Oz Supermarket Innovation In Management †Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Oz Supermarket Innovation In Management? Answer: Introduction This report is a case study of Oz Supermarket change which has implemented a new technology that would be explored here to understand the potential of innovation in the retail space. This report deals with two key questions with respect to retail stores that include exploration of the innovation used in the retail space and of methods used for improving customer service. The paper explores the case of Oz Super market that has applied technology innovation to its retail store payment systems by installing a PayWave technology that allows customers to make purchases on the go without the need to stand in queues waiting to complete transactions. The store sells household goods, non-perishable items and stationary. With the implementation of PayWave technology, the shopping experience of customers would improve as shopping will become fast and more convenient. The report would also explore more potential ways that customer services can be improved in the store besides this newly implemen ted technology. Business operation Oz Supermarket is a retail store that sells household, stationery and non-perishable goods in the store. Recently, the retailer has implemented an innovative payment and delivery system to reduce the inconvenience of customers that is caused by waiting in long queues for making payments. Customers of today have less time and thus, they always look for services that are fast and waiting in queues of payment is seen as a major cause of inconvenience for such a customer. The new technology has solved this problem by deploying a PayWave technology in which the customers can make automatic payments that get calculated as they add the items in the cart while shopping and while leaving the shop, they just need to wave the card to make the payments which gets deducted from the card balance. PayWave technology utilizes a contactless payment system that comes with a card which has money balance filled using which the purchases can be made from the store. The cart is connected with this prepaid card such that with every item addition, the corresponding bill gets generated and charged to the connected card. Each cart uses a RFID reader which records the details of the items added and updates the same in the membership card. In case, the customer is new and does not have any membership card, a cash amount is taken by the cashier against whom a new card is immediately issued using which shopping can be continued by the store visitor. In the case, shopping items exceed the card limit; an alarm rings to alert the customer and the store staff. Besides this technology, the retailer offers some more services to its customers such as display of shopping summary of cart at stations and timed car parking facilities allowing low cost parking in non-peak periods. A the shopping cart it self adds to the bill and updates the same in the card, customers do not have to wait for billing and payment which saves time as well as brings convenience to the customer (Reinartz, Dellaert, Krafft, Kumar, Varadarajan, 2011). Recommendations There are several retail store modes that exist in the world such as Amazon and Carrefour. These models can be explored to understand what recent retail innovations have been used in the industry such that their best practices are identified and can be used for making recommendations for the improvement of the Oz Supermarket retail store. Thus, these models were explored and certain recommendations were drawn from the lessons including: Google had launched a concept called Zero Moment of truth (ZMOT) that used the conversations between the company and its customers while they went through the process of purchase including sales talks, customer reviews, and direct customer interactions, to explore customers. If the same technology can be adopted for the Oz supermarket, it would help the retailer track buyer behavior in the journey of purchase which can help the retailer understand the needs and preferences of customers such that better marketing and other plans can be formulated to improve the customer service(Nielsen , 2013). Instead of just the store, Oz can make use of multiple channels to reach out to their customers such as ecommerce system that allows customers to make orders online or do pre-orders for goods that can be picked from the store upon visit. As online selling systems are increasing day by day with more and more customers adopting it, absence of the facility would make the company lose on opportunities. An addition of the online and home delivery purchase option would add convenience of shopping to customer and increase sales for the retailer. Oz superstore can launch a mobile application which customers can use for tracking their purchases or may be explore additional features like surfing lists, recipe recommendations, a and so on. The application would serve as a guide to picking, refining quantities, and scheduling deliveries. This would add to convenience for the customer thereby enhancing customer satisfaction because of enhanced shopping experience. An increase in satisfaction can result into increased number of customers buying from Oz superstore. Improve customer service The customer service at the Oz superstore can be improved by the retailer in several ways that have been discovered upon studying various methods and strategies used by other successful retailers in the world. These strategies include: Communication strategy: Keeping a control over the operational costs is very challenging in a retail organization as it needs employees of the company to be productive as well as the processes to be efficient. Communication can help employees of the store and its managers collaborate and work effectively. If a two-way radio system can be implemented allowing continuous communication between them then it can help employees stay focused and solve issues of slow requests and out of stock conditions. Moreover, customer complaints can also responded to easily such that they can be tackled well. Retail Markdown Optimization: Retailers have a lot of market pressure from competition as in this industry, consumer preferences keep on changing as retailers respond to these changing demands quickly to retain more customers with them. The objective of any retail establishment is to makes sales in a way that maximizes its profits. In such a situation, a strategy called Retail Markdown Optimization can be used such that retailer can take right decisions on inventory and pricing while taking care of the business constraints. This innovation in inventory management would enable company to take appropriate decisions on manipulation of the prices and stocking of the goods as per seasonal requirements. This would help retailer avoid problematic situations like too low pricing leading to margin reduction and too high pricing discouraging customers from purchasing thereby reducing demand and increasing left over stock. Oz Supermarket already forecasts its demand but it does not consider the complete product life cycle which can be done with the retail mark down optimization enabling retailer to judge the impacts of the decisions on the full product life cycle such that full merchandize value can be realized(Marx Erasmus, 2006). There are some applications available in the market that can be used for retail markdown optimization such as retail applications from oracle and SAS that are used for inventory management, merchandize clearance, product life cycle pricing and study of impacts of promotion (Oracle, 2015). Variations in the consumer demand can be incorporated as per geography or demography such that most profitable markdown events can be created and most profitable inventory locations can be identified. The optimization would thus improve eth performance of the store by helping it achieve its financial targets by taking right pricing decisions that help maximize the profits. Best deals can be formulated for extending benefits to customers while at the same time ensuring that the retailer is also benefited appropriately(Dydacomp, 2014). Besides these technological developments suggested, there can be some more methods that would help the retailer improve its customer service at the store and some of them are recommended below: Creation of customer oriented culture: a culture that is focused on the customer service can be instilled in the organization by aligning the staff of the superstore towards this goal. For this, first the staff would be selected on the basis of their tendency to serve customers and then structures would be formed supporting customer support. Customer satisfaction may be measured from time to time such that teams are both aware and focused on customer service (Salmon, 2013). Total Customer Experience: The store can provide certain add-on services for its customers over its core and basic services which would give a wholesome experience to the customer beginning from the entry in the store till the exit. Wave card is already a technology implemented that would take care of the inconvenience caused to customers as they keep standing in queues waiting to make final purchases. However, some more facilities such as appropriate lightening, easy navigation, and soothing music can be added to enhance the experience and thereby the customer satisfaction (CSSP, 2007). Improving business operations Business operations of the Supermarket store can also be improved using following methods: Data Analytics: The point sales data can be analyzed using data analytics systems such that most appropriate mechanizing techniques and promotional strategies can be formulated for different customers based on their segments. These segments could be based on psychographics or demographics. The retailer may also store the in-store experiences of consumers and use the same for analyses such that loyalty programs can be designed or improved based on consumer preferences(IBM, 2010). Automated inventory management: The inventory at the store can be managed using automatic processes that would enhance the efficiency as well as improve the accuracy of the inventory management system. The activities that can be automated in these processes can include tagging of products, printing, layout designing, price management, and so on. This would help retailer streamline its operations beginning from the activity of receiving stocks. Coding the products, tagging them, picking from store, and packing, shipping in case of home deliveries, item tracking and inventory replenishment when the stock is getting over. The resulting benefits would be reduced errors, reduced resource requirements, increased sales, increased customer satisfaction and increased productivity(Motorola Solutions, Inc., 2013). Conclusions The report explored the operations of a retail store called Oz Super market that has recently installed a PayWave technology that allows customers to make payments through a prepaid card on the go eliminating the need for them to wait at the billing counter for building and payment. They would pick the items to put in the cart which would be linked with the card such that the price for every item added gets deducted from the card balance automatically and the final payment is received at the store at the time of exit when the customer waves the card at a machine. There were some more technologies and other customer serve enhancement strategies that were discussed in the paper such as automated inventory management, markdown optimization, zero moment of truth, multichannel promotions, ecommerce implementation, mobile application development, real time data analytics, real time communication management, total customer experience management ,and so on. All these strategies were found to be innovate and were used in other retail stores that got benefited with improved efficiency of services, increased customer satisfaction, enhanced decision making in terms of pricing, promotion, and inventory management, and so on. Thus, the methods can be recommended for Oz supermarket such that the addition of these technologies and implementation of the suggested strategies would being major operational as well as strategic benefits for the organization which would be beneficial for the organization into eh long run. Some benefits that can be expected with these implementations include profitability enhancement, customer loyalty enhancement, reduction in errors, increased customer satisfaction, improved customer experience, increased product life cycle values, and so on References CSSP. (2007). Customer Satisfaction: IMPROVING QUALITY AND ACCESS TO SERVICES AND SUPPORTS IN VULNERABLE NEIGHBORHOODS. Center for Study of Social Policy. Dydacomp. 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