldwide ad campaign to make itself and its products more relevant in the eyes
of younger consumers. Ironically, much of Sony’s future growth may come from
its own backyard. The primary buyers of electronic and digital products are
ages 15 to 40. It is estimated that by 2010, two-thirds of the people in the
world in that age bracket will live in Asia. Tokyo is already a powerful
influence on Asian culture. Asia’s most popular youth magazines are published
in Tokyo, and most of the music Asian young people listen to comes form Tokyo.
So part of Sony’s challenge is to continue to grow on a global scale while
paying close attention to the burgeoning market at home.
Immediately following World War II
and for some years thereafter, the label “Made in Japan” connoted cheap, shoddy,
imitation products. Today, for many people, that same label stands for
excellence and innovation. Certainly Sony can take much of the credit that
transformation. Now the question is whether Sony’s products and marketing
efforts can keep pace (or set the pace) in the upcoming age of digital
convergence.
Question:
1.
Identify and discuss some of
the cultural meanings for Sony possessed by consumers in your country. Discuss
how these cultural meaning were developed and how they influence consumers’
behaviors (and affect and cognition). What is the role of marketing strategies
in creating and maintaining (or modifying) these cultural meanings?
2.
It is often stated that the
world is becoming smaller because today people communicate relatively easily
across time and distance. Discuss whether that has been beneficial for Sony.
What are some marketing challenges it presents?
3.
What do you think about Sony’s
tradition of region-specific or nation-specific marketing? Would Sony be better
served by working to create a more uniform global image?
CASE: V Pleasant Company
Samantha
Parkington fights for women’s
suffrage. Addy Walker escapes from slavery. Kirsten Larson builds a life in the
frontier. Characters from feminist novel? No, these plucky heroines are part of
The American Girls Collection, a line of historical dolls that are the darlings
of 7- to 12 year-olds. Christmas orders piled up so fast at Pleasant Co.—the
privately held doll-maker—that company vice presidents had to pack boxes in the
warehouse.
Former president, Pleasant Rowland,
who began the company with royalties she received from writing primary school
reading books knew her vision had to be broad. Simply launching a me-too doll
would have meant failure.
Before Rowland got her idea she went
shopping for dolls for her two nieces. All she found were Barbies that wore
spiked heels, drove pink Corvettes, and looked as if they belonged in strip
joints. Though industry sources told her she couldn’t sell a mass market doll
for over $40—some Barbies cost less than $10—Rowland gambled that boomer
parents would pay more for one that was fun and educational.
Each of Pleasant Co.’s five dolls
represents an era of American history. Addy is from the Civil War, and Samantha
is described as a “bright Victorian beauty.” Parents can also buy historically
accurate replicas of clothes, furniture, and memorabilia, such as the June 6,
1944, Chicago Daily Tribune headlined
“Allies Invade France, made for Molly McIntire, the 1940s doll. The 18-inch
dolls cost $84; add in all the accessories, including $80 dresses for the
doll’s owner, and the price exceeds $1000. Every doll also stars in its own
series of novels, with titles like Kirsten
Learns a Lesson Samantha Saves the
Day. The heroines go on adventures and cope with moral dilemmas; for
example, Felicity Merriman, a colonial girl, has to decide whether to continue
her tea parties while her father fights King
George Ill’s tea tax. Says Rowland: “We try to give girls chocolate cake with vitamins.”
George Ill’s tea tax. Says Rowland: “We try to give girls chocolate cake with vitamins.”
Pleasant Co. decided early on not to
compete doll to doll on toy store shelves. Defying industry wisdom, Rowland
began selling only through her own catalog. She counted on her dolls’ being so
different that word of mouth would take care of sales. She also coddled her
customers. Pleasant Co. opened a “hospital” for broken dolls, so when brother
sticks a pair of scissors through Molly’s head, Mom can return her to Pleasant
Co. for repairs. For $35 the company does the surgery then mails Molly—now
wearing a hospital gown and carrying a certificate of health form the house
doctor—home to recuperate.
Will Pleasant Co.’s dolls have legs?
Rowland says movies, CD-ROMs, and theme parks aren’t out of the question. But
she’ll expand only as long as she can keep the business special. She refuses to
license her products on T-shirts and lunch boxes, fearing that too much
exposure would cheapen the doll’s image. Says Rowland: “It never hurts to play
hard to get.”
In 1998, Mattel, Inc., purchased
Pleasant Co., which continues to operate as an independent subsidiary. During
the same year, American Girl Place, the company’s first retail and
entertainment site, opened in downtown Chicago, and a second store opened in
New York in 2003. The stores are a little girl’s delight. Visitors can purchase
dolls, books, and clothing; view a musical revue; and have tea, lunch, or
dinner at the Café at American Girl Place. The Chicago store sold $35 million
worth of products in 2003.
Question:
1.
Why do consumers pay $84 for a
Pleasant Company doll when they can buy other dolls much more cheaply at retail
stores?
2.
Considering money, time,
cognitive activity, and behavioral effort costs, are Pleasant Company dolls
more or less costly than dolls that can be purchased at retail stores?
3.
What recommendations do you
have for Pleasant Company to increase sales and profits?
www.answersheets.in
info.answersheets@gmail.com
info@answersheets.in
+91 95030-94040
No comments:
Post a Comment