D.H.P. Stores Inc. Case Study: Management and Business Challenges

This case study analyzes the issues within D.H.P. Stores Inc., a retailer facing challenges with a new credit card launch. The marketing department, led by Lisa, aims to increase sales and customer retention, but faces resistance from the operations department regarding promotional materials and sales efforts. The case highlights conflicts between departments, lack of cooperation, and the need for a revised action plan. The study recommends reporting issues to higher management, re-evaluating the division of work, and setting priorities to ensure the success of the credit card campaign. Alternatives like convincing the operations team or assigning marketing representatives are discussed, along with their pros and cons. The analysis emphasizes the importance of effective leadership, strategic alignment, and overcoming operational hurdles to achieve business objectives and maintain competitiveness in the market.

Running head: PRINCIPLE OF MANAGEMENT
Principle of management
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Part 1
Synopsis and Symptoms in D.H.P. Stores Inc
This is a case study, which portrays the issues in the organization named D.H.P. stores.
D.H.P. stores are a retailer of consumer goods in the market and have many outlets across
Canada. The focus of the organization is one the house ware and hardware. The competitive
rivals for the organization are Home Hardware and Canadian Tire. Lisa, the Vice President of the
marketing department and have decide to launch credit cards so that retain the present consumers
and gain more consumers in the market. This would facilitate in the expansion of the business
and increase the amount of sales in each of the stores (Dengue, 2017).
The main issue is that Ray Patton had gone to the stores and misbehaved with the people
in the organization. This had created tension within the store managers and the marketing team.
This has caused the Vice President of operations department to be furious and an explanation is
required to make him understand what the main problem is (Rudani, 2013). The rival companies
in the industry all have their own sets of credit cards so the organization will have to implement
this strategy if they want to compete with the other companies in the market.
Problems and causes
The other issue was that there was lack in the promotional materials in most of the stores
and the operations were reluctant in selling the products. Lisa had gone to five to six store and
have found out that there were lack in the promotional materials in the market. This policy was
the way of gaining loyalty of the consumers in the market. However, after ten days from the
launch of the promotional activity it is seen that many of the stores had little promotional

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material for display (Wisner, Tan & Leong, 2014). Lisa felt that the consumers can be acquired
mainly at the store level so it was important that the promotional materials would have displayed
and the operations department would have to make some effort so that the credit cards could be
sold to the present consumers and the new consumers. When the proposition was made, it was
decided that finance will handle all the aspects of administration, credit and collection. The
marketing was supposed to handle the launching of the card all over the nation and other
promotional activities to support the development of the product campaign. The operations were
supposed to handle the sales of the product. However, it has been seen that the operations
department are not following the instructions that had been decided in the meeting. The head of
the operations decided that selling of the product is the department of the operations as this a
product which will help in increasing the loyalty of the consumers (Stark, 2015).
Even though the operations department took the initiative to sell the product however, it
is seen that they are reluctant about the selling of the product. The majority of the stores are not
using the promotional materials and the store managers are not pushing the employees to make
an effort sell the credit cards. Thus, if the operations are not doing their work properly then the
marketing campaign will fail and the capital that have been spent on this campaign will be
wasted and the organization will be unable to implement the strategy that has already been
applied by the market competitors (Cohen, Krishnamoorthy & Wright, 2017). This can be cause
for the downfall of the organization and it will be tough for the organization to maintain their
sustainability in the market. Thus, these are the issues and the problems that the organization is
currently facing.

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Part 2
Action plan
It is recommended that the marketing team report all the instances to the higher ups in the
organization. This will include the vivid description of the wrong doings of the operation
department with evidence so that it can be proved. Moreover, the actions against the store
managers will have to be taken so that they could take initiative and sell the product with much
more eagerness. However, the marketing team will have to revaluate the division of the work and
should take the initiative of selling the product as it is one of the major strategies which will
provide the organization with competitive advantage. The main problem with the strategy was
that other promotional campaigns were getting more priority then the campaign for the credit
card. Thus, Lisa will have to call for a meeting to set the priorities right so that the campaign for
the credit card is given the utmost priority (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). This promotional campaign
was the idea of the marketing team of the company so the initiative will have to be taken by
them. Lisa will have to call the president to provide him with the detail report on the progress of
the campaign. She will have to highlight the fact that the companies will fail miserably if they do
not do anything. This is because of the fact that Adam is the head of the operations department
and so it must be under his instruction that the priorities of the campaigns have been changed.
Alternatives and decisions
Lisa will have to take the permission of the president to set up a meeting with the
operations team so that the promotional campaign can be brought back on track. There are two
solutions that they can come up with, first is to convince the operation team to change their
priorities and keep this campaign as their utmost priority. However, the disadvantage of this

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alternative is that it will be difficult to convince the operations team to change their priorities.
Moreover, the process is time consuming so it will take some of time to sort out this issue. The
other solution is that as it the initiative of the marketing team, the marketing team will in charge
of selling of the products through special representatives in each of the stores (Anderson et al.,
2015). Moreover, there should be a supervisor to monitor the daily sales and the success of the
plan so that the report it back to the head of the tournament. Therefore, the decisions in the
meeting will have to be conveyed to all the stores so that the new strategies can be implemented
as soon as possible. The disadvantage of this alternative is that the cost of the marketing team
will increase and they will have to make use of excess resources. Moreover, the operation team is
not cooperating with the marketing team so it will be difficult to sell the products with the
support from the operational team.

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Reference
Anderson, D. R., Sweeney, D. J., Williams, T. A., Camm, J. D., & Cochran, J. J. (2015). An
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Cohen, J., Krishnamoorthy, G., & Wright, A. (2017). Enterprise risk management and the
financial reporting process: The experiences of audit committee members, CFOs, and
external auditors. Contemporary Accounting Research, 34(2), 1178-1209.
Dengue, C. (2017). Principles of Management. Evidence-Based Critical Care: A Case Study
Approach, 513.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Rudani, R. B. (2013). Principles of management. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Stark, J. (2015). Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume
1) (pp. 1-29). Springer International Publishing.
Wisner, J. D., Tan, K. C., & Leong, G. K. (2014). Principles of supply chain management: A
balanced approach. Cengage Learning.