How Have They Been Involved in the Strategic Planning Process at the Company?

...

- What is the company’s current strategy? How would it be described to the public or investors?

Since we are a retail store, we spend a lot of our planning on communication strategies. We believe that communication strategies are most important in the retail world because they evolve as consumer media changes. We base our communication strategies on 3 factors; recognition, technology, and social media. Recognition is very important because it helps us get recognized amongst potential customers who are in the market for furniture. We use any form of advertising that is proven most effective, such as door to door mail, TV commercials, our website, and most importantly digital ADS. Technology is rising, and smartphones in specific. Research suggests that smartphones could be our only computer. We are making it much easier for our customers to shop our website through their mobile device, than any of our competitors. Social media, and technology work together. By upgrading our technologies, a social media communication strategy can help us involve our customers to get more feedback on our products. This is done by creating blogs, linking social networking websites like Facebook, twitter, etc., to our website. However, in combining all the three factors of our communication strategies, we are developing a new technology that can bring us major recognition through social media. This technology is what I call “The price beater”. This is a program that would allow customers to get a better price on anything they see online. And none of our competitor have it. This is an example step by step procedure of what this program can do:

- The customer finds a bedroom set on wayfair.com that is priced at $3999.99

- The customer grabs that specific link from Wayfair, and submits it to our price beater search bar on our website, and hits the button that says (Beat this price)

- In a matter of minutes, the customer will get a notification of either a better price, matched price, or we can’t get it.

In determining whether this new strategy would work or not, we used confirmation bias to confirm, and disconfirm this strategy. The pros were much greater than the cons, and so we are moving ahead with this strategy to test just how effective it can be.

- Does the company have a vision, mission, or values statement? If so, what is it?

We are a profitable business focused on traditional, contemporary, transitional, and custom furniture manufacturing. We specialize is custom design that is reflected in the high quality of our products. The development of our business rests on research, effective manufacturing, growth, and administration procedure. Our concerns for our customers is shown through qualified, professional teams, focused on innovation, and solutions. Our mission is to provide innovative custom furniture designed for living, sleeping, working, dinning, and more. We offer our customers the option to customize their furniture to suit their exact design, size, and comfort. We are very adaptable and open for change in a constantly shifting market.

- How is the strategy communicated to others in the organization?

I mentioned above how when we make a decision, we conduct a SWOT analysis. In the collecting data/brainstorming stage, our managers return to their staff and involve them in being part of the strategy development process. We learned in this course that strategic decisions emerge through interaction with others inside the organizations. And that is what my team and I precisely focus on when making a decision. Others in the organizations such as employees often communicate directly with customers. It is required of my managers before conducting the SWOT analysis to have a meeting, and explain clearly what our strategies are, and how they can impact the company. Also, as I mentioned before, my managers often remind our employees how our strategies are linked to our core purpose, and mission.