Homebake is a growing company in the consumer small appliance industry. This is a highly competitive industry that produces high-quality, innovative products on a regular basis. Life cycles of some products may be short, while others are longer, but the market reaches saturation fairly quickly. Customer satisfaction is an important success factor. It appears that Homebake has produced a quality product that is meeting consumer demands; however some of the products are flawed.
Thomas has the same amount of space and machines as before but now he has an additional standardized line that he sells to retail outlets. Now sales of the standardized line are beginning to rise but not only does he have the same amount of equipment, he also cannot speed up the production time of the custom made furniture. Another decision that Thomas is faced with has to do with how quickly he can deliver pieces. The buyers of the standardized pieces have more stringent deliver requirements, yet Thomas is still prioritized the custom made furniture. He has to decide daily what kind of realistic delivery dates he can set without upsetting the customer.
The manual labor the company does is basically inexpensively in this region, and because of this the furniture store can offer their products at the best price. The furniture store is going through some changes that are affecting the market. Some of these changes include the rising of new competitors, the high technology used by the current overseas competitor, and the increasing on the cost labor which affect the business profit margin (UOPX, 2012). The primary purpose of finance is involved with defining value (Emery, Finnery & Stowe, 2007). There are three mainly areas cover by finance: investments, corporate financial management, and financial markets and intermediaries (Emery, Finnery & Stowe, 2007).
Best Buy is able to effectively manage the flow of its inventory that helps them complete the important task of having the right merchandise on its shelves for customers to buy. Weaknesses Although Best Buy has a large market share, the sales of the company heavily relied on domestic sales. The large percentage of the company’s sales mostly comes from US market despite the existence of its stores in other countries. The company still needs to push the products to the market in order to stay in the global market. Best Buy lacks strategies in strengthening the business in other countries where the company operates.
To change the price structure Kamprad designed sleek functional furniture which was able to be produced on machines and thus cheap to assemble. Furthermore, he utilized factories and workers in Poland which offered a 40% savings over production within Sweden. This pricing strategy allowed nearly unhindered growth for the furniture giant within countries of what I would consider the European Union. As growth continued, IKEA took advantage of the fragmented furniture industry within the Western European furniture markets. Instead
Case 1: Logoplaste: Global Growing Challenges 1) HOW did Logoplaste manage to continuously grow its profitability and accelerate its profit growth? WHAT was the successful business model that led Logoplaste to become an MNC? Logoplaste practiced the “hole-in-the-wall” concept. Single client plants were built, tailored to client’s needs and located inside client’s plants. This concept helped Logoplaste reduce transportation costs and offer “just-in-time” service to clients, which was still new to other competitors at the time.
Supplier Bargaining Power: High – By having a great deal of raw material available gives the suppliers a big advantage over their competitors. The majority of businesses in the industry have numerous suppliers to choose from so they can make sure that what they are getting is the best material for a cost effective price. Potential New Entrants: Medium - The possibility of having new clients that will enter the market is pretty low due to the fact that the big businesses are already in existence in the market. It isn’t likely that a loyal customer of the big company will switch to new the company. They will need to create a completely new product that has a better design and quality as well as a better price.
These changes consist of getting married, moving locations, having children, growing older and wanting to downsize. 3. What is the purpose and role of the IMC mix in the household wood furniture industry? The IMC mix plays an important role on delivering information of the offering and even facilitating an exchange for the offering in the household wood furniture industry. A company could use IMC to convey the message that they have the highest quality furniture to their consumers, which would allow them to be in the consumers consideration set if they are looking for high quality wood furniture.
Having such “space-friendly” package allows the warehouses to contain sizeable amounts of furniture and trucks to transport significantly much bigger quantity. All of this process reduces the overall cost of storage and transport, therefore, creating a core competency for Ikea. Furthermore, considering the fact that customers have to mount their furniture themselves automatically induces that Ikea won’t need any employees for the assembly like most shops do. This allows Ikea to concentrate their employees in different tasks, saving them a lot of money. The only counter-part of this aspect would be the fact that customers have to take time mounting the furniture, which Ikea considers being a source of fun and a social activity.
The current products are 100% customer designed, therefore allowing Shipper to pass most of the production cost to the customer. The new products will be manufacture designed and could affect ADP’s profits. The price could likely be an order winner for customers, as the company will likely have more competition as they move towards a higher-volume continuous product. Shipper will need to address and improve their inventory and production control if they intend to be competitive in the new market. The current situation is manual and difficult to maintain.