Search results

In the home furnishing industry outside contract installers produce higher quality work than in-house installers which is reflected in less revisits to customers to repair mistakes. Many home furnishing retailers are therefore contemplating introducing so that the quality of the work of in-house installers will be linked to financial incentives, thus resembling the situation of contract installers. However, a necessary condition for a successful introduction of bonuses is that in-house installers are motivated by it to deliver better quality work, i.e. cause less revisits. The purpose of this paper is to look into the question whether the introduction of bonuses could be used to increase the quality of work of in-house.

For the research the four steps of the evidence-based HRM framework, as developed by Rousseau and Barends (2011), were used. In steps 1, literature review, the research question was formulated based on work motivation theories (in particular on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, bonuses, and the differences between contract workers and organizational employees). In step 2, systematic gathering of facts, two existing questionnaires were combined to measure the motivation of the two types of installers.

In step 3, evaluation, the differences between the motivational factors and attitude towards bonuses was analysed for both groups of installers. The research results show that although in-house installers are potentially motivated by bonuses, they differ so much from contract installers in their general work motivation that introducing bonuses by no means will be a success. In step 4, ethical considerations, the consequences of the research findings were discussed.

The main limitations are the use of a self-constructed questionnaire and the fact that the research was conducted at only one case company, thus rendering the generalization of findings problematic.

The practical implication of the study is that management of the case company can now better prepare itself for the issues to be expected when introducing bonuses for the in-house installers.

This research adds to the literature on the effects of bonuses on motivation. It also addresses a gap in the literature as there is currently hardly any academic literature on the conditions necessary to introduce bonuses for craftsmen successfully, and on whether this introduction is advantageous for organizations in the first place. In addition, the case company offered the opportunity to research the issue in a comparative way, by looking at the motivational factors influencing in-house installers and contract installers who work in the same conditions, something which to the knowledge of the authors has not been done before. Finally, the sue of an evidence-based HRM framework is quite unique for the human resource management field.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the role of consumer perceived value relative to home furnishing case good (i.e. furniture made of wood and not upholstered) consumption choices.

A qualitative approach to data collection and interpretation was used. A semi-structured depth-interview and focus group schedule was created based on an extant review of literature and consisted of open-ended questions about shopping for and purchasing home furnishings case goods.

A thematic interpretation of interviews and focus groups led to the development of emergent themes: the key factors influencing participant's value perceptions were quality, comfort, and price; participants decorated first for themselves; a welcoming, attractive environment for family and friends/guests was important; and desires and wants were more salient than needs. Themes were then categorized according to Sheth, Newman, and Gross' five consumption value dimensions.

Limitations of the study include a focus on Southeastern US consumers and a focus on home furnishings case goods.

Although the findings of this research are market specific, they have important implications for the home furnishings case goods industry. Overall, this study provides product developers, manufacturers, and marketers with a greater understanding of the home furnishings case goods consumer, which could allow sellers to create lead times and provide consumers with more tailored offerings/selections that would better suit their needs and desires.

This paper offers insight into the role of consumer perceived value relative to home furnishing consumption choices to product developers, manufacturers, and marketers.

Teuer Furniture is a privately owned, moderately sized chain of upscale home furnishing showrooms in the United States. The firm survived the economic recession and by the end of 2012, it has regained its financial footing. Now that the firm is more secure financially, some of its long-term investors have asked to cash out their investments. This will be the first time that Teuer has repurchased its equity; the company has paid dividends since 2009. Chief financial officer Jennifer Jerabek and her team have been given the task of valuing Teuer using a discounted cash flow approach. The discount rate is given in the case, and the students need to build a pro forma income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement and then calculate a per-share value for Teuer.

• Estimate firm value using a discounted cash flow approach

• Construct firm-level estimates of the pro forma income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow from assets based on store-level estimates

• Recognize how forecasts of revenues, costs, and capital investment are constructed, how the individual estimates relate to each other, and how the forecasts depend upon the underlying economics of the business

• Evaluate and defend the validity of the firm’s forecasts and the valuation model

Estimate firm value using a discounted cash flow approach

Construct firm-level estimates of the pro forma income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow from assets based on store-level estimates

Recognize how forecasts of revenues, costs, and capital investment are constructed, how the individual estimates relate to each other, and how the forecasts depend upon the underlying economics of the business

Evaluate and defend the validity of the firm’s forecasts and the valuation model

Rajan Overseas was founded by Rajan Makhija in the year 2014. It was into export of handloom products like rugs, throws, etc. Makhija wanted the company to grow from INR 7.6 crores to 100 crores in the next five years. However, the plan hit a roadblock as one of the largest customer of Makhija wanted him to sign an exclusive contract. Makhija was evaluating various growth options in the light of this new hurdle. The case can be taught in courses on entrepreneurship, internationalization and strategy for SMEs to teach topics related to effectuation and challenges of international business.

Strategic management, HR Management, Change management, Marketing.

Potential audience. This case will serve to undergraduate students, master level students, in the subjects, entrepreneurship, managing change, marketing, H&R management, strategic management.

The Brunes Company was founded in 1994 by Gerond Cela and his brother, with the goal to provide quality products for bathrooms in the then-emerging Albanian market. During the next few years, it had grown into one of the biggest wholesale and retail chains in Albania, with huge portfolio of goods for home refurbishing. The beginnings were very humble. Armed only with the high school diploma in textile trading, born and raised in an ex-communist country without developed entrepreneurship culture, Gerond set off to Italy, a popular destination for young Albanians who were looking for an opportunity to escape the pitfalls of the post-communist transitional economy. Gerond recognized the huge gap in the market for imported tiles in his home country, so he began importing quality Italian tiles in 1994. Initially, he was doing the wholesale from his truck, due to the lack of retail stores. He focused on increasing customer satisfaction and built the company name as trustful provider of quality goods. This strategy brought him less profit, but his long-term goal was to build the company name and to establish it as a trustful provider of quality goods. In 1999, he bought 18,000 m² (for 50.000 euro) land on the highway Tirana-Durres, 7 km from the city centre, which proved to be extremely worthwhile in the long run because the price of the land had skyrocketed up to ten times during the next decade, due to the economic development of Albania. In 2004, Gerond and his brother epitomized their business idea. They entered the market of home furniture. In 2009, the company expanded further in country towns like Lezha, Saranda and Fier. After two decades of establishing his company as a market leader with approximately 30 per cent of market share, Brunes Company is at the crossroads. On one hand, it is pressured by very stiff competition in the form of their main competitor Delta Home, which succeeded in taking 10-15 per cent of the marketing just in one year. On the other hand, the company has been stagnating for some period without a concrete plan to overcome this problem, as well as without a clear strategy for the future directions of the expansion. To diversify the company’s portfolio, Gerond built a factory for tiling accessories which will cost 8 million Euros and employs about 30 workers.

Specific objectives of the case are as follows: to portray individuals who became successful primary through their leadership abilities, and to examine how their experiences and values contributed to the success of their business; illustrate the impact on operations of an increasingly competitive environment and how this environment affects the need for a change in strategy; identify the challenges of selling luxury goods in a competitive retail environment; to assist students to critically think about diversification strategy; to gain an understanding how to adapt to change; to discuss for issues that must be changed (culture, people, technology, values and philosophy of leadership, marketing, business model), to grow.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy

After reading and discussing the case, the participants would be able to: apply 7S and VRIO framework for online furniture retail; evaluate the profitability of horizontal versus vertical marketplaces for selling furniture online; articulate the challenges faced by online furniture retailers; discuss the applicability of technology to enhance customer experience in online furniture retail; and discuss the omni-channel strategy which online furniture companies can adopt.

Although furniture has traditionally been an unorganized category, the online furniture platforms have been on an upward curve since past few years. Digitization of economy and usage of smartphones to access internet had given a thrust to online purchases. This case on Wakefit Innovations Private Limited is intended to provide the readers with the business and marketing insights of selling furniture using online platform. The readers will be able to understand how retailing furniture using e-commerce is full of challenges and how various marketing activities have helped Wakefit improve their customer base. The readers can discuss the advantages and disadvantages of horizontal versus vertical e-commerce marketplaces and various challenges associated with online furniture retailing. Whether Wakefit should continue setting up experience centres and the benefits that could accrue by usage of virtual reality, augmented reality and data analytics are additional dimensions which can be discussed by the readers. The case will benefit the professionals in understanding the challenges and marketing strategies used by online furniture retailers and the same can be replicated by other players in this sector.

This case is suitable for students enrolled for full credit course on e-commerce at post graduate level. The case can be discussed towards the middle of the course once the students have studied different formats of e-commerce marketplace.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The forest products processing industry is a key component of the forestry economy, and the level of companies’ operating efficiency directly affects its profitability and market competitiveness.

In order to deeply study the operation status of forest product processing industry, this paper takes the panel data of 70 listed forest product processing companies from 2015 to 2022 as the basis, and adopts BBC, CCR and DEA-Malmquist models to measure the operating efficiency of these companies. Meanwhile, the Tobit model is applied to deeply explore the impact of innovation input on operating efficiency.

The results of the paper show that: (1) the overall operating efficiency of listed forest product processing companies performs well, and the improvement of technology level promotes the growth of total factor productivity; (2) innovation input plays a significant positive role in listed forest product processing companies, which positively affects the operating efficiency.

A scientific and reasonable evaluation of the operating efficiency of listed forest product companies is of great practical significance to the development of the forestry industry The study of forest product processing industry is of key significance to the social economy.

This paper explores the improvement of production and operation efficiency of forest products processing enterprises for the purpose of in-depth analysis of the current situation of China's forest products processing enterprises, which is conducive to improving the innovation and operation efficiency of China's forest products processing enterprises, and realizing the high-quality development of China's forest products processing industry.

Teuer Furniture is a privately owned, moderately sized chain of upscale home furnishing showrooms in the United States. By the end of 2012, it had regained its financial footing and a number of long-term investors, including several of Teuer’s original non-management investors, now want to sell their shares. At the request of the board, Jennifer Jerabek, the chief financial officer of the company, and her team put together an extensive valuation of Teuer based on a discounted cash flow analysis. When the model was presented to investors, a number of them disagreed with the results. Some investors considered the value too high; others considered it too low. Not surprisingly, some of the differences of opinion were correlated with whether or not the investors wanted to sell their shares of Teuer. Jerabek was instructed to build a valuation of Teuer using a multiples approach instead.

After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to:

• Estimate the value of a firm using a multiples approach

• Select an appropriate group of comparable firms and defend the logic behind the selection

• Select a correct set of valuation ratios and defend the logic behind the selection

• Compare the valuations produced by a multiples and DCF approach and if the valuations do not match, explain why the two methods yield different valuations

Estimate the value of a firm using a multiples approach

Select an appropriate group of comparable firms and defend the logic behind the selection

Select a correct set of valuation ratios and defend the logic behind the selection

Compare the valuations produced by a multiples and DCF approach and if the valuations do not match, explain why the two methods yield different valuations

This simple case study tells the story of three young men who started an online business-to-business trading portal for fun, and to help fund them through university. They seized the opportunity of a major assignment to ask a new lecturer, the narrator, to guide them into profitability. Reluctantly, the young men were coerced into a literature survey, which proved surprisingly helpful to them. A simple research project followed, using mixed methods (survey, expert opinion, key account interviews). Based on the survey results and some simple frameworks from the literature, the young men not only completed their exercise, but also went on to turn their hobby into a sustainable business. The business still exists today, based on the simple study conducted some 12 years ago.

The purpose of this paper is to explore case studies of business models (BMs) driven by supply chain innovations (SCIs) in order to investigate how SCIs can lead companies to discover new BMs.

This research is based on an in-depth literature analysis. Literature supports that SCIs drive new BMs. An exploratory interview-based study with practitioners from German and Italian companies shed more light on the ways SCIs can contribute to the discovery of new BMs.

So-called operators can establish close links between SCIs and BM innovation. Because in general, supply chains are designed to improve operational performance, most BM improvements are incremental. Large companies, however, can leverage SCIs to generate new BMs that are complementary to their current BMs.

This research is exploratory in nature. Further (quantitative) research studies can link SCIs types to specific BM patterns and examine contingency factors such as size and industry sector that influence the relationship between SCIs and BMs.

This research draws the attention of practitioners to SCIs as a valuable opportunity to discover new BMs. The operators enable companies to estimate the effects of specific SCIs on their BMs and to identify the SCIs required for achieving a targeted BM.

This paper elaborates propositions about the relationships between SCIs and BMs. It identifies supply chain and process management as important streams of literature that can support the advancement of BM research.