Questions

case on pages 341-344 in your text.

1. What is the LA Galaxy “product”?

2. Which of the seven elements of the service marketing mix are most important in the LA Galaxy marketing program?

3. How is promotion (advertising, personal selling, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing) used by the LA Galaxy? Do these activities depend on the specific target markets?

4. How are social media integrated into the LA Galaxy’s marketing strategy?

5. How does the LA Galaxy assess the impact of its marketing activities? Has its program been successful?

Regional Airlines is establishing a new telephone system for handling flight reservations. During the 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM time period, calls to the reservation agent occur randomly at an average rate of one call every 3.75 minutes. Historical service time data show that a reservation agent spends an average of 3 minutes with each customer. The waiting line model assumptions of Poisson arrivals and exponential service times appear reasonable for the telephone reservation system. Regional Airlines management believes that offering an efficient telephone reservation system is important part of establishing an image as a service-oriented airline. If the system is properly implemented, Regional Airlines will establish good customer relations, which in the long run will increase business. However, if the telephone reservation system is frequently overloaded and customers have difficulty contacting an agent, a negative customer reaction may lead to an eventual loss of business. The cost of a ticket reservation agent is $20 per hour. Thus, management wants to provide good service, but it does not want to incur the cost of overstaffing the telephone reservation operation by using more agents than necessary. At a planning meeting, Regional’s management team agreed that an acceptable customer service goal is to answer at least 75% of the incoming calls immediately. During the planning meeting, Regional’s vice president of administration pointed out that the data show that the average service rate for an agent is faster than the average arrival rate of the telephone calls. The vice president’s conclusion was that personnel costs could be minimized by using one agent and that single agent must be able to handle the telephone reservations and still have some idle time. The vice president of marketing restated the importance of customer service and expressed support for at least two reservation agents. Answer to the following questions to help prepare a managerial report to analyze the telephone reservation system with one agent as proposed by the vice president of administration.

11. What is the average number of callers waiting to speak with an agent?

12. What is the average number of callers in the system?

13. How many minutes on average a caller must wait to speak with the agent?

14. How many minutes on average a caller spends in the system (including waiting to speak with the agent and talk duration with the agent)?

3. What are the seven challenges for managers?

4. Name the four Functions of management

5. What are the levels of management?

You have a supply chain of your choice which serves your needs in the service industry of selling fresh fruits and vegetables to super market chains.

• Define supply chain management as it relates to your industry.
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of having a supply chain support.
• What are normally the supply chain performance drivers as you view it.

Your company has a Quality Control ( QC ) department who assist you in TQM activities. To promote TQM in your organization, please list for the QC department, your understanding on the following :

• What are the determinants of quality ?
• What are the consequences of poor quality ?
• What is TQM ?
• List the elements of TQM ?

Discuss in detail (keeping the artical in mind), the various business environments that Hungry Lion operates in as they have an impact on these successful operations of the business. 20 Marks

The Continent’s Progressive QSR Player

Stellenbosch-based fast food specialist Hungry Lion has found ideal footing for expansion over the coming years, owed to optimised operations and an admirable outlook

Writer: Jonathan Dyble | Project Manager: Josh Hyland

Adrian Basson is a self-described Afro-optimistic. “There’s no hiding from the fact that there are a lot of challenges in Africa, but retail is a promising sector when it comes to facilitating opportunities, creating employment and generally building a business that can have a widespread impact,” he says.

“When you reach a remote town with an empty plot, the local people don’t often have much. But as we’ve built new stores and helped to launch new shopping centres, we’ve been able to not only witness, but also facilitate the construction of new, thriving ecosystems. We’re proud to be a business that contributes to the success of these societies – I guess you could say we’re a capitalist business with a socialist outlook.”

Basson, now CEO, became part of the Hungry Lion story in 2001 and has seen the company come a long way over the past two decades to be the responsible, esteemed organisation it is today.

Having opened its first restaurant in South Africa in 1997, the business today proudly operates a network constituting over 200 stores across South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Angola, with over 4,000 Hungry Lion employees. Looking at the bigger picture, however, such statistics only touch the surface of what the brand is bringing to the region.

“In many ways I like to think that our product is an afterthought in what we’re looking to achieve,” explains Basson. “Yes, serving bigger portions, more chips and more smiles is key to our operations, but it’s just one part of our overriding goal – providing joy to our employees, customers and local communities through food, served with passion.”

This ethos is relatively new to the firm, becoming more of a core focus during the company’s major rebranding process that kickstarted in 2014. Having originally been part of the Shoprite Group, Africa’s largest food supermarket chain, Hungry Lion is now a totally independent company in its own right with a unique brand and character.

“In the beginning, we weren’t really building a brand,” reveals Basson. “We purely sold chicken and chips at an affordable price on a somewhat ad-hoc basis. However, we eventually found ourselves with 100-plus stores, and with the economic challenges that came around in 2008/09, we realised that stores without a brand, a story, and an experience would fail to deliver in the long term. It was a case of changing with the times and we invested a lot into the design of our stores, our product quality and consistency, together with the development of the brand itself.”

Since transitioning from being a business-centric to a customer-centric brand, Hungry Lion has reaped the rewards with the business undergoing stratospheric growth over the past few years.

Adding a modern twist

Moving in this re-energised direction, strategy changes quickly followed for Hungry Lion, evidence of which can be found in the firm’s increasing use and the implementation of revolutionary technologies.

Fast forward to today, the company now benefits from artificial intelligence, automated system checks, cloud computing and live dashboards – technologies which serve multiple purposes in the way of driving the business forward. This together with an always connected workforce, makes executing operationally so much more efficient.

“I’ve always had a connection with technology,” Basson reveals. “I used to work in the technology division of Compaq in London and also formerly as the Chief Digital Officer of Shoprite for a period. We live in an era where we can augment the people with technology to do the repetitive stuff, so that they can focus on the more human touches.”

In a space where most others in the fast food industry are franchised and owner-managed, Hungry Lion is unique in the African landscape, with almost all stores being fully-owned and managed from its Head Office. This is where automated systems and clever use of technology comes to the forefront in managing the business over vast distances and across borders.

“With technology comes data and with data comes insight,” Basson continues. “Using our systems, we’re able to see the performance of each of our stores in real time, have an overview of customer experience, and execute plans to fix problems at speed and scale. These capabilities would never have been possible if we didn’t have the right technologies in place.” With full visibility of information comes accountability, since everyone can see what needs to be done and if it was done. Transparency is a crucial merit of these technologies, a cultural trait of Hungry Lion that is accentuated in other ways.

Basson adds: “We have a network of area, country and regional managers who act as an extension of our Head office in Stellenbosch. Head office employees pay regular visits to different regions to keep a finger on the pulse of local operations. Our area and country managers, in turn, come to Head Office regularly for updates to business processes, training, and meetings. This constant exposure in both directions ensures that best practises are shared and implemented to all stores quickly.”

Prosperous career planning

Combined with both these expansive technologies and a transparent, remodelled structure, Hungry Lion recognises that its staff are key to achieving the firm’s ongoing ambitions.

To this end, the company ensures that it provides extensive benefits to its employees, bolstering its position as an employer of choice and equally its talent retention capabilities.

Such initiatives include the introduction of E-learning materials in five languages and the company’s live in-house training platform from LessonDesk, a comprehensive new employee assistance programme, access to affordable healthcare for employees and more specialised and tailored training programmes.

What’s more, Hungry Lion has a strong focus on career planning, testament to its culture of internal promotion.

“Typically speaking, joining a fast food business as the lowest level of employee, the pay isn’t fantastic and it’s not uncommon for these workers to have bigger aspirations,” explains Basson. “What we’ve realised is you can either listen to and facilitate these ambitions, or your workers will leave and look for opportunities elsewhere. We like to pursue the former, providing clear career paths for our inspirational and aspirational workers. From cashiers to controllers to junior managers to regional managers, and so on, this personal growth structure is in place at Hungry Lion.”

A core part of the company’s ethos, providing key opportunities to reward loyalty and ambition, Hungry Lion offers not just a job but an all-encompassing opportunity to build a prosperous career.

A sound, responsible outlook

Such a humble and grounded approach is not only applied internally, but equally externally through a number of corporate social responsibility initiatives.

These are built around Hungry Lion’s three-pillar CSR strategy, with the organisation contributing towards hunger alleviation, championing change in local communities and promoting skills development.

Between February and March of this year alone, for example, the company provided food for the attendees of a seminar addressing the issue of domestic violence, pupils of an underprivileged primary school during a field trip and fire fighters in the Western Cape, while also supporting a Soweto children’s home and a local police station’s cricket tournament for rural schools.

“It’s an element to our business that we take pride in,” reveals Basson. “We like to show that we care for our communities, customers and especially our employees and their families. There’s a lot of need in Africa from a poverty standpoint and being in the food business we’re able to help local communities in addressing such issues. I wouldn’t say we have a set agenda – ad hoc opportunities arise, and we react accordingly in each of the locations that we’re based, helping to give people a sense of purpose and promote skills of local communities.”

Asked about a particular such initiative that springs to mind, Basson is quick to highlight the company’s efforts in supporting the Zambian people during a cholera outbreak at the beginning of 2017.

He continues: “We immediately lowered the prices of our food, ensuring people could get nutritious, safe and affordable food, we donated money to the government that was used to help with the clean-up process. We even provided sanitation kits to our staff, helping them clean their own living environments to ensure their family’s health.”

Having developed a culture that is firmly centred around providing benefit to all people, whether it’s supporting local communities or providing unrivalled, progressive career opportunities, Hungry Lion’s outlook is unique and admirable.

Opportunity is a word that is creating an atmosphere of excitement within the company at the moment, with continued expansion firmly on the table for Hungry Lion after experiencing double digit percent organic growth over the past two years.

“We’ve set 20 new stores as a benchmark, but realistically this is a ball-park figure on the conservative side,” reveals Basson. “If we can open 50 stores then we’ll do it – if we find a good site where we can profitably trade, we will open. There aren’t any specific limitations.”

New systems and optimised procedures in place, last year’s corporate action, focus on organic growth, and consolidation allowed Hungry Lion to not only transition into independence, but equally provided the platform for the company to gear up for full throttle expansion over the coming years.

“We’re realistic at the same time,” Basson continues. “We understand that we cannot conquer the whole continent in 2019 or 2020, but the plan is to grow as fast as possible. Africa has around 1.2 billon people but in the next three decades this number will double. Further, there are 54 countries across Africa, countries that we know we’ll have a good chance of being able to expand into, whether it be through franchises, joint ventures, or other kinds of partnerships. The opportunities are immense, and I feel our business is a prime example as to why it’s a great time to be investing on the continent right now. I just hope that others will come and join us in the fun!”

Carefully follow the instructions below. [60 marks]

1.1 Identify and discuss four important pieces of legislation about local government that were passed in the dawn of the democratic dispensation in South Africa . 1.2 The various levels of government cannot exist in isolation – they are widely influenced by the environments that exist all around them. Identify and discuss any 4 external environments for the local government. 1.3 Examine the main functions of the Municipal Demarcation Board. 1.4 Briefly outline the 3 categories of municipalities.

Case: Overshipped & Short-shipped
China's Company A imported wheat from a foreign company. It was contracted "Quantity: 2,000,000 M/T, USD 100 per M/T FOB ..." But the foreign company shipped 2,300,000 M/T.
Question:
(1) How to deal with the over-shipped goods?
(2) What if the foreign company only shipped 1,800,000 M/T?

Consider BMW-

Globalization represents the opportunity to deliver improved value to end customer to developing a world class supply relationships in terms of cost,quality,deliver and performance.More and more buyers will have to learn to develop a supply chain base in more than one country in order to remain competitive in the complex and dynamic global business environment. Identify a company of your choice(in a vehicle manufacturing industry) on which you will base your study. Write a detailed report on the above statement considering the following questions:

Question 1 Critically analyse reasons that may cause your company to consider an international supplier over a local supplier. (20)

Scenario:
You have recently gained employment as a Trainee Engineering Manager with a large multinational company which manufactures electrical machines and transducers, including transformers, motors, generators, sensors and actuators.

Your line manager has tasked you with creating a report to indicate your level of knowledge in engineering management.

Activity:
Within your report you have specifically been instructed to provide written solutions to the following questions.
Task:
a) Discuss the main features of project and operations management tools used to manage activities and various resources within the engineering industry. What are the most effective tools to employ when managing activities and optimising the allocation of resources? Present a table which compares the relative merits of such tools.

b) Compare what can be used to improve management processes within the engineering industry? Which activities will improve management strategies? How do you think management strategies may be improved in certain circumstances or situations?

In quality control, statistical process control (SPC ) is often employed to analyze the process capability in manufacturing or service operations. Explain the following with an example each :

• What is a p chart  ?
• What is a c chart ?

There are 3 machines in your factory which can produce a ruler. The rulers as produced has a spread in length between 12.5 thru 12.4 inch.

Given the standard deviation of the 3 machines are as follows, calculate the process capability of each machine. Which of the 3 machines has the best process capability index ?

Write a letter to the manager of a restaurant you lunch at stating :
a) what you like about the restaurant
b) describe two problems you experience there
c) suggest two ways of solving the problem.

Use the fully- blocked layout in your answer (350 words)

You have recently been appointed as contract manager of a new Japanese airline, 新しいサニー航空 (in Japanese : The New Sunny Airline). This company is opening new destinations and is interested to contract with General Sales Agents in a few countries. Those countries include at the moment : France, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Iran.

A) A major question arises : which legal system to regulate the contract to choose ? Where to sue and which may be the applicable law ? Details in length the various possibilities, taking into account all the possible paths, pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages of all systems. Take into account the various countries where you are supposed to operate.

B) A second question : when drafting a series of contracts for the above transaction (NDA, MOU and final agreement), is it advisable for me to choose different jurisdiction options in each document ?

As businesses increasingly emphasize workplace ethics, you may be asked in an interview to tell about a time when you were challenged ethically. One workplace compliance officer advised candidates not to respond that you have never faced an ethical challenge. "You want a candidate," he said, "who avoids misconduct, not someone who lies and says they've never done anything wrong." Do you agree?