Performance Issues Faced By Ralph Rosen's Flagship Store In Toronto

Importance of a flagship store

A flagship store is opened at a prime location for the purpose of drawing the attention of the target market and the efforts made by the flagship store are generated towards establishing both brand recognition, and facilitating a brand reputation in the prime location. Hence, undoubtedly the flagship store is of prime importance to the company as it would bring forth the most of the brand image for the company in that particular location which is excluded from the customer territory of the company so far, although there is a tremendous amount of meticulous planning and strategic alignment invested before a flagship store is opened at a particular location, there is need for target market analysis, brand scope measurements, market culture analysis and product life cycle management before a flagship store can be opened in a prime location .

For this case study, the flagship store by Ralph Rosen was opened in Toronto without any prior analysis or market research and lacked strategic alignment completely.  Hence the store could not rope in a considerable flow of customers and hence the entire store failed to deliver its primary outcome, decent sales and brand image recognition. As per the needs analysis, there are a number of issues that can be identified. Considering the organizational analysis component of need analysis, there had been a significant lack of strategic alignment before the store was opened, as the store opening had been hurried for the upcoming Toronto fashion week, the entire planning and organizational activities had been hurried. As per the task analysis, it has to be mentioned that most of the staff in the flagship store came from the New Army and there had been no time to train the new employees before the store opening, so improper job target allocation and training had been a significant performance issue behind the low sales. Lastly, considering personal analysis the lack of any organization data and client demands analysis documentation had been another significant issue which indicated at the lack of prior market analysis and any strategic preplanning done before opening a flagship store.

There has been a myriad of different issues prevalent in this case study; there had been countless business process management errors or mishaps which cumulatively contributed to the amalgamation of the different performance issues that has the entire sales statistics of the store affected. However, employing the principles of the barriers of effective principle model, the most relevant contributing factor behind the performance issue can be identified. Considering the human factors, there are 5 different elements, lack of knowledge, lack of skill and motivation, counterproductive reward system and group norms. The first element, the lack of knowledge can misguide the employees affectively and can confuse the job roles of the individuals. Now the lack of skills refer to the basic lack of competence in the employees, if one of the organizational tasks needs investment of a particular skill, the absolute lack of that particular skill in the employees will inevitably lead to compromised performance. Motivation in the organizational culture plays a pivotal role in improving performance; lack of motivation in the organizational culture is another key barrier that facilitates many a performance issues and conflicts, just as ineffective reward system. However, none of the parameters discussed in human factor analysis apply to the case scenario largely. The second factor is the technical factor which has a number of different elements, out of which a few factors apply to the scenario represented by the case study. Poor job design is the first element which can not only cause confusion but also business process mishaps, which is extremely applicable here as the newly appointed staff did not even get the chance to have their corporate orientation and had no idea about their job roles and responsibilities. Lack of tools or standardized process also refers to two influential restrictions to optimal performance by restricting the resources and an organized protocol. This is applicable to this scenario as there had not been any prior strategic planning before the store opened; hence the staff had no idea of the market trends and the business situations in the market of Toronto. The last two parameters are dynamic technological changes and ineffective feedback, now lack of effective feedback from the clients had not been included in the store business process as well which is the last element of this parameter that matches to the case scenario, but technological changes do not apply to this scenario at all.

Case study: Ralph Rosen's flagship store in Toronto

According to the informational parameter, the lack of raw data refers to information researched or collected from the market analysis and customer demands; the lack of both normative and comparative data is the only element that can be correlated with the case study from informational parameter. This is because there had not been any prior strategic alignment or market analysis done before the store was opened, and there have been no raw data available for the store. And lastly, the structural parameter had one element that can be correlated with the case scenario which had been the overlapping roles and responsibilities in the store due to the lack of proper orientation and training in the new joiners. Hence the factor which had the most influence as the contributing factor to the present performance issue in the case study is the technical factor.

One of the major concerns with the performance issues that the flagship store of Ralph Rosen in Toronto had been facing was the lack of proper strategic alignment of different business process activities before store opening like sales strategy and budget, merchandising mix, the operations, and the HR related activities. Now one of the most important recommendations that the store staff needs to implement to save the store performance and meet the primary goal of the store to establish a brand image for itself in the Toronto’s market is a proper strategic market analysis. A brand image can be considered as the unique set of opinion and ideas in the consumers based on their perception, understanding and personal demands. Building brand reputation enables the corporate organizations to mold the brand image that the target customer base retains within themselves in accordance to their own requirements. Hence, with brand image building the organization is able to highlight the strengths and attraction of the product or service that they are marketing and developing a custom made idea in the consumers regarding their product or service. However, in order to build an effective and influential brand reputation the company will need a prior understanding of the market trends and client preferences so that the luxury store can modify their sales and marketing strategy in a manner that can meet those demands; hence, a market culture and trend analysis is a prior recommendation for this situation. Another very important recommendation will involve training the newly joined employees, it has to be understood in this context that new employees will inevitably have a few stumbles while getting accustomed to the business processes and their job roles. The lack of any proper corporate orientation must have left behind a significant gap in their understanding go their job responsibilities and he nature of the business organization. Along with that, a corporate orientation also helps to let the employees grasp the scope for professional growth that they have and it serves as a tremendous motivational factor contributing to employee engagement and better performance. Hence the second most crucial recommendation that can be beneficial to this situation is to undertake a proper corporate orientation of the entire staff of the store, so that the staff understands their roles and responsibilities clearly and can attempt to fulfill those goals, which will eventually contribute to meet9ng the primary outcome of the flagship store.

The performance issue that the flagship store faced was primarily due to lack of proper understanding of the market cultures and job responsibilities in the Toronto store. Hence establishing a learning organization will be extremely beneficial for the staff to understand the market culture better and perform in the future in a manner that will not repeat the same problems . A few steps that Jeanie could take to ensure successful implementation of a learning organization in the store can be based on the systems thinking model by Peter Senge. The model of learning organization depends on the five disciplines of Peter Senge, all the five elements of the model emphasizes on the critical analytical thinking and decision making skills within the context of business process management.

• The very first strategy that can be employed in this situation represented by the case study is based on the first element of the model, shared vision; in this strategic step, a collaborative communication and interaction can be organized by Jeanie which will help the entire staff to gain a common understanding of the professional commitments they have for the success of the flagship store.
• The second strategic recommendation that Jeanie can implement takes the path of mental models, the second element of Senge’s model. In here the staff will re-evaluate their psychological connection with their profession; by sharing and adapting to different values, beliefs, mindsets and assumptions the staff will be able to generate a common goal for the benefit of the store to achieve.
• In the third recommendation the concept of personal mastery of Senge’s model will be utilized, here the staff should be encouraged to generate self-awareness of their own job responsibilities, competencies and weaknesses, so that each and every staff can realize their responsibility and the gap in their performance in accordance to it.
• The fourth recommendation is centred on the team learning element of the model, where the entire staff will come together with their own reflection and understanding of strengths and weaknesses so the room for improvements can be identified and acted upon.
• The last recommended action or initiative is based on systems thinking step of the model, where the challenges that arose in the store will be analyzed in cause and effect relationship led by Jeanie so that logical and reasonable steps can be taken to ensure the best outcome for the flagship store.

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