C & C Grocery

C & C grocery store currently operates under a goal approach. They were committed to customer service and satisfaction. This approach provided the grocery chain with the profitability and growth they strived to obtain. The stores operative goals were attained and the chain had over 200 stores in operation. For years overall performance for C & C was excellent and came with ease. Unfortunately employee development and innovation and change weren't a top priority and it began to show. To remain successful C & C had to outsource and get advice from a team of consultants. The team dissected the company from top to bottom and advised the chain to implement an internal approach to go along with the goal approach. Implementing the internal approach will give the store managers full control of their stores which they do not currently possess. The store managers should be knowledgeable in all areas of the store to be able to fully communicate with staff. It was difficult for the district managers to give each store location the time and attention they needed when they were responsible for several other stores. Giving store managers more responsibility was a terrific idea of the consultants because the store managers have more day to day customer and employee interaction and could better assist needs. C & C was in desperate need of providing employee training and development. Cross training is beneficial for company as well as employees. Employees get the opportunity to learn other job positions and have the ability for advancement opportunities within the company. The company benefits from cross training because it provides flexibility if a store is short staffed, and it provides empowerment. A store full of happy employees from management down will give more incentive to continue to provide excellent customer service and satisfaction.

The consulting team served as an analyzer and was very beneficial because they also encouraged C & C grocery to take on a focus differentiation to gain a competitive advantage. C & C should focus on their current customer base but also innovate. More departments (i.e. floral, pharmacy, gourmet/specialty) could be added to the stores to create one-stop shopping. Although they could not lower prices to compete with the Wal-Marts of the world they could venture into new possibilities to create more customer loyalty. For instance, if C & C had a pharmacy customers' could get their groceries and medicine in one location. Many customers would choose C & C grocery over Wal-Mart because of the friendly atmosphere and the stores desire to surpass their current expectations. This could put C &C in a realm of its own because larger retail stores have forgotten about customer satisfaction.

C & C Grocery's been in business for over 50 years and has a great customer base. It is very important for this company to continue to maintain customer loyalty so understanding their desires should be a high priority being that competition is increasing. The "Models of Effectiveness Values" allows management to take initiative and decide what is important for success and what can handle being a lower priority. In previous years, C & C didn't handle human relations in a respectable manner. In order to continue to have customer loyalty and profitability, employee morale is important as well. I believe that C&C should adopt human relation emphasis along with open systems and implementing these will allow the company to adapt to environmental changes and have a better working relationship with employees. The human relation emphasis will reduce low cooperation and reinvent the friendly atmosphere. There will no longer be dissatisfied employees due to being in stagnant job positions because of training and development. This is important because employees are interacting with customers on a daily basis and they are the largest representation of the company. In my opinion, happy employees equal happy and loyal customers which equal profit. The open system emphasis provides flexibility which will allow easy adaptation to change. C&C district managers should examine the environment around each store and adapt accordingly.

The initial organizational structure of C &C was a vertical linkage because there were strict management and a ton of specialization within the organization. This really brought dissatisfaction and frustration to the store manager because he was treated as a regular employee and not as an equal to upper management. He wasn't able to make any decisions concerning his store. The staff was taught how to handle situations without communicating with their managers.

The centralized decision making made the work environment very unstable because the meat and produce managers acted as if they were