Course Home - Course Select, develop, and analyze two mini case studies. The purpose of this project is to identify a successful strategy and compare and contrast it with an unsuccessful strategy,...

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Mini Case - 1
NCA of Super Group, a UK based company established in the year 1945 headquartered in
London. The company has multinational chain of stores for furnishing and furniture used for
home. It is one of the largest players; specialising inexpensive furniture of Scandinavian
designed .At the end of 2005, Superb Group of companies had 170 stores in 30 countries. In
addition to the earlier mentioned stores, there are 20 Super stores owned and run under
franchisees model, outside the Super store across the globe.
In UK, both a home and nature plays a vital role in the lives of people. The best way of
describing the home furnishing style in UK is that, describing the nature full of light and
breeze. To meet the expectations, the artist Karl and Carin mixed classical influences with
UK folk style. They jointly created a model of UK furnishing home design, which is
renowned in worldwide today. In the early 1960s, different styles developed because of
functionalism and modernism in the same time UK established in the range of social quality.
To cope with these changes, there were different UK traditional home finishing products
were introduced.
The founders of Super Group, were borne in a place in UK, where people are known for hard
working and living with small means. The people from this place use the available resources
to the optimum level and reap benefits out of it. Hence the Super approaches were to reduce
the price of the products as much as possible with better quality.
Super was established during a time, where people of different classes like rich or poor
looked alike and started moving in a caring society. Hence this approach became one of the
components towards the vision of company. To have a better everyday life, Super requests
the customer to work as a partner. The range of products offered at Super meet the
requirement of whole family. Hence a better everyday life for everyone in a family is
ensured.
On and above closely working with 1,700 suppliers across the globe ,Super manufactures
many of its own products through sawmills and well established factories in the Super
industrial group, UKwood. It is also the responsibility of UKwood to go for a knowledge
sharing programme to the other suppliers. It may be in the way of educating them issues
pertained to improve the efficacy, quality, environmental work etc. UKwood operates 30
industrial units in 12 countries.
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Purchasing: Super has 39 Trading Service Offices (TSO) in 30 countries. Because of
frequent touch with the suppliers and understanding the value of suppliers, it has built up long
term and rational relationship with the supplier. As an approach, the co-workers from TSO
visit suppliers on regular basis in order to improve production, test new ideas, price
negotiation, carrying out quality audit and inspections.
Distribution: The route of distribution from supplier to the end customer maybe as direct
cost effective and environmental friendly as possible. It uses to be monitored that Flat packs
are made in such a way that the unnecessary spaces is eliminated and we are able to store the
goods and transport them efficiently. The company gives more preference in developing an
efficient logistic distribution, as distribution has a key role in making the work of low price.
The business Idea: Super has always a mission of offering different variety of products with
exclusive designs and maintain the price of the product so low, that everyone can afford to
purchase. The company uses to charge an additional minimum price by serving the customers
in arranging the furniture are needed. Super targets customers of low to middle income
group.
Competitive Advantage: The competitive...