netrashetty
Netra Shetty
Borders Group, Inc. is a leading specialty retailer of books as well as other educational and entertainment items headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, through its subsidiaries. The company employs approximately 19,500 throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores. Online shopping is offered through borders.com.
As of January 30, 2010, the company operated 511 Borders superstores in the United States, including 508 in the U.S. and three in Puerto Rico. The company also operated 175 stores in the Waldenbooks Specialty Retail segment, including Waldenbooks, Borders Express, Borders airport stores, and Borders Outlet stores.
On February 16, 2011, the company announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing $1.275 billion in assets and $1.293 billion in debts in its filing
ave a broad menu of services to offer," says Rowland. "Marketing research enables us to home in on what specific customer groups need today and tomorrow."
Transborder business
Right-O-Way is heavily committed to international shipping, especially transborder business with Canada. Therefore, much of its marketing research effort reaches outside U.S. borders.
Rowland was manager of Right-O-Way's transborder services in 1985 when the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was passed. Basically, the FTA specifies three schedules for phasing out tariffs and duties over a ten year period starting in 1989. By studying the FTA and communicating directly with Canadian and U.S. government officials, Rowland and his staff found out which industries and product markets would open up first.
"We identified what types of products would be moving across the border and determined how best to tap those markets," says Rowland. "Our FTA research showed that, initially, there would be a great deal of movement of electronics and computers from the Midwest into the Toronto area. So we identified which companies on both sides of the border were most likely to engage in this trade. We went aggressively after those accounts, developing transportation services to match their needs."
Rowland admits that Right-O-Way had a distinct advantage when tapping the transborder market. "Our sister company, Right-O-Way Canada, has offices in every major Canadian airport city. We've been able to coordinate marketing research on both ends and come up with programs that take advantage of everything we know north of the border."
Domestically, Right-O-Way taps a wealth of external sources for research and sales purposes. The company purchases manufacturing guides on computer disk from Database Publishing Company in Newport Beach, California. "From these disks, we can identify companies in a particular ZIP code or group of ZIP codes by SIC code and find out what they ship and where they ship. So if we want, for example, to go after freight lines between Los Angeles and New York, we can identify which companies to target. The disks give us direct leads."
Mail and telephone
Jean McClymonds, president of Just Marketing, also serves as the research chairperson for the Sales and Marketing Council of the American Trucking Association. When transportation firms are looking for basic trends in customers' shipping preferences, they will more than likely use mail surveys or telephone interviewing as their research tools, McClymonds says.
"One of my larger clients sends out an annual survey to approximately 20,000 businesses, customers and non-customers alike. It asks respondents to rate the major carriers on a number of service criteria and to indicate the importance of various transportation factors such as price, dependability, on-time performance and so on.
"It's a blind survey in the sense that they don't tell respondents who's conducting the survey. The survey goes out under the name of a market research company, but they collect the data and do the analysis."
Transportation firms find such surveys very revealing, McClymonds says. "They learn a lot about their reputation as well as the perceived value of current services and prospective new services."
For smaller, more specific research efforts, the firms often switch from the mail to the telephone. "Generally speaking, these telephone interviews can be completed in a matter of minutes," McClymonds says. "And companies can discover some very valuable information about specific aspects of their market and/or services."
In-house databases
To obtain names for their mail and telephone surveys, most transportation firms use their own in- house databases, augmenting them with subscriber lists from major trade publications or list brokers with an emphasis on the transportation and purchasing industries. They generally select names from across various standard industrial classifications (SIC), sorting by size of company, number of employees, or geographically, depending upon the survey's objectives.
In addition, today many of the transportation companies conduct smaller surveys of their current customers, both by phone and mail. In some cases, these surveys will be very sophisticated. In others, they're much more informal.
Sometimes, a customer survey will serve as one part of a larger market research project, McClymonds says. Several years ago, for example, a client conducted a survey regarding the strengths and weaknesses of its customer service department. It surveyed both customers and employees, and held focus group sessions at its shipping terminals.
In addition to surveying current customers, transportation firms will survey departing accounts to determine why they lost their business. "Many companies will conduct a telephone survey of lost business. Basically they'll ask, 'Why did you leave us?' In many cases, the customer might have had a decline in business due to the recession, or they went out of business altogether. And in others, it may have been due to unsatisfactory service. We believe it's the latter that clients should pay particular attention to."
The competition
When researching the competition, some companies obtain the publicly published financial records of other major transportation carriers. However, most firms agree that the best source of competitive information is their own sales force.
"Salespeople talk to customers everyday," says McClymonds. "They hear things and they feed it back. Companies can synthesize that data and get a sense of what's going on. But you have to be careful, because there are laws that limit what kind of contacts you can have with customers and what type of information you can get from them."
One client takes its competitive information gathering very seriously, keeping extensive files on its major rivals, McClymonds says. Each of those files is assigned to an account manager, who becomes the in-house specialist on that particular carrier.
"Everyone gathers information and forwards it to the appropriate specialist," says McClymonds. "The file is updated every six months. Those files are condensed into competitor fact sheets, which are put into a three-ring binder and made available to anyone in the marketing or sales departments."
At some companies, market researchers are free to examine the wealth of operational data kept in internal databases. "This data can help a company identify its major customers or major shipping lanes. Through computer overlay programs, they are able to access shipment activity and spot trends that are very telling."
New markets
Transportation firms also use their databases to help identify new markets. By tapping external and internal databases, they can look at the demographics and business activity of territories they're not serving and make an accurate determination of whether it makes sense to open a terminal in that locale. "When a company is considering a new territory, it should look at trends in population, retail sales, and number of businesses over a six-, nine-, and twelve-month period."
One major transportation firm uses its own "interline activity reports" to gauge whether new markets should be entered. "When a transportation firm handles a shipment and the final destination is outside its own service area, it will hand the shipment off to another carrier. If you track this activity closely and see that you're turning a lot of business over to another carrier in a particular area, you should consider moving in."
McClymonds says that many larger firms now subscribe to general commercial databases such as Trinet, which covers various industries by SIC codes. It helps them profile communities and subsequently provides actual leads for their salespeople.
Others are using more transportation specific databases such as TranSearch, a freight flow database. It models movement between various points throughout the U.S., estimating tonnage by SIC code for commodities moving within certain lanes.
"Let's say you want to examine shipping activity between Salt Lake City and Portland. TranSearch will give you the major commodities, listed in descending order. And, it gives you names of companies involved in those industries."
Silvestro, Fitzgerald, Johnson & Voss (1992) add to the service literature by the development of a topology that was based on the function of the existing service dimensions to the existing organizations. This resulted to three-category typologies which are: professional service, service shop and mass service. The amount of the daily service activity and the ranking of firm on the six classification dimensions were combined in order to decide into which category it fits. Furthermore, the authors stated that as the daily volume of service activity increases the focus moves from a people orientation to an equipment orientation, whereas the length of customer contact time, degree of customization as well as the level of employee discretion moves from high to low. In addition, value added tends to move from the front office to the back office, and the focus shifts from a process to a product orientation (Cook & Chung, 1999).
The catering service is considered as included in the mass service typology. Thus, the said service model can be used in order to focus on how food-catering firm can design the entire delivery system.
In the partial service catering, the meal will be prepared at the location of the firm or at the party site and then arrange it as a self serve buffet. The said type of catering can be considered as the most common type of catering or mass service. There are different factors that must be considered in order to design a service model which will ensure good flow of service from the consumers and the catering firm.
In partial catering service, it is important to maintain the balance between being equipment and people focused, because orders must be taken from the customers, produced in the headquarters of the firm, with accordance to the fixed menu and then deliver it to the site and set up. In addition, the length of customer contact time is considered as low, because the catering firm is only involve in the delivery of the foods and preparation of buffet. Furthermore, the degree of customization is also considered as low because commonly catering firms tend to create their own menu, where in the customers can choose from or ask for some changes in the ingredients or process if possible, but still the degree of adjustment made to respond to the customers is not that high that it will affect the standard procedures and process of the company.
It is also important to focus on the degree to which service personnel can exercise judgment and carefulness. In the case of partial catering, there is a need for mediocre discretion because all of the activities and things to be done in the site were all planned before and the employees don’t have serve the customers to the fullest. Because of these factors it can be said that the value added is at the back-room or at kitchen where all the food to be delivered are being cooked and prepared. However, it is still important for the employees to show courtesy during the delivery. Above all, the said topology of service is the mixture of product and process, because it is important to ensure the quality of the food to be delivered as well as the processes that are needed to be done.
As of January 30, 2010, the company operated 511 Borders superstores in the United States, including 508 in the U.S. and three in Puerto Rico. The company also operated 175 stores in the Waldenbooks Specialty Retail segment, including Waldenbooks, Borders Express, Borders airport stores, and Borders Outlet stores.
On February 16, 2011, the company announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing $1.275 billion in assets and $1.293 billion in debts in its filing
ave a broad menu of services to offer," says Rowland. "Marketing research enables us to home in on what specific customer groups need today and tomorrow."
Transborder business
Right-O-Way is heavily committed to international shipping, especially transborder business with Canada. Therefore, much of its marketing research effort reaches outside U.S. borders.
Rowland was manager of Right-O-Way's transborder services in 1985 when the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was passed. Basically, the FTA specifies three schedules for phasing out tariffs and duties over a ten year period starting in 1989. By studying the FTA and communicating directly with Canadian and U.S. government officials, Rowland and his staff found out which industries and product markets would open up first.
"We identified what types of products would be moving across the border and determined how best to tap those markets," says Rowland. "Our FTA research showed that, initially, there would be a great deal of movement of electronics and computers from the Midwest into the Toronto area. So we identified which companies on both sides of the border were most likely to engage in this trade. We went aggressively after those accounts, developing transportation services to match their needs."
Rowland admits that Right-O-Way had a distinct advantage when tapping the transborder market. "Our sister company, Right-O-Way Canada, has offices in every major Canadian airport city. We've been able to coordinate marketing research on both ends and come up with programs that take advantage of everything we know north of the border."
Domestically, Right-O-Way taps a wealth of external sources for research and sales purposes. The company purchases manufacturing guides on computer disk from Database Publishing Company in Newport Beach, California. "From these disks, we can identify companies in a particular ZIP code or group of ZIP codes by SIC code and find out what they ship and where they ship. So if we want, for example, to go after freight lines between Los Angeles and New York, we can identify which companies to target. The disks give us direct leads."
Mail and telephone
Jean McClymonds, president of Just Marketing, also serves as the research chairperson for the Sales and Marketing Council of the American Trucking Association. When transportation firms are looking for basic trends in customers' shipping preferences, they will more than likely use mail surveys or telephone interviewing as their research tools, McClymonds says.
"One of my larger clients sends out an annual survey to approximately 20,000 businesses, customers and non-customers alike. It asks respondents to rate the major carriers on a number of service criteria and to indicate the importance of various transportation factors such as price, dependability, on-time performance and so on.
"It's a blind survey in the sense that they don't tell respondents who's conducting the survey. The survey goes out under the name of a market research company, but they collect the data and do the analysis."
Transportation firms find such surveys very revealing, McClymonds says. "They learn a lot about their reputation as well as the perceived value of current services and prospective new services."
For smaller, more specific research efforts, the firms often switch from the mail to the telephone. "Generally speaking, these telephone interviews can be completed in a matter of minutes," McClymonds says. "And companies can discover some very valuable information about specific aspects of their market and/or services."
In-house databases
To obtain names for their mail and telephone surveys, most transportation firms use their own in- house databases, augmenting them with subscriber lists from major trade publications or list brokers with an emphasis on the transportation and purchasing industries. They generally select names from across various standard industrial classifications (SIC), sorting by size of company, number of employees, or geographically, depending upon the survey's objectives.
In addition, today many of the transportation companies conduct smaller surveys of their current customers, both by phone and mail. In some cases, these surveys will be very sophisticated. In others, they're much more informal.
Sometimes, a customer survey will serve as one part of a larger market research project, McClymonds says. Several years ago, for example, a client conducted a survey regarding the strengths and weaknesses of its customer service department. It surveyed both customers and employees, and held focus group sessions at its shipping terminals.
In addition to surveying current customers, transportation firms will survey departing accounts to determine why they lost their business. "Many companies will conduct a telephone survey of lost business. Basically they'll ask, 'Why did you leave us?' In many cases, the customer might have had a decline in business due to the recession, or they went out of business altogether. And in others, it may have been due to unsatisfactory service. We believe it's the latter that clients should pay particular attention to."
The competition
When researching the competition, some companies obtain the publicly published financial records of other major transportation carriers. However, most firms agree that the best source of competitive information is their own sales force.
"Salespeople talk to customers everyday," says McClymonds. "They hear things and they feed it back. Companies can synthesize that data and get a sense of what's going on. But you have to be careful, because there are laws that limit what kind of contacts you can have with customers and what type of information you can get from them."
One client takes its competitive information gathering very seriously, keeping extensive files on its major rivals, McClymonds says. Each of those files is assigned to an account manager, who becomes the in-house specialist on that particular carrier.
"Everyone gathers information and forwards it to the appropriate specialist," says McClymonds. "The file is updated every six months. Those files are condensed into competitor fact sheets, which are put into a three-ring binder and made available to anyone in the marketing or sales departments."
At some companies, market researchers are free to examine the wealth of operational data kept in internal databases. "This data can help a company identify its major customers or major shipping lanes. Through computer overlay programs, they are able to access shipment activity and spot trends that are very telling."
New markets
Transportation firms also use their databases to help identify new markets. By tapping external and internal databases, they can look at the demographics and business activity of territories they're not serving and make an accurate determination of whether it makes sense to open a terminal in that locale. "When a company is considering a new territory, it should look at trends in population, retail sales, and number of businesses over a six-, nine-, and twelve-month period."
One major transportation firm uses its own "interline activity reports" to gauge whether new markets should be entered. "When a transportation firm handles a shipment and the final destination is outside its own service area, it will hand the shipment off to another carrier. If you track this activity closely and see that you're turning a lot of business over to another carrier in a particular area, you should consider moving in."
McClymonds says that many larger firms now subscribe to general commercial databases such as Trinet, which covers various industries by SIC codes. It helps them profile communities and subsequently provides actual leads for their salespeople.
Others are using more transportation specific databases such as TranSearch, a freight flow database. It models movement between various points throughout the U.S., estimating tonnage by SIC code for commodities moving within certain lanes.
"Let's say you want to examine shipping activity between Salt Lake City and Portland. TranSearch will give you the major commodities, listed in descending order. And, it gives you names of companies involved in those industries."
Silvestro, Fitzgerald, Johnson & Voss (1992) add to the service literature by the development of a topology that was based on the function of the existing service dimensions to the existing organizations. This resulted to three-category typologies which are: professional service, service shop and mass service. The amount of the daily service activity and the ranking of firm on the six classification dimensions were combined in order to decide into which category it fits. Furthermore, the authors stated that as the daily volume of service activity increases the focus moves from a people orientation to an equipment orientation, whereas the length of customer contact time, degree of customization as well as the level of employee discretion moves from high to low. In addition, value added tends to move from the front office to the back office, and the focus shifts from a process to a product orientation (Cook & Chung, 1999).
The catering service is considered as included in the mass service typology. Thus, the said service model can be used in order to focus on how food-catering firm can design the entire delivery system.
In the partial service catering, the meal will be prepared at the location of the firm or at the party site and then arrange it as a self serve buffet. The said type of catering can be considered as the most common type of catering or mass service. There are different factors that must be considered in order to design a service model which will ensure good flow of service from the consumers and the catering firm.
In partial catering service, it is important to maintain the balance between being equipment and people focused, because orders must be taken from the customers, produced in the headquarters of the firm, with accordance to the fixed menu and then deliver it to the site and set up. In addition, the length of customer contact time is considered as low, because the catering firm is only involve in the delivery of the foods and preparation of buffet. Furthermore, the degree of customization is also considered as low because commonly catering firms tend to create their own menu, where in the customers can choose from or ask for some changes in the ingredients or process if possible, but still the degree of adjustment made to respond to the customers is not that high that it will affect the standard procedures and process of the company.
It is also important to focus on the degree to which service personnel can exercise judgment and carefulness. In the case of partial catering, there is a need for mediocre discretion because all of the activities and things to be done in the site were all planned before and the employees don’t have serve the customers to the fullest. Because of these factors it can be said that the value added is at the back-room or at kitchen where all the food to be delivered are being cooked and prepared. However, it is still important for the employees to show courtesy during the delivery. Above all, the said topology of service is the mixture of product and process, because it is important to ensure the quality of the food to be delivered as well as the processes that are needed to be done.