Business Case Study: Debenhams, Facebook, and Streets Ahead

This document presents a comprehensive analysis of three distinct case studies. The first case study examines Debenhams' potential expansion into a food division, detailing primary and secondary market research methods, including focus groups and questionnaires, along with ethical considerations. The second case study conducts a SWOT analysis of Facebook, evaluating its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, particularly focusing on its marketing platform and challenges related to privacy and advertising. The final case study explores the problems within Streets Ahead estate agency, specifically addressing issues of employee motivation and leadership deficiencies, using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to understand employee needs and behaviors, identifying key issues such as lack of communication, poor management, and limited opportunities for professional growth. The document provides insights into business strategies, marketing, and leadership, offering potential solutions and recommendations for each case.

CASE STUDY CONTEMPORARY THEMES ASSIGNMENT
CASE STUDY 1
Primary research
Debenhams is one of the leading department stores of the United Kingdom with a turnover of around £2bn with over
140 departmental stores and also has 40 franchised stores all over the world. The company enjoys a considerable
online presence. The original Debenhams store is based in London and was founded in 1913. The company still uses
it for their communications and press activities. In 1928, the acquisitions of the Harvey Nichlos and Brown stores were
seen to follow and the company was listed on the stock market. The department store was seen to expand rapidly and
was bought by private consortium in 2003. Debenhams is seen to have top four markets share in men’s wear,
women’s wear and an estimate of ten shares in children’s wear. Further, it is a pioneer in the market of premium
health and beauty. Today, Debenhams is available in almost 70 countries is considered to be the eleventh biggest UK
online retailer on the basis of the traffic volume.
The organization is looking forward to extend their business and looking out for ways that can enhance their revenue.
But, Debenhams is a department store that sells mainly home ware and clothing. They should look into opening a food
division of their shop in order to boost profits. I would suggest that Debenhams creates a food department, which
should hopefully ensure they remain competitive in the same way that it helped M&S. The following is a suggestion on
how Debenhams could conduct their market research if they planned to open a food division in their department
stores.
First of all, Debenhams should employ primary research methods. The primary market research can prove out to be
an important method for gathering information regarding the service idea and the views of the customers (Glass, G. V.
(1976). The organization will get the perspectives from the customers and can easily determine the demand of the
products and the customers. The organization should carry out focus groups with participants that reflect diverse
sections of society. Although it is expensive to carry out a focus group, as it involves having to give participants a
financial incentive to attend, focus groups are very useful in that they provide rich data: they reveal unexpected needs
and suggestions by potential customers that the researcher may not have thought of. The focus groups can easily
help in obtaining the detailed information regarding the group and personal feeling, their opinions and perceptions.
The focus group also helps in saving time and money as compared to the interviews on individual basis that are being
conducted. The focus group will be beneficial in providing a broader range of information from all the participants
(Kitzinger, J., 1994).
Furthermore, Debenhams should design a questionnaire for their current clients. The questionnaire is practical and
helps in accumulating a large amount of information from a larger number of people in a very short span of time. The
whole process is highly cost effective. This method has a limited affect to the reliability and validity. Furthermore, the
results are quantified easily using the software software package or by the researcher. This method will allow them to
obtain relevant and current data which will help with planning the development and marketing strategies for the food
division.
The following questions should be asked in the department stores by sensitive and polite interviewers who would
ensure that all of the participants give their consent prior to completing the questionnaire.
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Questionnaire
1. 1. How often do you shop at Debenhams?
a. Once a week
b. Once a month
c. Once every 3 months
d. Occasionally
2. 2. Would you be interested in buying your groceries at Debenhams?
a. YES
b. NO
3. 3. What type of food products would you like to buy at Debenhams?
a. Everyday groceries
b. Healthy food for busy people
c. Specialities from around the world
d. Other (please specify
e. __________________________________
4. 4. How much would you be ready to spend on weekly groceries in Debenhams?
a. Under 50 pounds
b. 50-70
c. 70-100
d. Over 100
1. 5. Would you be willing to spend more money for…
a. YES
b. NO
Ethical concerns with primary research
Other ethical issues Debenhams would need to consider are anonymity, objectivity in their interpretation of data, and
sensitivity in which groups they target. The people who would be studying the research and are involved with it must
be taken prior permission. Nothing that would cause emotional or physical harm to the subjects would be practiced.
The sensitivity or the difficulty of the questions would be controlled. The research must be fair and will consider
personal biases and personal opinions.
Secondary research
Apart from the questionnaire, Debenhams should invest some time into conducting secondary research. They should
analyse the groceries market by looking at case studies, and financial reports published by leading supermarkets.
Additionally, they should observe CCTV footage collected by market research companies that analyse consumer
behaviour. The organization can also look out in the successful organizations and their successful stories. Various
cases and findings will assist the organization to look into the matter. The organization can look into company website,
marketing research reports, magazine articles and other sources. The organization can gather information from
sources that are external to the marketer and can easily access material from the market research carried out by
some other organization and from old sales report. The organization can also look into the accounting records of the
companies so as to look at their growth after expansion (Stewart, D. W., & Kamins, M. A., 1993).
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To conclude, Debenhams needs to conduct primary and secondary research methods before they plan the launch of
their food division. This way they will have all the necessary information which will inform their decisions. The primary
and secondary research methods will help in assisting towards the gaining the market information and perspective
from the customers. And – they will be able to choose the correct segment of the market share, decide on the range of
products, and ensure the new venture will yield a return and be profitable.
CASE STUDY 2
SWOT analysis of Facebook
Facebook’s strength as a marketing platform is primarily its integration with other applications and websites:
everything users want to post can easily be shared onto this social networking platform, including advertisements of
products they have purchased and liked. They can also ‘like’ products, which will show up on their friends’ pages,
which is a personalised way for products to be seen by potential new customers. The social networking site has more
than a billion monthly users who are highly active. The organization further understands the need and behaviour of its
users and comes up with new and creative ideas to engage them. Furthermore, the social networking site enjoys
excellent users’ experience (Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C., 2007).
Facebook’s weaknesses are its attitude towards privacy, its weak protection of users’ data, and the fact that too many
adverts have saturated it. There is only one source of revenue for Facebook that is the advertisement. Users have
complained that their pages have been used for market research without their consent, there have been stories about
Facebook making users appear to have ‘liked’ a product when in fact they haven’t (e.g. a vegan supposedly ‘liked’
McDonalds, which appeared on her friends’ feeds and made them ask her if she was eating meat again!), and there
are now so many adverts on there that its users are less likely to pay them any attention. Further, the social
networking site has a weak CTR of advertisements and also lacks the website customization. Most of the users of
Facebook have complained of spending a considerable amount of time on the website. These users want the social
media website to reflect their personalities. However, they are unable to customize the website as per the needs of the
users and a uniform template is forced for all their users. As compared to the Facebook, the Google+ is seen to allow
for much more personalization of the social network account (Dwyer, C., Hiltz, S., & Passerini, K., 2007).
Facebook’s main opportunity, which still attracts many advertisers, is that the sale of smartphones is constantly on the
increase, meaning users are constantly plugged in to the site via these small, portable computer screens. Constant
exposure attracts marketing revenue, so Facebook has benefitted from this increase in smartphone sales that is
external to itself. Furthermore, the website relies heavily on the advertising as one of the major source of income, with
over 1 billion active monthly users; the website is seen to exploit other opportunities for attracting the money. The
website is in a strong position to open a Facebook marketplace, in case it is successful, the Facebook would be able
to bring more revenues as compared to advertising which will boost the future prospects and growth of the company
(Stumpel, M., 2013).
Another area that is beyond Facebook’s direct control, but that affects is negatively, is related to technological
advances that enable users to block ads. This threat means users can use the free social networking platform without
being exposed to those who pay for it to exist, i.e. advertisers. The model of Facebook has been threatened due to
growing adblocks as the users are not able to see the advertisements and unintentionally click on them.
Furthermore, the identity thefts are very common due to which Facebook is facing bad reputation due to its inability of
protecting the private information for its users.
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CASE STUDY 3
Streets Ahead estate agency: David’s problems with Motivation and Leadership
Streets Ahead has a few problems with motivating their staff. These will be explored one by one in the following
analysis. Firstly, staff are ignored by managers, which leads them to waste time on social networking or online
shopping websites such as Ebay or Facebook. The bosses should get more involved in the work their staff do, set
deadlines, and perhaps encourage targets to be met by offering various incentives or simply praise for work well done.
Another problem is that the managers do not consult employees for ideas or input of any kind. This is because they
decide the best course of action alone. They should consult team members, who otherwise feel stunted in their growth
and demotivated. Instead of seeming unavailable, clear leadership should be established. This can simply be done by
making the managers’ duties clear: when David goes to see Tom to share an idea, he is sent to Alice, who sends him
back to Tom. Employees need to know which employer is in charge of what aspect of the business. A further problem
concerns deadlines: it is said in the case study that Alice would not communicate deadlines to the team, then blame
them when work was not complete and distance herself from them. This is very bad managerial practice: instead, she
should set clear deadlines and at least take the blame when she fails to do so. David also states that he feels no
personal growth is possible at Streets Ahead.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Analysing David’s situation according to this famous theory is useful to understanding which needs the job meets and
which it does not. David’s behaviour will be assesses on the basis of his needs, as per the Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs. He has adjusted his behaviour as per the satisfaction of his needs. As per Maslow, there are five types of
human needs which are arranged in a hierarchical manner as per their priority and importance. As one set of need is
satisfied, that particular level creases to be a motivating factor for the person. That person begins to look motivation in
the other set of needs. The five level of needs as per the priority are physiological needs, security needs, social
needs, esteem needs and self-actualizing needs (Maslow, A. H., 1943).
As per Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the physiological needs of David are met, as we are told he makes an excellent
salary, especially in comparison to his previous job. He is able to sustain his life and is able to afford food, shelter,
rest, water, air, sleep, clothing and sexual satisfaction. These needs with the highest priority over other needs cannot
be prolonged for long and David has met all this physiological needs. As these physiological needs are satisfied to the
considerable amount of extent, Davis is motivated towards gaining other needs.
His security needs are also met: he gets paid holidays and commission. As these are directly linked with the
psychological fear of loss of job, hazards, property, David has been provided sufficient protection from such types of
fear due to his secure position at job. These needs are met due to high salary. Therefore, the security needs have
ceased to be his priority and he looks forward to the other set of needs.
As for his social needs, these are arguably not met. Although his colleagues seem friendly at first, they soon ignore
each other to go on social media and shopping, after explaining to him that there is no point in making any effort at
work. His managers also seem to prefer to ignore the staff. He being a human being is a social animal and therefore
he desires to stay with a group. He is not provided with the sense of belonging and is not provided with enough sense
of love and affection from his team mates and managers. He is not loved by any of his company members and
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therefore does not have sufficient social needs. Therefore, David aims towards fulfilling his social needs and wants to
be appreciated, loved and respected among his fellows.
His esteem needs are met at first, as we are told he can add ‘digital content specialist’ to his job title: this gives him a
higher perception of himself. However, he then claims to have deteriorated from a person with enormous potential to
‘another mediocre estate agent’, which suggests his esteem needs are ultimately not met. This is due to lack of
respect and appreciation by the others and he does not enjoy self-respect or competence neither he is able to relate
to any status or recognition in the company.
Finally, his self-actualising needs (i.e. whether or not he finds his job challenging) are clearly not met either. When he
has good ideas to fix the mobile app, his employers are not even interested in hearing them. Therefore the desire of
becoming what he is capable of becoming is denied to him. He is not able to utilise his potential to the maximum
extent possible and his desire of becoming what he dreams of accomplishing is not fulfilled. Therefore he is not able to
fulfil his need.
Therefore, Davis is not in a good position and is aiming to fulfil his social, esteem and self-actualizing needs. He aims
to make friends with his team members and managers and is looking forward to attain his esteem needs as well. For
this he has to broaden his friends circle, and needs to be appreciated for his work and efforts. As he lacks the chances
of personal growth, he is struck in the company and is only enjoying the high salary which satisfies his security and
psychological needs.
CASE STUDY 4
How Budgens can learn from Tesco in terms of equality and diversity.
Budgens should adopt an equality and diversity policy similar to Tesco’s for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, all
businesses in the UK have to respect the Equality Act 2010 as legal action can be taken if employees are
discriminated against. Diversity means visible and non-visible differences including disability, work style, personality,
background and of course race, gender, and age. Diversity can be considered as a commitment towards appreciating
and recognising the variety of characteristics where every individual feel unique in the working environment thereby
promoting and celebrating the collective and individual achievement. The diversity in the workplace considers
everyone to be a unique person. Although the people are seen to have everything in common but it must be
considered that everyone is different in their own way. All the personal characteristics on the basis of race, gender,
disability, sex, reassignment, pregnancy, civil partnership, religion and beliefs, age, sexual orientation etc are seen to
be covered by the discrimination law so as to provide protection to the people against being treated unfairly. Therefore
it is clear that the diversity at the workplace must have high tolerance of various unique aspects of the working
individuals within the working environment.
Everyone feels valued in an environment that values and represents these differences and where each person’s talent
is allowed to be fully utilised. Budgens, like Tesco, needs to make sure that they encourage people from a diverse
range of backgrounds to apply in order to make the staff more representative of the population. They need to ensure
racial and gender equality for example in staff and management, while also putting talent first.
The organization must recognize a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model and approach for managing the people who are seen to
have issues with achieving fairness and equality for opportunity for each and every individual. The organization has
different personal values, needs and beliefs. The people management practices must be able to fulfil the demand of
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the people propositions that are seen to be consistently fair and are seen to have flexible and inclusive manger which
are seen to support the business needs.
There are many ways to implement a diversity policy: they have to be willing to offer flexible working arrangements
and have to apply positive action when recruiting. Positive action means giving preference to equally qualified
members of an under-represented group. For this to happen, senior management and line managers must commit to
positive action as well as raising awareness about diversity.
Diversity management is basically a process which is intended for maintaining and creating a positive working
environment where all the difference and similarities of the employees are highly valued. This type of working
environment is helpful reaching their potential and for maximizing the contribution towards the strategic objectives and
goals of the organization.
The workforce diversity can easily be related to the equal employment opportunity where the individuals belonging
from colour, race, sex, religion and national origin will be kept on the same scale without any discrimination.
Furthermore, the workforce can also be subjected to education, teaching, sexual orientation and differences, tenure,
abilities, difference in values, personality etc. Therefore, the working environment must aim towards maximizing the
potential of the employees and the organization in turn feels that it is recruiting the best employees which results in
greater revenue, profits and job security (DiTomaso, N., Post, C., & Parks-Yancy, R., 2007).
Tesco has many interesting schemes that Budgens could use to inspire their own initiatives: for example, Tesco Asian
Network could be implemented in Budgens too. It would mean having events like careers fairs and parents’ evenings,
where Asian employees can share experiences and parents are told about career opportunities their children could
one day enjoy at Tesco. ABC Network, which grew out of Tesco’s Asian Network, aims to make the business
particularly appealing to African, Black British and Caribbean colleagues. Budgens could do the same by providing
training opportunities for black people to reach senior positions within the supermarket business. This would
encourage more people from a diverse range of backgrounds to apply, while making sure merit (talent) is still the
criteria for appointment into jobs (Cox Jr, T., 2001).
Furthermore, Budgens can manage its workplace diversity in recognizing the difference among the employees and
individuals and for providing opportunities and various other means to the individuals for contributing towards their
talent to the organization. Another way of providing diversity is to work out the ways in which it can manage its older
and younger workers within the workforce.
Similarly, in order to ensure gender and sexual preference equality in management, Budgens could again follow
Tesco’s example by starting schemes like Out at Tesco, which represents 1000 LGBT members and also hosts
events for these employees to share experiences, as well as Women in Business, which raises the profile of women
and supports them to develop their careers through training and career sponsorship. Similar schemes for disabled
staff would also be highly beneficial for Budgens’ diversity policy. With such schemes, Budgens would improve
employee retention, fill skills shortages, increase employee productivity, and be considered an employer of choice.
CASE STUDY 5
Cash flow case study: Assets, liabilities, expenses and gains
Robert’s assets are his corner shop, his existing stock, his cash register, and everything else he owns in his shop. His
liabilities are anything he owes: the rent he has to pay for both of the stores and the stock he continually buys to fill the
shelves. His expenses are whatever he owns that he can claim as an expense and get a tax return for: for example,
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some merchandise, and perhaps equipment that is essential for the corner shop. Finally, his gains are all of the profits
he makes from goods sold.
Cash flow problems and solutions
At the moment, Robert is having cash flow problems for various reasons, and there are a few potential solutions to
improve his business. Firstly, he buys too much stock ahead of time. This makes little sense when considering his
seller is walking distance from him. A solution would be for Robert to have better stock control, and only purchase
items when they are needed as it is easy for him to re-stock regularly. Linked to this problem is the identical standing
order each week. Products should evolve based on customers’ needs. Robert would benefit from observing
customers’ buying patterns and adjust his order accordingly. A further point in relation to stock is the fact that he buys
the stock in cash rather than taking advantage of the interest free payment plan: again, making smaller payments over
time would alleviate financial pressure.
As for the store itself, changes could include increasing display space. By cutting down on unpopular items, potential
customers would quickly find what they need. Also, he pays rent for two separate rooms but makes no profit from one
because he only keeps stock in it. Instead, he should expand the shop or rent out the spare unit. This leads to
overhead expense which was not tied directly towards selling any service or product. This leads to high overload
expenses which in turn hurts the cash flow of the business. Because of being highly persistent, the high overhead
expenses are very challenging. The solution is to audit all the expenses and cut back on wherever possible. Robert
needs to consider that over-cutting might lead to hurting the company and therefore he needs to consider the cheaper
options and he should audit his expenses regularly for ensuring that every overhead expense stays in the line.
Sometimes he might sell his products and services at a comparative lower prices which leads to low and even
negative gross margins. This usually happens in the case of competitive environment. Therefore, Robert needs to
audit all the products and services for determining the all-inclusive cost for delivering the products. He can then raise
the price of the product and services having weak margins and can even ensure that all the proposals must price their
products as per their cost.
Additionally, Robert must engage himself in cash flow forecast. This will help him in seeing the time periods where he
can expect a cash deficit and the periods where his company will expect a surplus profit. This is one of the best ideas
for tracking down the amount of cash being going in the business and how much is expected for the survival.
As for his dealings with customers, Robert should not allow them to pay on credit without a clear payment plan. He
should agree on terms of payment or stop doing this altogether, as he often does not get his money back. Further,
Robert must not add too many customers quickly. This will lead to major cash flow problems in case too many
customers are added and can be hard for Robert. This will lead to elimination of the operating deficit. He should use
financing for covering up the cash flow gap until he finds himself to be in a financially strong position. He can use a
line of credit, factoring, business load and even an asset-based loan (Lewellen, J., & Lewellen, K., 2014).
Additionally, he should be careful while taking a very large order as it might take too many resources from the
organization. In case of lack of resources, the organization might face critical issues. Therefore Robert needs to be
careful while taking up the order and can get term credit for his vendors. He can also train his employee and staff to
suggest the related service or a costly option for the service, the customer has been requesting for.
He suspects theft occurs, and should also install cameras or mirrors as well as recording transactions properly.
Furthermore, he should register for online banking for greater flexibility, since his current arrangement is not practical:
going in person to the bank frequently takes time out of running the shop. Finally, he should hire a professional
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accountant rather than try to do the bookkeeping himself, since the money he has in the bank does not correspond to
how much he should be making! Cash flows are high professional and complex and therefore require a professional
accountant in order to assist a proper functioning of the organization.
References
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