Retail Apocalpse Assignment Report

Running head: RETAIL APOCALYPSE 1
EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY
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City and State
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Retail Apocalpse 2
Introduction
The UK high street have experienced decline in economy as many large retailers such as
Debenhams and Homebase have opted to close down their business. From 1950 to 2012 UK high
street have experienced a significant closure of 290, 000 stores. This number is believed to
increase exponentially if nothing will be done to the economy. Banks have also closed down
their branches to reduce the operation cost. The revolution of technology is attributed to market
behavior. The emergence of e-commerce platforms such as online shopping and banking has
influenced the customer demand on the UK high street. The vacant property rates have
significantly the operation of the businesses. Deekay is one of the companies that specialize with
commercial properties only and it charges a 5 percent commission on the rent collected
regardless of whether the property was vacant or not. This has proven to be damaging to both
the clients’ cash flow as well as the total revenue of the business. This paper will focus on the
strengths and weaknesses of the three consulting methods.
Soft Systems Methodology (SSM)
According to Saadi and Bell (2019), a Soft system methodology is an organizational
approach that uses rich pictures in order to learn and appreciate the problems or situations that
exist between groups of stakeholders. The main strength SSM and the reason why this
methodology is the best for the problem is the ability to use rich pictures that give a detailed
visual representation of the problem (the retail apocalypse). The use of rich pictures has given a
clear demonstration of the main elements and relationships that are to be considered while
handling the problem situation (Wang et al., 2015). The main element that has been taken into
consideration by the rich pictures include landlords, local government, retailers, small business
and customers.

Retail Apocalpse 3
By using soft system methodology, we can have a better understanding of the Retail
apocalypse by providing a concise overview of the situation (Liu et al., 2012). The SSM explains
the importance of the high street to the corner shop and the community. The methodology
argues that the disappearance of the high street would also cause the Local florist, or otherwise
the corner shop to disappear subsequently. The use of SSM to analyze the retail apocalypse gives
a clear relationship between the stakeholders and conflict of interest. The retailers would like to
continuously consideration to the high street rather than to be shut into administration. Then, if
they were to be shut into administration the Landlords will make losses since they will be having
vacant houses. The interest of the government is also conflicted since a decline in footfall in their
borough would lead to a reduced investment from the district.
Despite SSM having great strengths in evaluating the Retail apocalypse, it is limited for
this problem because of the following; Using the SSM tool we are unable to build a
conceptual/modeling model of the Retail apocalypse that would help us to use the definite
techniques to provide a comparison of the solutions in the real world (Kamari et al., 2019). For
example, looking at the world view, there is no model used in comparison with the proposed
solutions. The SSM assumes that by offering cheaper and more flexible rent prices would help in
reducing the closure of the retail businesses. Additionally, the SSM lacks a model to demonstrate
an estimate of how many landlords are willing to make sacrifices by providing reflexive rent
prices. This narrows the scope of the investigation that makes it hard to formulate the richest
picture.
Structured problem diagnosis and solution
According to Baaij (2013), Structured problem diagnosis (SPD) is a consulting
methodology that attempts to find the root problem, where are the problem and the reason for the