42. Decision Making – Case Study
05-11-2019 www.growthbest.com
• Case Study
– Janet is a purchasing manager for a department store
chain that recently consolidated its offerings of salt
and pepper mills. Sales of the products fell after the
choices were narrowed.
– Janet visits several stores to investigate and observes
that salespeople have reduced shelf space on which
the mills were displayed to match the reduction in the
range of models. From her own experience, Janet
knows they should have maintained the same space
and stocked more of each product.
– How does Janet decide to fix the problem?
43. Decision Making – Case Study
05-11-2019 www.growthbest.com
– Janet proposes giving buyers “the D” on how much space
product categories can have.
– Sales staffers have “the A”: If space allocations don’t make
sense to them, they can negotiate to alter them.
– Staffers also have “the P”: They implement product layouts
in stores.
44. Decision Making – Case Study
05-11-2019 www.growthbest.com
• Case Study
– Bryan manages a customer support center for a consumer
products company. The volume of phone calls and emails
coming into the center has increased so much that the
support associates can’t keep up. He assembles a team to
help him decide what to do.
– Bryan says "We have a serious problem. Customers are
waiting too long for service. We need to fix it." This frames
the issue as a problem with response time.
– So, the team will most likely focus on adding more service
representatives.
– But they may not address the root cause of the problem,
which could range from defective products to inefficient
distribution channels.
45. Decision Making – Case Study
05-11-2019 www.growthbest.com
– To get to the root cause, Bryan will want to frame the
issue differently for his team: "We have a serious
problem with our customer support center. The
volume of calls and emails has increased, and
customers are waiting too long for service. We need
to find out why this is happening. Then we need to
decide what to do about it."
– By framing the decision in this way, Bryan encourages
his team to think about what’s causing the problem.
– If they can accurately identify the root cause, they’ll
make a smarter decision about what to do next.