Tech book store case study analysis

Case Study Analysis of Tech Book Stores

ABSTRACT

The case study we analyzed is based on the Tech Bookstores which operates two book stores

situated inside Tech University and outside the University. In the Tech Bookstores case, the

bookstore manager has received several complaints about service quality from faculty and

non-student customers.

The case includes data from a customer quality survey. The data is classified by bookstore

location and type of customer. We developed a Pareto analysis of the survey data to prioritize

the quality problems, we identified costs of poor quality, and the obstacles which are

inevitable in implementing the change at the bookstores and made recommendations for

improve service quality.

INTRODUCTION

Tech is a major state university located in a rural collage town & operates two bookstores one on campus & one off campus at a nearby mall. The on campus store sells school supplies, text books, school licensed apparels, gifts and has large computer department. The off campus store sells text books, school supplies, licensed apparels, gifts & has trade book department.

Significance of the Bookstore

Operating in a competitive market.

Charge reasonable prices for text books & premium price for other products.

Profits are used to fund student related projects.

Past period there were some of problems occurred at the off campus store like:

A student employee was arrested for drug possession. There is a shouting match between faculty customer & student employee due to not

locate the book on right place on the bookstore computer system. Argument between one of student employee & alumnus for the return policy. Difficulty of purchasing due to unmanned register Employees talking together in the store.

To identify the reasons for above problems Mr. Watson, the executive director of Tech services initially conduct a customer survey during a two weeks period, and secondly he hired several graduate students to pose as customers, make purchases, ask specific questions of sales clerks & report their experience.

QUESTION 01.

REASONS FOR ORGANIZING THE CUSTOMER SURVEY

To identify the issues in tech stores Mr. Watson organized a customer survey during a two week period in the middle of the semester by appointing some of employees to ask brief questionnaire from the customers as they left the store. Due to following advantages of customer survey he may feel to arrange a customer survey like this.

Low cost- Surveys are less expensive than many other data collection techniques.

Easy to conduct- Surveys can be created quickly and administered easily.

Easy to gather the data- Through preparing sample of questionnaires can gather necessary information

on a wide range of things, including personal facts, attitudes, past behaviors and opinions.

More sample size- According to our requirements we can select the sample size.

Little or no observer subjectivity- Surveys are ideal for scientific research studies because they provide all the

participants with a standardized stimulus. With such high reliability obtained, the researcher’s own biases are eliminated.

Because of the above reasons Mr.Watson thought this is the most suitable analytical tool than the others for identify major problems.

Tools That Can Use to Analyze the Book Store’s Quality Issues

Due to the disadvantages regarding to the selecting Sample size, Rigidity and Possible Inappropriateness of Questions survey methods can get failure. Therefore to get better information they can use this survey method through in this normal way, through their online web site and observing their customer behavior. After that they can use the tools like Fishbone Diagrams, Pareto chart and Scatter diagram for analyzing this quality issues.

Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram: identifies many possible causes for an effect or problem, identify bottlenecks in the process and sorts ideas into useful categories.

Pareto chart: The Pareto Principle states that only a "vital few" factors are responsible for producing most of the problems. This principle can be applied to quality improvement to the extent that a great majority of problems (80%) are produced by a few key causes (20%).

Scatter diagram: graphs pairs of numerical data, with one variable on each axis, to help you look for a relationship.

QUESTION 02.

ANALYZING THE SURVEY RESULTS

Campus store -Student Campus Store – Non Student

CAMPUS STORE

When we analyzing quality issues in campus book store in terms of students, non students and ultimately combined results of both students and non students can be drawn following conclusions.

As per the Pareto chart 1, around 65% of dissatisfaction level of students in on campus comprises visiting to the book store website, purchase price of the item and employees’ knowledge and there is no significant dissatisfaction on overall service, employees’ courteous, waiting time for service and check out and the availability of the item.

As per the Pareto chart 2, around 72% of dissatisfaction level of non students in off campus book store comprises visiting to the website, waiting for service and checkout and employees’ knowledge and there is no material issues on overall service quality, employees’ courteous, availability of the items required by the customers and the prices of the items.

The major problem we could have identified in the campus store are the lack of visiting to the book store’s website, lack of knowledge of employees, a higher purchase price of the items and the long waiting time for service and checkout which comprises 75% of overall dissatisfaction level.

It is noted that the prices of the items available in the campus book store is a big issue among students but not among non students which comprises 24% and 3% of total dissatisfaction level respectively. And also there are no material issues on waiting for service and checkout among students but among non students.

OFF CAMPUS

Off campus store -Student Off campus store –Non student

OFF CAMPUS

Analysis of survey results of off campus book store in terms of students and non students, the following conclusions can be drawn.

As per Pareto chart 1, the results of survey in off campus store among students reveal that there is around 81% of dissatisfaction level comprises visiting to the book store’s website, the purchase price of the items, overall service and employees’ knowledge and courteous. But there are no significant issues in availability of the items required and the waiting time for the service and check out.

As per Pareto chart 2, the survey results among non students in off campus reveal that there is around 82% of dissatisfaction level comprises visiting to the book store’s website, the employees’ knowledge and courteous, waiting time for service and overall service. But there are no material undesirable impacts on availability of the items required, the purchase price of the items available and the waiting time for checkout.

As per the Pareto chart 3, the major problems identified in the off campus book store are lack of visiting to the book stores website, lack of employees’ knowledge and courteous, dissatisfaction with overall service and long waiting time for service.

Also noted that there is a big issue on prices of items available among students surveyed in off campus store, but not among non students which comprises around 20% and 2.3% of total dissatisfaction level of on and off campus store respectively. This is more than 17% of dissatisfaction level of the non students.

Pareto chart for overall survey result

As per the analysis of overall results of the survey, the following conclusions can be drawn.

The major problems faced by both on and off campus book store as per the above Pareto chart are lack of visiting to the book store’s website, lack of employees’ knowledge and courteous, dissatisfaction with overall service and the purchase price of the items which comprises around 74% of total dissatisfaction level. So from the survey results it is concluded that the both books stores hold the items required by the customers.

QUESTION 03.

QUALITY OF A BOOK STORES

“The creation of customer satisfaction by providing a good basis for the purchase of books and other items on the right time at right quantity at right price with perceived condition and re-creation of customer loyalty”

Quality dimensions of the Book Store

• Time and Timeliness– Reduction of waiting time to search and purchase a book– Quick response of service personnel to customer requests

• Completeness– Maintaining a satisfactory level of stocks to meet customer requirements– Update the Bookstore’s website regularly

• Courtesy– Treat the customers in a friendly manner– Politeness to the customer

• Consistency– Equally treat all the customers

• Accessibility& Convenience– Appoint knowledgeable employees– Locate the book store in an accessible place to customers– Maintain a proper layout that makes convenience

e.g. Arrange the store’s very pleasant manner using proper lightening and light music system to the book store, allocate special reading area for buyers for read books before purchase, use any alphabetical method to arrange the book shelves correctly.

– Convenience to access the website• Accuracy

– Deliver the exact product that customer requires– Ensure the accuracy of billing– Ensure the correct information available in the website at anytime

• Responsiveness– Should maintain a decent return policy and handling customer complaints.

QUESTION 04.

QUALITY ISSUES IN THE TECH BOOKSTORES

Poor coordination system –

Not enough that relationship between management levels and an operational level employees. Thus the student employees not work in responsible. Not only that, but also, some student employees have referred for unmannerly activities.

Very limited parking facility in the on campus book store.

Higher turnover and absenteeism among student employees.

Customer’s disfavor about the prices.

One of a student employee was arrested on drug possession.

Lack of knowledge regarding to Book store computerized system.

Student employees do not threat their customers well.

Keep registers in Un-manner way.

Several employees talking together in the store.

Student employees not familiar in store policy.

Employees do not have a proper idea about what products available in the store and where it is located

Sometimes employees got defensive with their customers.

Some student employees are lackadaisical and bored

Less induction and training program

The student employees lack knowledge regarding

Store policies of bookstores Operating system of the store computer system Available products types Separate located places for each product.

QUESTION 05.

COST OF POOR QUALITY

INTERNAL FAILURE COST

Cost associated with defects found before the customer receives the product or service.

E.g. scrap, rework, process failure, downtime & price reduction

Cost incurred for investigation of poor quality activities of organization. Cost of resale and changing of the returned books.(downgrading) Down time due to the problems related to the bookstore computer system. Not properly recording the required information in the bookstore computer system. Loss the cost due to keeping wrong or unnecessary items within book store inventory. Delay in providing service on time to the customer. Cost of re-entering data in to the organization data base. Loss sales due to the lack of knowledge of the employees about organizational

system.

EXTERNAL FAILURE COST

External failure costs are the costs that occur after the poor quality products reach to the customer.

Cost of handling customer complaint about the quality of the product as well as the service of the bookstore.

Cost of handling & replacing the returned products. Cost of loss sales. Loss of reputation.

QUESTION 06.

HOW TO IMPROVE QUALITY AT THE BOOK STORE

QUALITY IMPROVEMENT;

Is the actions taken throughout the organization to increase the effectiveness of activities and processes to provide added benefits to both the organization and its customers. There are two basic ways of bringing about improvement in quality performance. One is by better control and the other by raising standards.

Apply 5S practices to the bookstore

Sort - the first step in making things cleaned up and organizedSet In Order - organize, identify and arrange everything in a work areaSweep or Shine - regular cleaning and maintenanceStandardize - make it easy to maintain - simplify and standardizeSustain -maintaining what has been accomplished

Conduct training programs aimed at student employees   Incentive schemes to staff on attracting customers Maintain a suggestion box Design proper service level agreements Develop a proper return policy and communicate it clearly Implement a camera system to detect and control employee misbehavior Appoint a leader, responsible for quality issues, from employees in the book

store on daily basis

QUESTION 07.

BARRIERS AFFECTING TO THE CHANGES AT THE BOOKSTORE

Have long –standing policy of selling textbooks with a very small markup.

Use all profit to fund student related projects like new athletic fields, student center enhancement. Therefore there is no improving in the stores due to lack of investments.

Lack of knowledge regarding to organizational policy.

Lack of training and motivation programs to enhance employee training skills.

Failure to adopt the change.

Resistance emerges in the books store culture.

Lack of control over Part time student employees Negative attitude towards system upgrades Employee redundancy and grievances due to technology usage

QUESTION 08.

BENEFITS OF QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS

To the Book Store:

Facilitates re-engineering Improves morale and Stimulates creativity of employees. Improves relationships among managerial non managerial staff and customers. Improves problem solving ability and decision making. Reduces cycle times, both development and process. Clarification of what services a client expects the practice to provide Reduction in loss of time due to re-work or ineffective and/or inefficient practices; Better communications structure. Higher repeat business/referrals from a satisfied client base; Enhanced reputation in the business and its market share. Enhance efficiency and productivity. Facing to the competition very well. Detection of a problem before it reaches the customer

To the employees Improved awareness amongst locations of book store Increased consistency amongst locations Documenting and sharing of employee’s knowledge Improved understanding of internal business processes Training facility. Improved morale of employees Having opportunity to participate in decision making.

To the customers:

Higher quality service. Increased reliability of the end product. Increase the customer own satisfaction. Ensure that the bookstores are able to fulfill customer requirements before making the

sale. Ability to buy products at relevant price ranges on the required time.