Grocery Checkout Inc GCO Case Solution

2. Problem definition

The CEO of GCO, Nathan Felder has been asked by investors as well as personally wants to attempt faster growth. The situation facing him is one of critical importance as they need substantial investment and manpower to launch them. With a higher investment target, the return will also take more time.

3. SMART Goals

For a business, goals are part of every aspect: they provide a general as well as a specific sense of direction, a clear focus, motivation, and clarify the importance of goals. A goal is a target to be achieved: a SMART approach is applied to goal setting to help set better goals. In this case, SMART is an acronym: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely. A SMART goal is one that incorporates these criteria to set goals that are focused, clear and possible for the business to achieve (Bjerke & Renger, 2017).

4. Critical Issues

The major issue facing GCO is the demand from investors to increase business and profitability. To do so, GCO needs to focus on its capabilities and the opportunities that are available in the market. The critical issues facing GCO at this point are:

• Technological advancements in the area of online shopping which makes it even easier to place orders for the customers: With the advent of the smartphones consumers especially those in the younger age bracket are looking for more convenient options. While GCO has a strong website, its presence in the social media and the application section is low. Not only does this make it difficult to share word of mouth for the younger age brackets but also is considered a hassle to go to the website (JinLim, Osman, Salahuddin, Romle, & Abdullah, 2016). With social media marketing, it is an easy option to like, share and recommends the business to peers and other page visitors. The need for applications is high at this point as it makes it easier to order while on the go: students and young professionals' even moms can place orders while walking, or during a few free minutes in the day. The operational aspect will not be impacted since the app and website can be combined into one portal at the back end, and processing can be done as usual (Foroudi, Gupta, Sivarajah, & Broderick, 2018).

• Competitors in the Western and London area: there are only brick and mortar stores located around the Western campus and the London downtown area. The closest online competitors are based in the Greater Toronto area. This is a huge strength for GCO since the need of the Western area is for an online delivery service for grocery items based on quality and reliability. However, competitors with their customer base size as well as store capacities can negotiate lower prices from suppliers by buying in bulk. This is the main cause of reluctance to switch to online shopping in relation to groceries since these discounts are not offered by GCO (Misra, Baranwal, & Jha, 2017).

• At this point, GCO has no permanent staff. This is an issue since temporary workers have a high turnover and cannot match the dedicated focus to work for a growing business. Since only the CEO is a permanent employee, it falls to him to maintain smooth processing as well as ensuring quality and timely delivery. Other competitors have dedicated trained staff which makes business operations and customer dealings smooth sailing (Hameed & Waheed, 2011).

5. Decision Criteria

For GCO, decision criteria will be based on the following:

i. Ease of implementation

With almost no permanent sales force, this criterion is an important aspect that needs to be considered by GCO. 

ii. Cost

With investors pushing for growth and having recently invested in the company, this is a factor that GCO needs to consider in detail.

iii. Risk level

Bing a newer company, the books of GCO are not that strong to take on higher risks.

iv. Increase in sales

The main aim to grow the business is to increase sales which will translate into more profitability for the investors and GCO.

v. Return on investment

More profitability with low investment will allow for a higher return on investments.

vi. Customer satisfaction

This is a tricky factor since it cannot be quantified easily but without a focus on it, there will no to minimum growth.