CASE STUDY: HAPPY FEET
CASE STUDY: HAPPY FEET Happy Feet is a family-owned business, that specializes in the manufacturing and retail selling of leather footwear. Their shoes are sold through 25 Happy Feet stores in malls in every province as well as in 47 pharmacies in South Africa. Manufacturing has been done in their factory in Cape Town for more than 30 years and they employ 310 people. Happy Feet is one of three comfort/health shoe manufacturers in South Africa specializing in high-quality comfort footwear and is dedicated to the promotion and maintenance of healthy feet. They manufacture infant sandals, ladies’ sandals and court shoes, and mens’ shoes and sandals. All the shoes are orthopedically designed and genuine leather is used which makes it expensive. The shoes compete with shoes that are mass-produced in countries like China and imported to South Africa. The imported shoes are available in most stores at much lower prices than leather shoes. Apart from the fact that several changes have occurred in the industry, the financial statements that were reported at the annual general meeting show a decline of 9% in shoe sales and a large decline in profit for the past financial year. Management views it as a very critical situation for the business. It is not the only problem that the management of Happy Feet is experiencing. Customers are complaining that some of the advertised shoes are not available and it has to be ordered from the factory, which is taking a long time most customers are willing to wait. This leaves the customers unhappy and shops assistants frustrated, resulting in unfriendly conduct towards the customers. These complaints were conveyed to management, but nothing was done about them. In a heated argument between the marketing and financial managers the proposed new marketing strategy was not approved.
1. Brainstorming is often used informally as a method of generating ideas, however specific guidelines, and procedures apply.
a) Discuss four (4) main important aspects to consider when planning a brainstorming session.
b) Name three (3) problems generally experienced when using brainstorming to generate ideas.
2. Generate ideas for Happy Feet using the final problem statement: What can management do to ensure that products are stocked as needed and that customer complaint are handled appropriately so that customers buy more products and sales increase?
> Use ONE of the following techniques to generate at least 5 ideas for Happy Feet.
-The mind map.
– SCAM3PER2.
– Morphological analysis
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