Critically examine how businesses can obtain a competitive advantage from information systems.

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Question Description

I need support with this Management question so I can learn better.

 

“Critically examine how businesses can obtain a competitive advantage from information systems. Are such advantages sustainable in your view? Give reasons for your answer.”

Requiremnent:

1.900-1000words,

2.No reference needed,

3.please give Citation when use example or book resource,example:(name, year)

4.this course is “Information and Operations Management”

 
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IKEA Case

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CASE – An expatriate for IKEA Mexico
Before reading the case, please read the following in depth:
 Dowling, P.J., Festing, M., & Engle, A.D. (2017) chapters 5, 7, 8 and 10.
 Konopaske, R., Chet, R & John,M.I. (2005) A preliminary model of spouse influence on
managerial global assignment willingness. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management 16(3), 405-426
 Black, J. S., & Mendenhall, M. (1989). A practical but theory-based framework for selecting
cross-cultural training methods. Human resource management, 28(4), 511-539.
Instructions
You are the head of Human Resources at IKEA headquarters, the Netherlands. IKEA has a subsidiary
in Mexico. However, staff turnover has been high over the past years. A month ago, the previous HR
Manager Division Flatline located in Mexico City resigned. It is now of utterly importance that a new
HR manager in Mexico will stay for at least five years. You are in charge of recruiting the successor.
After a long recruitment process with a vast number of candidates from within IKEA, you have
narrowed it down to three top candidates. Your job is to choose one of these candidates based on
the information below and take all possible means to improve the chance of expatriate success.
After reading this case you will argue for your choice of one of the candidates and discuss what steps
you have to undertake to prepare the assignment, expatriate and accompanying spouse/family.
write a paper that in detail discusses your choice of: Around 2000 words.
 Recruiting a PCN (parent-country national), an HCN (host-country national) or a TCN
(third country national). Elaborate your answer and discuss the pros and cons of
ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric or regiocentric approaches to recruiting.
 What steps will you have to take to prepare the spouse/family for the new location to
enhance the chances of expatriate success?
Final candidates
Paloma Hernández
References
Paloma’s references emphasize her ability to manage extreme workloads in an international
setting. She is an excellent negotiator. As a manager she is known to work hard and demand of
her co-workers to do the same. Her superiors and current coworkers describe Paloma as
extremely efficient and well liked for her excellent results.
Work life experience
Three year as HR manager at IKEA New York. Four years at home with her children. Two years of
experience as an HR manager at Atlantic Express in New York, a US based logistics company. 7
years of experience as HR strategist at IKEA Mexico. Further Paloma has 4 years of experience as
HR strategist at Interjet Airlines in Mexico City.
Education> Master of business from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Private Paloma is 42 years old, born in Tulum and a Mexican citizen. Her husband Michael is also 42
years old, a U.S. citizen and works as an accountant in the public sector in Atlanta. Paloma and
Michael have two daughters, Elizabeth 5 years and Alejandra 7 years who go to school/preschool in
Atlanta. The past three years Paloma has commuted between New York and Atlanta and her family
has remained in their hometown in Atlanta, USA. If Paloma is chosen for the job in Mexico her family
will accompany her, and Michael is planning to stay at home the first years until the daughters are
settled.
Language skills Fluent in Spanish and English.
The job adverts
HR Manager Division Flatline, IKEA Industry – Mexico
Do you believe in people? Are you passionate about leading our people agenda, so we become a
great place to work in all aspects? Do you like to work on both a strategic and operational level to
secure that we keep developing the business through people? Do you want to be part of a dynamic
and changing production environment? Then this might be the right challenge for you!
About you
To be successful in this role you should be business minded with a strong people focus. It is also of
utmost importance that you share the humanistic IKEA values and act in a way, which creates an
atmosphere of trust, respect, continuous improvements and togetherness. As a person, you like to
interact with many different kinds of people in different contexts and have the capability to build
strong relationships based on trust and act as a trusted advisor. You have the ability to work with
both a long-term perspective and at the same time turn strategies into results, by breaking them
down into plans and implementing different actions. Furthermore, you have strong communications
skills with the ability to both inspire, clarify and negotiate, and you are fluent in English, both written
and spoken. We are looking for a person who has at least 10 years of experience from working in the
HR area, preferable in an international organization.
About the job
Division Flatline is one of four divisions in IKEA Industry and we produce furniture mainly based on
boards, for example Kallax, Bestå, Pax, Billy and Lack. The division consist of 12 production sites in
nine different countries with approx. 10 000 co-workers.
The Division HR Manager plays a key role in the organization as the main responsible for Human
Resources as well as for Health and Safety. As the Human Resources Manager, you will act as the HR
generalist and assist with coordination of employee policies, performance management,
compensation and benefits, and general HR services. It is crucial for the Division HR Manager to form
a strong partnership with the business managers to contribute to the performance, with focus on
leadership, competence- and organizational development.
Another important area for the Division HR Manager is, as a part of the matrix role, to actively
support, coach and develop our 12 local HR Managers and continue to build a strong team spirit in
that group.
The Division HR Manager will together with other stakeholders, continue to develop and implement
the IKEA Industry People plan in the whole division to secure long-term profitability by focusing on:
 Strengthening our value based leadership
 Developing new competencies
 Creating an innovation culture
 Developing the workplace for the future
The position gives plenty of opportunities to influence the People agenda at the IKEA Industry and
you will be part of the IKEA Industry HR Matrix team. You will report to the Division Flatline Manager
in Älmhult, Sweden, and be a part of the Division management team world-wide at the headquarter
in Leiden, the Netherlands. As you will work closely with all the Flatline production sites, and it will
require extensive travelling. You will be located in the IKEA Industry office in Mexico City. The
corporate language is English.
We are a values-driven company with a passion for life at home. Our vision is to create a better
everyday life for the many people. IKEA Industry, integrated part of Inter IKEA Group, is the world’s
largest producer of wooden furniture and every year, IKEA Industry produces more than 100 million
pieces of furniture for IKEA customers.

Background on IKEA
IKEA was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in Älmhult, Sweden, in 1943 (IKEA is actually an acronym for
Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd – the name, hometown and home region of the founder).
However, even as the Swedish roots are still very important in the company, IKEA is not really a
Swedish company anymore. Today IKEA is controlled by a company called INGKA Holding, which, in
turn, is controlled by a Dutch stitchting — a tax-exempt, nonprofit foundation — to which Ingvar
Kamprad transferred his ownership shares in 1982. Today IKEA is a multinational group of companies
that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture (such as beds, chairs and desks), appliances and
home accessories. As of November 2018, there are 424 IKEA stores operating in 52 different
countries. In the 2016 fiscal year, the company generated a global revenue which exceeded 35
billion Euros. The IKEA headquarters lie in Leiden, the Netherlands. The corporate language is
English.

 
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MN 5337 City University Zero Hunger London Walmart and Walmart Foundation PPT

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Question Description

I’m working on a Management exercise and need support.

 

TOPIC(choose one of them, please DO CHECK website https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300) :

1.No Poverty

2.Zero Hunger

requirements and notice:

1.this is Individual reports: Presentation slides to be submitted with a 250 word commentary to explain what is on the slides

2. powerpoint slides are maximum 20 slides and no less than 14 slides

3. you can use tables, statistics/diagrams even some photographs (if relevant) on your slides. The main issues to bear in mind would be the relevance to your analysis and the references.

4. Ideally, it might be best to analyse a company that is already implementing your chosen UNSDG. This way, you can focus on what they are doing well and how else they could improve. you can also compare them with another company on the same UNSDG if you prefer. But, if your chosen company has not been implementing the UNSDG and you consider it is relevant to their core business and for society, then you could focus on justifying why they need to consider the UNDGS and recommend to them how they could do so.

5. To do so, you need to identify your UNSDG, your company/industry and follow the assignment brief to outline how you could prepare a presentation to the CEO of the company. For example, if I chose China Airlines which is in the aviation industry and wanted to apply UNSDG 13 ‘action on climate change’, I would introduce my topic in the first slide. I would use the next 2-4 slides to explain the significance of the UNSDG 13 to business organisations in general and to the aviation industry in particular (i.e. part 1 of the assignment. Then I would explain the relevance of UNSDG 13 for China Airlines and then use my own criteria to analyse critically, how China airlines is performing in terms of UNSDG 13 (second part of assignment 1). From this second part, I would make a few relevant recommendations for China Airlines (part 3 of assignment 1).

6. Detail of REPORT Rubric attached below, course information is inside Powerpoint, please do check it before start

7. please do this work follow the REPORT Rubric as much as possible

thank you!

 
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MN5338 PROJECT WORK FOR MANAGERS (II): BUSINESS RESEARCH SKILLS

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MN5338 PROJECT WORK FOR MANAGERS (II): BUSINESS RESEARCH SKILLS

 

INDIVIDUAL PROJECT ASSIGNMENT

 

Your coursework is a 400-word individual project assignment. This assignment builds on your weekly workshop/seminar case studies for discussion and is concerned with critically evaluating and interpreting a business research case study. You are asked to answer one out of four questions in your group report.

 

A customer loyalty journey

How loyal?

As part of your daily morning routine you take the same route to your office and stop for a while at your favourite coffee shop to get your usual hot cup of coffee. You are almost sure that you had just reached the ‘free cup’ level and you could redeem it today to get your coffee free of charge. But suddenly, as long as you are waiting at the queue to check at the cashier, you realize that you have forgotten your loyalty card. You look into your wallet anxiously only to confirm that you carry another four loyalty cards, not useful though today, except from the one you need desperately now.

 

What a frustration!

 

You use your loyalty card every day to collect points and earn rewards, such as the one ‘free cup’ every ten purchases, because you prefer this coffee shop in contrast to other ones nearby that offer less rewarding loyalty schemes. You ask the cashier whether you can redeem today, even if you are not carrying the card with you, but you get a polite rejection in response. Leaving the shop, you stare at the stand, next to the exit door, with the three smiley buttons eager to collect consumer feedback. Red, yellow and green are the three buttons and customers are asked to provide feedback on their overall satisfaction upon their exit. You are a loyal customer for long and overall satisfied from the service and the products. You think for a while, hesitating, but you press the red one in the end. “Let’s try another coffee shop tomorrow”, you muttered to yourself.

 

Retention vs. acquisition

A common debate among marketing practitioners, researchers and executives is whether companies should focus on customer retention rather than acquisition. No clear answer exists and both sides have their proponents. It is a commonplace to hear that the cost of attracting a new customer vs. keeping an existing one is, more or less, five to one. Spending on promotion via all possible channels is a substantial investment with limited, in most of the times, results. The old marketing saying “I know that half of the money I spend in advertisement is wasted. But I don’t know which half” expresses clearly the low return of such investment. Advocates of customer retention claim that campaigns for existing customers are far less costly but more effective. Even though this sounds beneficial for companies, the preference seems to be towards acquisition, according to some surveys. It might not be irrelevant to the pareto principle which, in sales, simply states that the eighty percent of the sales revenues originates from the twenty percent of the customers.

 

One question that turns up is whether a customer whom a company tries to retain, by investing in promotions, worth’s it or not in terms of revenues. Of course, retaining a customer is not by itself beneficial, unless this customer turns to a frequent buyer, generating thus revenues in the long term. A diversity of factors affects customer relationship with companies and brands, as well as product choice preferences and studying in depth is quite challenging and evolving. At this point of discussion what shows up is that a retained customer is not necessarily a loyal one. A retained one might become a frequent buyer, following company’s effort, but may easily switch to another company without any thought. Retained customers, to put it simple, continue to purchase from the same company because they have not yet switched to another. On the contrary, a loyal customer is a frequent buyer, more spontaneous and at the same time acts as an advocate of the company and the product. This segregation is quite significant for companies as the effort should be directed towards empowering customer loyalty. One popular approach to do so is to engage customers in reward programs, where various incentives promote repetitive purchase behaviour. Loyalty programs exist in a variety of ways and mixes, and although it is considered as “must have” for every company, it is debatable whether benefits overcome investments or not.

 

A success story?

Starbucks is a well-known coffee company and coffeehouse chain operating worldwide in several thousands locations. Except from its high quality coffee related products, it is noted for its loyalty programs that span across the years and for many are considered as a point of reference in terms of efficiency and success. One of the early days’ approach towards building a loyalty program was the collaboration with financial industry service provides in order to issue a mixed credit card product to enhance existing loyalty scheme offer.

 

Going back at the early 2000s the company was already offering a prepaid storedvalue card to its customers. It was identified as the “Starbucks Card” and its launch was proven to be a huge success according to the company. The card could be used by its holder for a variety of purchases at the chain’s stores, such as food and beverage. The idea was to provide customers with a payment medium, in the form of a card, that could store some value and could be reloaded at Starbuck’s shops. This medium was mimicking credit cards, a very common financial product that customers were familiar with, and was focusing on building customer loyalty by restricting purchases within the chain, combined with some offers and benefits.

 

As market was evolving, the company desired to build on top of their card’s success and advance its offering to customers by adding a reward scheme that would somehow surprise them. They performed a secondary research to assess the market, which was already saturated and credit cards were already a commodity. A new financial services product should be innovative and add value to the customer.

 

The initial outcome was that an offer combining credit card and Starbuck Card features in one card would be much appreciated by customers and would add value reducing at the same time the plastics into the wallet. They thus started another investigation to find the ideal potential partners for the product. Major card services companies (MasterCard, Visa, American Express) and banks were set under review. Starbucks conducted a series of interviews with executives of banks and card service providers, on site visits to call centres for observation of operations, and a close monitoring on phone calls with customer problems, so as to identify every aspect that would be critical for their decision. At the end of this phase, a choice was made: collaborate with Visa and Bank One, two of the top global players in the card’s market.

 

A new product, however, is not always successful in the market, even if it is well designed and offered by leading companies. All three partners were sceptical and decided to proceed to further investigation. As such, they examined the idea of the new card with four focus groups, using the services of an independent moderator. They selected Seattle and San Francisco cities which were both with good Starbucks coverage, for the focus groups. The groups involved two major classes of Starbucks customers who owned a credit card: those who used the Starbucks Card and those who did not. The aim was to determine how well the costumers perceive the new concept. From one group to the next, the research team refined the value proposition, until the participants understood they would need to carry only one card, not two. The findings from the focus groups were used to refine the concept and to restructure the communication of the idea to minimize confusion.

 

A number of quantitative studies followed after the focus groups completion phase. The first study was an online survey for product functionality. Participants were recruited from an online panel and the same customer classes as for the focus groups were used. The sample size for each subgroup was between 200 and 400 and the objective of this research was to understand which card concept consumers would prefer. This study measured quantitatively the level of understanding of the card functionality using the refined value proposition developed through the focus groups.

 

As soon as the decision was taken to proceed with the aforementioned functionality, a second online study was set. It comprised the concept evaluation/optimization as well as volumetric forecasting measurements. Again, the same parameters were used to stratify the sample, but a slightly larger sample size was used. The results from this study were compared to norms that have resulted from more than 200 similar concept studies by Bank One, using performance against those norms to predict the likely success of the new payment product.

 

Following the above, a press release was distributed announcing the partnership and website visitors were given the opportunity to submit comments. The comments piled to several tens of thousands and all were read and analysed by companies, to show an overwhelmingly positive reception.

 

The Starbucks Duetto Visa Card was launched in October 2003, and early indications showed that the program was headed for success. The program was to be evaluated on a quarterly basis according to specific metrics.

 

As the underlying idea was to promote customer awareness and loyalty, just six months after launch, a brand tracking study was completed to determine if the launch increased awareness and understanding of the card’s benefits. This study was done though an online survey, measuring participant awareness of promotional materials, whether participants had applied or considered applying, and why or why not.

 

Business Week named the Duetto card one of the best products of 2003.

 

Looks like a captivating journey with a success story at the end.

 

 

Please answer ONE of the following four questions as part of your 400 words individual project report. You may select any one of the four questions:

  1. Analyse critically the research design that was adopted in each phase.
  2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of focus group usage for the specific research?
  3. Discuss whether a longitudinal research design could provide more efficient insights on customer loyalty.
  4. Discuss ethical issues raised in customer loyalty research setting.

 

Requirements and limitations

  • The word limit is 400 words.
  • References are not part of the 400-word count.
  • All text should be Times New Roman, with sizing and styles as follows: ▪ Main text: 12pt

▪ Heading level 1: 14pt bold

▪ Heading level 2: 13pt bold

▪ Heading level 3: 12pt bold

  • Text must be justified with 1.5 line spacing.
  • All citing and referencing must be in the Standard Harvard Academic style

 

Assessment Assessment and feedback of your project assignment will be based on the following four criteria:

References: 20%

Critical analysis of business research: 50%

Reflection and new insights: 20%

Presentation: 10%

Please review the assessment and feedback criteria in the rubric for this assignment (see below) when preparing your work prior to submission.

 

 
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