Contemporary Management: Planning, Management Problems and Solutions

Running head: CONTEMPORARY MANAGEMENT
CONTEMPORARY MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

1CONTEMPORARY MANAGEMENT
Elevator 1- Is planning dead?
Planning is one of the integral part of any organization. Thought it is very much true that
the recently the organizations has become very unpredictable and the competition may come
from unexpected sources (Channon & Jalland, 2016). Therefore it may be considered by some
management Gurus that planning is dead. However the question arises then how the organization
will solve its existing problems and what will be the future plan of action? How will the
immediate and the long term future of the organizations be decided if there is no planning or
strategic discussion? There is no possible other ways. Planning has been the backbone of the
businesses since man had started a civilized economic system. Therefore it is never possible to
say that planning is really dead.
Case Study- Can you win back online shoppers? By Harvard Business Review.
Question- What management problems confront the Board?
The management in this particular case is suffering from a lack of decision making
because of the critical problem it is currently facing. Lack of prior planning or envisioning the
possible scenario from beforehand is one of the reasons that such situation has arrived. The
management is extremely anxious to solve the problem of “showrooming “ where the customers
are arriving at the stores, getting knowledge about particular product, even trying it first hand
and then leaving without buying (Garvin, Natarajan & Dowling, 2014). They rather choose to
buy the same products from the online shopping applications because the prices are much lower,
about 8% lower in this particular case. As it was discussed in the previous elevator pitch that
whether planning is dead or not, some people would take this example to prove that planning is
dead, because even after planning the problem cannot be averted (Gensler, Neslin & Verhoef,

2CONTEMPORARY MANAGEMENT
2017). However on the other hand there is the question of how to ultimately solve this problem,
only proper planning can do so. Without planning how any way the management would counter
a crisis like this. Any new innovation that comes into action to solve particular problems only
comes after necessary planning. The primary management problem confronted by the board is
the problem of lack of decision making because lack of viable options to solve the problem. Only
intensive brain storming and exhausting sessions of planning may solve the situation.
The idea proposed by Farb, the CEO of the company to use the shelf of the company to
display exclusive items as promotions is good and this will not only increase the revenue of the
company but also bring in customers aiming to grab the exclusive new launches. It has been seen
that in exclusive shops such as Apple, people queue up for whole night to put their hands on the
newly launched products. Therefore the exclusive products can be launched in the company’s
showroom and these can be made exclusively available for the first month only in the company’s
showroom which will automatically start drawing the customers to the shop for buying the
products. The problem of “showrooming” can be solved in this particular way.
Management of the various companies keep on encountering various problems at various
levels, it is important for the management and the board of directors to properly meet and brain
storm new ideas that can be implemented by the employees at ground level. The employees are
giving feedback to the Bertice Jenson that the general customers are actually afraid of the
exclusive services, because they are of the idea that the exclusive pre or post sale services are
actually costly and would add to their burden. The solution that needs to be searched must take
care that they are non-intrusive in the shopping experience of the customers. Changes must be
brought in the style of display of the products and the prices as well.