Business Structure and Design on Joe Coulombe’s Essay

Trader Joe’s is an upscale specialty supermarket chain by Joe Coulombe, the very first step they took is very difficult as it is something that he had not done before. But Joe Coulombe led this organization to overcome this by his smart policies and approach through organization design. He has access to both inside and outside the company by adding new items to the supermarket to increase choices for customers to shop at Trader Joe’s,the items that he brought were luxury items like California wines and gourmet foods. Besides luxury items, there are items for customer’s daily consumption, such as bread, cheese, fruit and vegetables are now available as well. The supermarket products have helped customers increase the chain in high-end supermarket. Moreover, Joe Coulombe also focuses on the internal change by the division of the company for employees in each store, it’s like a subsidiary of a group because it makes his supermarket much closer from sales staffs to management staffs. However, not being strictly control by a monitor for each sales staff, but instead Joe Coulombe has assigned the responsibility for their sales department and he wants them to make their own decisions and provide personal customer service towards their customers. Moreover, not only each store has its own monitoring system by their company, this will take a lot of time in the management and staff as each store’s will be monitored. . The decentralization will enable companies to closely manage the work and customer service at each store and that would be the right policy in order to improve customer service as well as personal sales at the stores. Joe Coulombe also pays great attention to the responsibility of every employees, he changes it, and in stark contrast with how to manage employees at other companies that he have allowed employees in each store to make their own decisions for personal customer service without the consent of the managers, it helps their employees develop the full capacity of themselves and to see if they are capable to perform and it helps the employee’s to improve relationship with the customers significantly. This is the reason that the customer would come back to the store again cause of their good customer service. Joe Coulombe is very good with finding the niche market and knowing his target audience well, that’s how his company succeed and with knowing that, he had tried many ways to encourage his customers to visit his stores offering them gourmet products. Q2: Trader Joe’s Specific Decisions Organization structure and culture of each company are almost identical but for Trader Joe’s of Joe Coulombe is different. Joe goes with the a set of rules inherent when an organization begins operations, that is by having authority to change the sales departments. Most of the customer service must be gone through with a supervisor before making a service to customers but at Trader Joe’s, employees of the sales department is autonomy for their decisions and provide services customer before via the supervisor. This makes the service to their customers better by the ability of the sales department is fully released without incurring any obligation and something special when that Joe Coulombe do so with the department sales, he has made employees feel Trader Joe’s is a part of them so as to improve work efficiency compared to the norm. He attaches importance to developing relations between the individual and the customer in the form of patrons because they are the ones who often buys from the store and will get much better customer service, and it is also to influence other customers to make customers familiar with his store. Joe Coulombe focused on his employees and his shop was created with the different environment in which employees are treated as individuals and their supervisors are considered to be captains. Uniformed employees are suitable for each store environment of each other that makes sense for customers when they come to each supermarket store. Besides, Joe Coulombe also is interested in salary and bonus for each department from the sales staff to the supervisor, and most of the wages for each employee here are higher than the others at the other supermarkets. Moreover, not only with a high salary bonus, Trader Joe is also very generous and employees can be paid with a bonus of more than $ 100,000 a year. Joe Coulombe trained his employees very well, he influence by the way of controlling sales people. Training includes skills, communication, teamwork, leadership, and product knowledge. He set a rule that the highest performing sales person could rise to become store captains and beyond in the organization. And he knows that he needs to treat sales people fairly. The ability to influence, the commitment to team work and an elevated level of achievement orientation of sales people were reported. Crew members indicate that they felt empowered to made decisions and they collaborate their relationship with other crew members and customers. Q3: How Trader Joe is Performing Today & Problems that Trader Joe faces as it grows Trader Joe’s is a retailer brand that was founded in 1960’s. In the early year of its business, it runs as a dime store. During the competition with the famous 7-11, it changed its business strategies and started to offer some up-market products, such as wine, beverage and delicacies like bread, cookie, fruits and vegetables. After its first step of transition, Trader Joe’s suddenly changed its identity and became a supermarket chain brand. At the same time, Trader Joe’s pay lots of concentration on upgrading its customer services in order to attract more customers to come to the supermarket and do some purchase. Today, Trader Joe’s has supermarkets over than 360 locations, grossed over than 80 billion dollars. Trader Joe’s has 4 obvious operational features: offering low fat products, up-market meals, advanced customer services and highly integrate with the community and contributing a lot to the community. First of all, as the raise of living standard, more and more customers start to pursue high quality products. Trader Joe’s supply foods focus on strong nutrition and balanced diet. They also print some health diet guide to teach their customer how to live healthier, shows the norm of mineral, vitamin etc. Secondly, up-market meals supply is also a service, which has been highlighted as Trader’s special offer. They offer two different kinds of meals-What’s Cooking and Top Recipes. For What’s Cooking, they separate it into 5 sorts: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert and Snack. Their reasonable flow of service system made customers choose what they want easily. However, on the contrary, Top Recipes lists the top products that customers like. What Trader Joe’s offer to their customers are not only slap-up diets, but also their high quality, special, fresh service, matching the current trend of diet as well. Thirdly, Trader Joe’s emphasize the concept of the personalized service. Fresh things always attractive, Trader Joe’s set different theme inside the store, make sells interesting. Like the Hawaii style, assistances wearing the Hawaii traditional cloth, the manager been called captain at that period of time, even the store decoration using Hawaii beach style. Sales assistants help in offering the sample beverage and foods for foretaste and doing interaction with customers. This way, employer gave a strongly believe to employees and give them more space to communicate with customers in their own magic ways. Lastly, Trader Joe’s did a great support to the community. Retail industry is a business that provides products, services and building the selling stage. A good public face can strongly enhance its fame. In 2010, Trader Joe’s donated over 2500 pounds foods to those who needs help. It almost equals to 656 chucks food or 2000 over meals. Every Trader Joe’s store has a donation coordinator who takes charge of donating foods to the community where they are every day. Trader Joe’s faced some problem during its long development history. The most obvious one is when the administration board thought about how to spread Trader Joe’s store successfully into different areas. The research group is looking for a low price rent. A well place and a proper price would be concerned as two important factors. In addition, because Trader Joe’s run a high price high quality store, a fit customer base is also important. Nowadays, Trader Joe’s is pushing forward an international expansion. In United States, Trader Joe’s have had an unprecedented pressure. Tesco- a British 900-billion dollars chain store landed Los Angela’s, San Diego, Las Vegas trying to bite the same cake with Trader Joe’s. It is a big threatens to Trader Joe’s. As result, it is quite urgent for Trader Joe’s to establish the overseas market. NUS Introduction The NUS Business School is a leading business school in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the 2012 QS Global 200 Business School Report, NUS Business school was listed as the third best school in the Asia- Pacific region. NUS Business School has also consistently been named by prominent press sources like The Financial Times, Economist Intelligence Unit, and QS Top MBA, in recognition of the quality of its programmes, faculty research and graduates. In 2013, NUS MBA was ranked 36th in the world by The Financial Times. Besides its prestigious branding, the school has been able to produce more than 27000 outstanding graduates since 1966. Today, NUS continues to attract talents into a diverse range of academic programmes including the BBA, MBA, Executive MBA, MSc and PhD programmes. Each year, thousands of applicants locally and foreign vie for the limited positions in the institution and the entry grade has consistently been high. The NUS Business School also has a varied and vibra nt Student Exchange Program. The partner universities include New York University, University of British Columbia, Copenhagen Business School, Manchester Business School, Peking University and University of Melbourne. Organization: As a leading global university, NUS strives to have world-class faculty in strategic academic areas, as well as special expertise in relation to China, India, and other parts of Asia. The faculty in NUS are drawn from Singapore and the best centres around the world. NUS Enterprise was established as a University-level cluster to provide an enterprise dimension to NUS teaching and research involving the University’s students, staff and alumni. The functions of the Enterprise Cluster complement the academic cluster of the University to nurture talents with an entrepreneurial and global mindset. NUS Enterprise, promotes the spirit of innovation and enterprise through Experiential Education, Industry Engagement and Partnerships and Entrepreneurship Support. NUS Enterprise (ETP) provides an entrepreneurial and innovative dimension to the University’s core research and educational activities. By igniting the entrepreneurial spirit, partnering for success and nurturing future entrepreneurial leaders, NUS Enterprise aims to make a positive impact on Singapore’s economy and beyond. This is done through three key thrusts: Experiential Education, Industry Engagement & Partnerships, and Entrepreneurship Support. Structure Impact of technology The importance of technology in education cannot be stressed enough. The introduction of technology in the educational field has made the process of learning and knowledge sharing, a more interactive and pleasurable experience. Perhaps, the greatest impact of technology on education is the change in perspective. The paradigm shift in thinking from local to global can be attributed to technology. Indeed technology is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind. Technology’s Impact on Education Easy access to information Greater interest in learning Increased retention of information Robust information storage Better presentation of information Teaching made interactive Knowledge sharing made easy Technology has revolutionized the field of education. The importance of technology in schools cannot be ignored. In fact, with the onset of computers in education, it has become easier for teachers to impart knowledge and for students to acquire it. Technology is a teaching aid Computers offer an interactive audio-visual medium. PowerPoint presentations and animation software can be used to present information in an interactive way. Owing to the audio-visual effects, this way of teaching invites greater interest from students. The method is equally helpful for teachers. Projectors and screens facilitate simultaneous viewing of information by a large number of students. Addressing systems using microphones and speakers make it possible for teachers to reach a larger number of students simultaneously. These teaching aids have led to improvements in student attendance and their attentiveness in class. Interactive media have proven to be useful in increasing students’ concentration levels. Research If a school’s library is outdated or lacking in a selection of titles, a student might find it difficult to compile the necessary research for an essay or research paper. As long as the school has a computer lab, students are able to use the Internet and digital encyclopedias to obtain the research they need. While students should be wary of the legitimacy of some of the content they read online, many schools use software like the Encyclopedia Britannica to help students do research. Information is easily accessible The Internet is a huge information base. It can be used an effective tool for acquiring knowledge. All a web user needs to do is to key in queries to search engines. Users are presented with thousands of search results. There are several websites and web directories that offer information on literally everything in the world. And all this is just a few clicks away. Technology has eliminated space and time constraints Online education and distance learning have given a new dimension to education and higher learning. Even if students are geographically far away from each other, they can be a part of one classroom. Though not physically but virtually, they can. Many educational institutes offer online courses, which eliminates time and space constraints in acquiring education. Universities offer online educational programs wherein students can interact with their teachers over the Internet, access reference material from the University website and earn degrees online. The Race Will Be On For A New Instructional Model. As lecture content is moved online, instructors will be able to re-think the classroom experience. A new model for peer-to-peer and peer-to-faculty interaction will need to be created, as this is one of the most fundamental components of classroom learning. There is a huge opportunity for instructors to create a more in-depth learning experience, whether by incorporating real-time discussions with industry experts or building small group experiences online, all of which may allow for more personalization of courses to students’ needs. The beauty of teaching analytics is that teachers will have real time information on how students learn and can augment future plans accordingly. While this is a budding area of exploration and one where schools will need to invest in discovery, once they ‘crack the code’, it opens the door to a much more effective as well as potentially more scalable model. Mutual impact Today, computer education is a part of school and college curricula. Considering the wide range of applications of computer technology, it is necessary for each one of us to computer-friendly. Considering the advantages of Internet technology, it is important for each of us to gain basic knowledge of Internet access and web research. We live in a technology-age and hence, it is important for us to be abreast with the latest inventions in the field. With education, we acquire knowledge of the functioning and use of different pieces of technology. And with the application of technology, we can educate ourselves better. Web Seminars Not every school has the resources and budget to send its students on field trips related to the course of study. When this is the case, the students’ education can suffer. But thanks to technology, students can use the Internet to virtually attend Web seminars put on by museums and other educational institutions. NASA, for instance, offers a program that allows students to talk to astronauts in space. Recommendation NUS business school is a premier choice for business students looking for a grounded, well established institution to pursue their studies with. The school is well accredited and employers are no stranger to the household name. Prospective job seekers will be able to distinguish themselves with the good branding of NUS business school. In terms of the course structure, NUS business school provides a good collaboration with the 12 other faculties in NUS to provide a holistic education. Students are able to take electives ranging from chemistry, psychology and even theatre studies if they have a keen interest. The core subjects are taught by faulty alumni PHDs and experienced professors who have a wealth of knowledge to share. The subjects are well structured to equip students with skills that will benefit them a lifetime as well as invaluable knowledge that will prove useful on the business field. Furthermore, the ever growing NUS alumni serve as a good network for graduates to seek o ut good friendship, employment opportunities as well as support. Students will be able to interact with alumni members who may be invited back for guest talks and seminars. Conclusion NUS business school is a good choice for prospective students seeking out an education in business. The good accreditation, intricate and comprehensive course material as well as established lecturers providing the education are compelling reasons to make NUS business school the choice as an educator. Graduates from the course have been able to find employment in a wide variety of fields both locally and overseas, and this information has been consistent throughout the years from the employment surveys collated from graduates. As a provider of quality education and producer of all rounded graduates, the results and reputation speak for itself. References https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh873bLHUUwy-xOME4yJgfXfdStIVgy8XMNqCvu2uM72nzLmPQy5afbEbvzo6tzRHjk_dgMQi8LXwAYquJfTYk-RRfMt8kpu91haUjhIZ-hXc_U0nh-3OQs5ynGyS6UY4t5tYds3qdxk2U/s1600/nus_logo.jpg – NUS Logo http://www.traderjoes.com/index.asp Accessed on 10 June 2013 MARK MALLINGER, PHD and GERRY ROSSY, (2007, Volume 10 issue 2) http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/the-trader-joes-experience/ Accessed on 10 June 2013 http://www.nus.edu.sg/uci/about/OrgStructure.htm – The NUS organization structure http://www.buzzle.com/articles/impact-of-technology-on-education.html – The impact of Technology on education http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2012/12/11/5-ways-technology-will-impact-higher-ed-in-2013/ – The impact of Technology on education