Promotions: Barilla's Sales Strategies
THE BARILLA SpA CASE
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QUESTION 1:
Observe Exhibit 12. What are the underlying causes and drivers that make order patterns to look this way? Provide a discussion on these causes/drives to show how they are causing the resulting demand pattern. Examples of items to consider include transportation discounts, promotional activity, product proliferation.
The BARILLA case is an illustrative example where we can understand the effects of a phenomenon which is very common among industries that is called the Bullwhip effect. As an immediate outcome this phenomenon creates large swings in demand on the supply chain resulting from relatively small, but unplanned, variations in consumer demand that escalate with each link in the chain .Events that can trigger begin at any point in the supply chain: consumer, retailer, distributor, manufacturers, raw materials suppliers and so on. As orders progress up the chain, each level perceives a greater demand that it seeks to rectify from its own Lets discuss in more detail some of the causes that can trigger this event and we can identify in the case: • Promotions: Barilla’s sales strategy relied heavily on the use of promotions, in the form of price, transportation and volume discounts. They divided the year into 10 to 12 canvass or promotional periods, during which different products were offered at discounts. These price discounts ranged from 1.4% to 10%. Barilla’s volume discounts consisted of carton discounts offered by sales representatives and the transportations discounts consisted of free shipping to the distributors. • Sales Representatives: The compensation system for the sales reps was flawed in the sense that they were rewarded based on the amount of the products that they sold to the distributors. This was causing problems as the sales reps would try and push more products during the promotional period to get a bonus and were not able to sell as much
[pic][pic]
QUESTION 1:
Observe Exhibit 12. What are the underlying causes and drivers that make order patterns to look this way? Provide a discussion on these causes/drives to show how they are causing the resulting demand pattern. Examples of items to consider include transportation discounts, promotional activity, product proliferation.
The BARILLA case is an illustrative example where we can understand the effects of a phenomenon which is very common among industries that is called the Bullwhip effect. As an immediate outcome this phenomenon creates large swings in demand on the supply chain resulting from relatively small, but unplanned, variations in consumer demand that escalate with each link in the chain .Events that can trigger begin at any point in the supply chain: consumer, retailer, distributor, manufacturers, raw materials suppliers and so on. As orders progress up the chain, each level perceives a greater demand that it seeks to rectify from its own Lets discuss in more detail some of the causes that can trigger this event and we can identify in the case: • Promotions: Barilla’s sales strategy relied heavily on the use of promotions, in the form of price, transportation and volume discounts. They divided the year into 10 to 12 canvass or promotional periods, during which different products were offered at discounts. These price discounts ranged from 1.4% to 10%. Barilla’s volume discounts consisted of carton discounts offered by sales representatives and the transportations discounts consisted of free shipping to the distributors. • Sales Representatives: The compensation system for the sales reps was flawed in the sense that they were rewarded based on the amount of the products that they sold to the distributors. This was causing problems as the sales reps would try and push more products during the promotional period to get a bonus and were not able to sell as much