Panera Bread Case Study Summary
MGMT: 479: Strategic Management
Panera Bread. Still Rising Fortunes?
Kokou T. Klu
Columbia College
Recommendation for issues facing the company.
Finding of facts, and recommendation.
The cruise line industry is, without a doubt, one of the most popular and prosperous tourist industries in America today. According to the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA). I have been hired as a strategic management consultant by Carnival Cruise Line which is the biggest cruise line in the world. The company currently has a robust name and the SWOT analyses look very fabulous. As a consultant of the Company I can guide the CEO of the company regarding the introduction …show more content…
of new technologies, facilities and its impact of the financial performance of the Company. Carnival Corporation is the largest cruise line company in the world, comprise of more than 10 cruise brands and different aspects of the Hotels industry to bring money to the company. With over 90,000 employees with offices scattered all over the world, the central and cooperate offices are located in Miami Florida. “The World’s Most Popular Cruise Line”.(Carnival, 2006) came to light in 1972 when Ted Arison had a vision to create the biggest and luxurious cruise line in the world. After lot of success in the business world, the company decide to go public in 1987 by entering in the New York Stock Exchange.
To compete effectively with other cruise lines, Carnival introduce lot of onboard activities like amusement park, Night club, Bingo night, Gym, shopping mall, Movie Theater, casino. Carnival is a floating city. All those are introduce to strengthen the competencies between competitors. We need to analyze the company to get a better understanding of what is going on, the situation at hand and make recommendation accordingly.
. My analysis and recommendations are as follows:
*Internal Assessment: Carnival Corporation have a strong structure organization.
One of the biggest success of Carnival Cruise is the powerful structure of the management. They have a different divisions and everyone know what they are doing. The successful companies in the world are those run by talented and experiences leaders with strong commitment interests in the success of the business. I want to put a particular emphasis on the strategy, organizational structure and culture of the CCL. For Carnival Cruise, here are the key directors:
Director
Position
Micky Arison
Chairman and chief executive
Howard Frank
Vice chairman and chief operating officer
Micky Arison is pretty much the general on the field. The billionaire is the son of the co-founder and work hard through the echelon to become CEO of the company in 1979 and chairman in 1990. His family interest control 27% of the combined voting power after steering the company growth through acquisition and merger, particularly the merger with P&O Princess Cruises, in 2003. It starts from CEO & Chairman Micky Arison, the next tier down is Howard S Frank as the COO who over sees all businesses of company, within that same tier is David Bernstein who is CFO of all Businesses. The Next tier down is Richard Ames SVP of Shared Services, within same tier Arnaldo Perez SVP General Counsel and Secretary. (David, 2013)
*Carnival, Financially strong and sound company.
Looking at couple years of Carnival 10K data, SWOT analysis from Financial Statement and Balance sheet, we can see that Carnival is the biggest cruise line operator in the world. The analysis of ratios is broken up into five segments including, liquidity, activity, profitability, asset management and leverage. Taking a deep look within these segment, we can come up with the company current ratio to total debt to assets and the data clearly indicate that the company is strong and sound financially. In 2009, Carnival had an Accounts Receivable Turnover of 37, had increased by 27% for a total of 47 in 2010. During 2011 you see a 30% increase in accounts receivable turnover which left them with a ratio of .61 in 2011. Carnival shows they are able to extend credit and collect in a 30 day timeframe.
Looking at Carnivals Return on Asset percentage and the SWOT analysis, we can confirm that Carnival has lower liquidity ratios, has a good management of its asset, and relies less on debt to finance its assets.
*Carnival, World class service.
The motto of the company is simple. The “Fun Ship” is there motto and that is what they would like to be known for and that is what they project. Nowadays, cruise line vacation doesn’t belong to the few fortunate anymore. That was the focus of Carnival Company and their main focus is to offer world class luxurious service at a fraction of the price. The number one priority is eth make sure the customers to have memorable experiences and come back next time. They want to attract a variety of folks from different cultures, demographic and ways of life. They want to be known as the” Fun Ship” and that is the main focus, and that is the reason why they spend countless hours, days trying to create activities that the competitors do not have. They move around 600,000 folks a week and all years around and so far folks always come back because they love the experience. The main concepts that Carnival tries to achieve is to be known as “Fun Ship”, along with all the amenities that go with it such as Luxury, elegance and exotic destination. (David, 2013)
To help and assist the agent on the field generate more sales, Carnival has invested a huge amount of money on the marketing field of the company, were they offer 10% commission to their travel agents and offer a bonus program as well base on how much revenue the sale agent is generating. Their website division has created promotional campaigns that offer discounts, VIP savings, resident discounts, special meals, and holiday deals. (David, 2013). Market conditions for the cruise industry is growing and for the last five years the cruise industry has been growing at 8% each year. (Cruise tourism, 2010) and Carnival is leading the charge.
*External factors. Economic, Social / Cultural / Demographic, Technological, political.
Like I said earlier, the Cruise line industry is growing faster and more people from different cultures, demographic and social classes are travelling today than ever before. Lot of economic metrics such as growth in markets, currency rates, clientele economic position are involved in the success of the company.
The social side is more center on the demographics, and age of their customers.
For example if a certain demographic and age, has a positive experience on their vacation. Then a positive trend will occur for that demographic and age segment. Social studies are important to the cruise industry to determine marketing opportunities on certain segments of the cruise industry. Cultural factors a very important. As a customer, you will be better off taking a cruise line versus plane if you want to go to place like the Caribbean, Alaska, Western Mexico, Mediterranean, Europe, South America and Asia pacific. Pulling into all these port will depend on the relationship between the government and the cruise line. This is very critical to the success of the port visited. The government will be directly involved on taxes fees, trade restrictions and so on. If you don’t have agreements with the government, grease the wheel, then it will be very difficult to do business in these countries. Governments and Political factors work hand and hand in the cruise industry. The government need to assure the safety of the customers when they come spend money by staying at hotels and buy souvenirs in your country. Especially nowadays that we have unsettle conflicts and pirates controlling the seas, Cruise ship need local governments for protection and the cruise industry offers an increase of local employment within the city and its ports. For example restaurants, hotels, taxis, theme parks, museums, shops, taxi drivers and travel guides are all positively affected. In some countries tourism brings large sums of revenues to the local city and governments. This enhances the relationship with cruise companies and Politicians.
Recommendations on issue facing the company.
Economy can affect the cruise company and since Carnival generate majority of its revenue in North America it is hard to keep staying on the other side of the red line if actions are not taken.
The porters Five Force should be the five basics that should influence our decision all the time. But with cruise lines, we need to add a sixth element like local government power, local community and regulations, etc...(Hunger, 39).
Make sure we have all our routes covers making hard for new comers to enter the market.
It is difficult for company to enter this industry because the demanding capital to start this business is not cheap since you have to build a whole ship to start it. But the rivalry among the different company is the big burden for Carnival and we need to deal with it. We need to work with the oil industry, make bigger ship that can carry more people, especially with the rise of the oil market. Carnival need to work on it safety record. Safety should be paramount for the success of the company. With the Senate Commerce Committee chairman complaining of the cost to the U.S. Coast Guard of reacting to Carnival 's 90 "serious events" in the last five years and the Costa Concordia disaster in Europe. We need to start populating the message to customer about how hard we are working to take our safety standard to a different level. We need to abide by U.S. and local laws in order to get the confidence of the people and different governments. For the last 10 years, the cruise industry has been monitored for many types of law violations, such as employment, consumer, health and safety violations. Violations of these laws can put a bad stamps on our ship name and we can be fine a colossal amount of money or even get criminal penalties from it. It seem like lately, every time you click on CNN, you have the cruise industry in the headlines, sinking somewhere or folks disappearing from nowhere. Lot of crimes and the safety records is not good. In June 2003, Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia introduce a Consumer Protection Legislation Ahead of Commerce Committee Oversight Hearing on the Cruise Industry. The hearing, titled, “Cruise Industry Oversight: Recent Incidents Show Need for Stronger Focus on Consumer Protection”, will focus on challenges the cruise industry continues to face, including a lack of consumer protections, the need for accurate crime reporting, and safety issues that
continue to plague the industry. While Cruise line are selling the idea of a cruise as a “dream vacation” it come to the senate concern that Cruise line are becoming a nightmare for the customer.
I totally understand that the management is trying hard to do a good damage control by providing suck perks as discount on future cruises, all-expense paid return flights from detoured destinations, on-board credits and refunds for excursions. But if the experience wasn’t good at all, there will be no future cruise, and with the way the social media took over our lives, the company name can be damaged. It sound to me like they are missing on the bigger pictures .We spend lot of money on market aspect of the company, but I will recommend that we hire a market research firm and consultant. We need to work with independent third party market research firms to ensure questions are asked objectively that would eliminate bias and guarantee the results would be reliable. We can use an image and awareness or brand equity survey to answer our image questions. And at the end, the board can sit down and review the results with the company, understand the impact of the data and act accordingly on the consultant recommendation. The first step priority is to correct Carnival Cruise Line image. The company needs to understand how the ship malfunctions and negative PR have impacted potential business rather than using a wait and see approach. There are lot of company on the field that are catching up with us. So we need to come up with the “next big thing” in order to stay competitive. Looking at the financial stats, we can see that Carnival 's profitability ratios are below the industry averages. But they are financially strong and we can improve these performance metrics and boost the stock back up. Another important recommendation I will make is for Carnival to partner with a low cost air company and this will push Carnival to remove lot of barrier to some customers that are not living on the coast or Miami. This partnership will allow customers to purchase flight and cruise ticket at one convenient location for the simple reason that lot of customers don’t live near a port city and driving like 8 to 12 hours to get to those port city in order to take the cruise is a major drawback for lot of customer. That will create a good business partnership for the airline company and more customers for Carnival. For example, you can receive free checked baggage, giving the chance to the customer to bring all the necessary luggage he or she will need during the cruise. This recommendation alleviates that issue and adds value for the customer.
The last recommendation will be simple. We need to tap into the Asian market. With the increasing numbers of old people and financial security in the Asia continent, we need to start opening a sale office in Asia and start tapping in that new market.
References
Cruise Market Watch. (2010). Cruise Market Shares. Retrieved Apr. 12, 2010, from Cruise Market Watch, Miami, Florida. Web site: http://www.cruisemarketwatch.com/blog 1/#share.
Carnival Corporation. (2010). Corporate Information. Retrieved Apr. 13, 2010, from Carnival Corportation and plc, Miami, Florida. Web site: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml ?c=20767&p=irol-prlanding.
Hunger, J. D., & Wheelen, T. L. (2007). Essentials of Strategic Managment Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.
Sandals. (2010). Reservations. Retrieved Apr 15, 2010.from Sandals. Website: https://obe.sandals.com/index.cfm?event=ehOBE.dspHome&REINITUSER=1&A=1&E VENT=ehOBE.dspHome&BRAND=sandals
Wheelen, T. L. & Hunger, J. D. (1999). Case Study - Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc - a Successful Company Rapid Growth. Retrieved Apr. 10, 2010, from Scribd. Web site: http:// www.scribd.com/doc/26363095/Case-Study-Carnival-Cruise-Lines-Inc-A- Successful- Company-Rapid-Growth.
Finding of facts and recommendations.
Panera Bread. Still Rising Fortunes?
Kokou T. Klu
Columbia College
Recommendation for issues facing the company.
Finding of facts, and recommendation.
The cruise line industry is, without a doubt, one of the most popular and prosperous tourist industries in America today. According to the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA). I have been hired as a strategic management consultant by Carnival Cruise Line which is the biggest cruise line in the world. The company currently has a robust name and the SWOT analyses look very fabulous. As a consultant of the Company I can guide the CEO of the company regarding the introduction …show more content…
of new technologies, facilities and its impact of the financial performance of the Company. Carnival Corporation is the largest cruise line company in the world, comprise of more than 10 cruise brands and different aspects of the Hotels industry to bring money to the company. With over 90,000 employees with offices scattered all over the world, the central and cooperate offices are located in Miami Florida. “The World’s Most Popular Cruise Line”.(Carnival, 2006) came to light in 1972 when Ted Arison had a vision to create the biggest and luxurious cruise line in the world. After lot of success in the business world, the company decide to go public in 1987 by entering in the New York Stock Exchange.
To compete effectively with other cruise lines, Carnival introduce lot of onboard activities like amusement park, Night club, Bingo night, Gym, shopping mall, Movie Theater, casino. Carnival is a floating city. All those are introduce to strengthen the competencies between competitors. We need to analyze the company to get a better understanding of what is going on, the situation at hand and make recommendation accordingly.
. My analysis and recommendations are as follows:
*Internal Assessment: Carnival Corporation have a strong structure organization.
One of the biggest success of Carnival Cruise is the powerful structure of the management. They have a different divisions and everyone know what they are doing. The successful companies in the world are those run by talented and experiences leaders with strong commitment interests in the success of the business. I want to put a particular emphasis on the strategy, organizational structure and culture of the CCL. For Carnival Cruise, here are the key directors:
Director
Position
Micky Arison
Chairman and chief executive
Howard Frank
Vice chairman and chief operating officer
Micky Arison is pretty much the general on the field. The billionaire is the son of the co-founder and work hard through the echelon to become CEO of the company in 1979 and chairman in 1990. His family interest control 27% of the combined voting power after steering the company growth through acquisition and merger, particularly the merger with P&O Princess Cruises, in 2003. It starts from CEO & Chairman Micky Arison, the next tier down is Howard S Frank as the COO who over sees all businesses of company, within that same tier is David Bernstein who is CFO of all Businesses. The Next tier down is Richard Ames SVP of Shared Services, within same tier Arnaldo Perez SVP General Counsel and Secretary. (David, 2013)
*Carnival, Financially strong and sound company.
Looking at couple years of Carnival 10K data, SWOT analysis from Financial Statement and Balance sheet, we can see that Carnival is the biggest cruise line operator in the world. The analysis of ratios is broken up into five segments including, liquidity, activity, profitability, asset management and leverage. Taking a deep look within these segment, we can come up with the company current ratio to total debt to assets and the data clearly indicate that the company is strong and sound financially. In 2009, Carnival had an Accounts Receivable Turnover of 37, had increased by 27% for a total of 47 in 2010. During 2011 you see a 30% increase in accounts receivable turnover which left them with a ratio of .61 in 2011. Carnival shows they are able to extend credit and collect in a 30 day timeframe.
Looking at Carnivals Return on Asset percentage and the SWOT analysis, we can confirm that Carnival has lower liquidity ratios, has a good management of its asset, and relies less on debt to finance its assets.
*Carnival, World class service.
The motto of the company is simple. The “Fun Ship” is there motto and that is what they would like to be known for and that is what they project. Nowadays, cruise line vacation doesn’t belong to the few fortunate anymore. That was the focus of Carnival Company and their main focus is to offer world class luxurious service at a fraction of the price. The number one priority is eth make sure the customers to have memorable experiences and come back next time. They want to attract a variety of folks from different cultures, demographic and ways of life. They want to be known as the” Fun Ship” and that is the main focus, and that is the reason why they spend countless hours, days trying to create activities that the competitors do not have. They move around 600,000 folks a week and all years around and so far folks always come back because they love the experience. The main concepts that Carnival tries to achieve is to be known as “Fun Ship”, along with all the amenities that go with it such as Luxury, elegance and exotic destination. (David, 2013)
To help and assist the agent on the field generate more sales, Carnival has invested a huge amount of money on the marketing field of the company, were they offer 10% commission to their travel agents and offer a bonus program as well base on how much revenue the sale agent is generating. Their website division has created promotional campaigns that offer discounts, VIP savings, resident discounts, special meals, and holiday deals. (David, 2013). Market conditions for the cruise industry is growing and for the last five years the cruise industry has been growing at 8% each year. (Cruise tourism, 2010) and Carnival is leading the charge.
*External factors. Economic, Social / Cultural / Demographic, Technological, political.
Like I said earlier, the Cruise line industry is growing faster and more people from different cultures, demographic and social classes are travelling today than ever before. Lot of economic metrics such as growth in markets, currency rates, clientele economic position are involved in the success of the company.
The social side is more center on the demographics, and age of their customers.
For example if a certain demographic and age, has a positive experience on their vacation. Then a positive trend will occur for that demographic and age segment. Social studies are important to the cruise industry to determine marketing opportunities on certain segments of the cruise industry. Cultural factors a very important. As a customer, you will be better off taking a cruise line versus plane if you want to go to place like the Caribbean, Alaska, Western Mexico, Mediterranean, Europe, South America and Asia pacific. Pulling into all these port will depend on the relationship between the government and the cruise line. This is very critical to the success of the port visited. The government will be directly involved on taxes fees, trade restrictions and so on. If you don’t have agreements with the government, grease the wheel, then it will be very difficult to do business in these countries. Governments and Political factors work hand and hand in the cruise industry. The government need to assure the safety of the customers when they come spend money by staying at hotels and buy souvenirs in your country. Especially nowadays that we have unsettle conflicts and pirates controlling the seas, Cruise ship need local governments for protection and the cruise industry offers an increase of local employment within the city and its ports. For example restaurants, hotels, taxis, theme parks, museums, shops, taxi drivers and travel guides are all positively affected. In some countries tourism brings large sums of revenues to the local city and governments. This enhances the relationship with cruise companies and Politicians.
Recommendations on issue facing the company.
Economy can affect the cruise company and since Carnival generate majority of its revenue in North America it is hard to keep staying on the other side of the red line if actions are not taken.
The porters Five Force should be the five basics that should influence our decision all the time. But with cruise lines, we need to add a sixth element like local government power, local community and regulations, etc...(Hunger, 39).
Make sure we have all our routes covers making hard for new comers to enter the market.
It is difficult for company to enter this industry because the demanding capital to start this business is not cheap since you have to build a whole ship to start it. But the rivalry among the different company is the big burden for Carnival and we need to deal with it. We need to work with the oil industry, make bigger ship that can carry more people, especially with the rise of the oil market. Carnival need to work on it safety record. Safety should be paramount for the success of the company. With the Senate Commerce Committee chairman complaining of the cost to the U.S. Coast Guard of reacting to Carnival 's 90 "serious events" in the last five years and the Costa Concordia disaster in Europe. We need to start populating the message to customer about how hard we are working to take our safety standard to a different level. We need to abide by U.S. and local laws in order to get the confidence of the people and different governments. For the last 10 years, the cruise industry has been monitored for many types of law violations, such as employment, consumer, health and safety violations. Violations of these laws can put a bad stamps on our ship name and we can be fine a colossal amount of money or even get criminal penalties from it. It seem like lately, every time you click on CNN, you have the cruise industry in the headlines, sinking somewhere or folks disappearing from nowhere. Lot of crimes and the safety records is not good. In June 2003, Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia introduce a Consumer Protection Legislation Ahead of Commerce Committee Oversight Hearing on the Cruise Industry. The hearing, titled, “Cruise Industry Oversight: Recent Incidents Show Need for Stronger Focus on Consumer Protection”, will focus on challenges the cruise industry continues to face, including a lack of consumer protections, the need for accurate crime reporting, and safety issues that
continue to plague the industry. While Cruise line are selling the idea of a cruise as a “dream vacation” it come to the senate concern that Cruise line are becoming a nightmare for the customer.
I totally understand that the management is trying hard to do a good damage control by providing suck perks as discount on future cruises, all-expense paid return flights from detoured destinations, on-board credits and refunds for excursions. But if the experience wasn’t good at all, there will be no future cruise, and with the way the social media took over our lives, the company name can be damaged. It sound to me like they are missing on the bigger pictures .We spend lot of money on market aspect of the company, but I will recommend that we hire a market research firm and consultant. We need to work with independent third party market research firms to ensure questions are asked objectively that would eliminate bias and guarantee the results would be reliable. We can use an image and awareness or brand equity survey to answer our image questions. And at the end, the board can sit down and review the results with the company, understand the impact of the data and act accordingly on the consultant recommendation. The first step priority is to correct Carnival Cruise Line image. The company needs to understand how the ship malfunctions and negative PR have impacted potential business rather than using a wait and see approach. There are lot of company on the field that are catching up with us. So we need to come up with the “next big thing” in order to stay competitive. Looking at the financial stats, we can see that Carnival 's profitability ratios are below the industry averages. But they are financially strong and we can improve these performance metrics and boost the stock back up. Another important recommendation I will make is for Carnival to partner with a low cost air company and this will push Carnival to remove lot of barrier to some customers that are not living on the coast or Miami. This partnership will allow customers to purchase flight and cruise ticket at one convenient location for the simple reason that lot of customers don’t live near a port city and driving like 8 to 12 hours to get to those port city in order to take the cruise is a major drawback for lot of customer. That will create a good business partnership for the airline company and more customers for Carnival. For example, you can receive free checked baggage, giving the chance to the customer to bring all the necessary luggage he or she will need during the cruise. This recommendation alleviates that issue and adds value for the customer.
The last recommendation will be simple. We need to tap into the Asian market. With the increasing numbers of old people and financial security in the Asia continent, we need to start opening a sale office in Asia and start tapping in that new market.
References
Cruise Market Watch. (2010). Cruise Market Shares. Retrieved Apr. 12, 2010, from Cruise Market Watch, Miami, Florida. Web site: http://www.cruisemarketwatch.com/blog 1/#share.
Carnival Corporation. (2010). Corporate Information. Retrieved Apr. 13, 2010, from Carnival Corportation and plc, Miami, Florida. Web site: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml ?c=20767&p=irol-prlanding.
Hunger, J. D., & Wheelen, T. L. (2007). Essentials of Strategic Managment Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.
Sandals. (2010). Reservations. Retrieved Apr 15, 2010.from Sandals. Website: https://obe.sandals.com/index.cfm?event=ehOBE.dspHome&REINITUSER=1&A=1&E VENT=ehOBE.dspHome&BRAND=sandals
Wheelen, T. L. & Hunger, J. D. (1999). Case Study - Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc - a Successful Company Rapid Growth. Retrieved Apr. 10, 2010, from Scribd. Web site: http:// www.scribd.com/doc/26363095/Case-Study-Carnival-Cruise-Lines-Inc-A- Successful- Company-Rapid-Growth.
Finding of facts and recommendations.