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Case Application - Ch2

Card Connection is a leading publisher and distributor of greeting cards in the UK and Ireland. They operate through a franchise model, where franchisees supply cards to retail outlets in exclusive geographic territories. Card Connection regularly evaluates factors like demographics and competition to determine how to allocate territories between existing and potential franchisees. This helps account for changes over time in things like population, household numbers, and regional economies.

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84 views2 pages

Case Application - Ch2

Card Connection is a leading publisher and distributor of greeting cards in the UK and Ireland. They operate through a franchise model, where franchisees supply cards to retail outlets in exclusive geographic territories. Card Connection regularly evaluates factors like demographics and competition to determine how to allocate territories between existing and potential franchisees. This helps account for changes over time in things like population, household numbers, and regional economies.

Uploaded by

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Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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CASE APPLICATION 1

On The Cards: Decision Making

Card Connection is one of the United Kingdom’s largest card publishers and a market leader in the
franchise distribution of greeting cards in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland (ROI).
Established in 1992, it is regarded as one of the Britain’s best-run franchise operations and has been a
member of the British Franchise Association since 1995. Its franchisees don’t operate under a standard
retail format and, instead, act as intermediaries in supplying cards to a range of retail outlets in allocated
franchise areas. Typically, its franchise holders supply products to post offices, convenience stores, gas
stations, and other retailers. Given this customer base, Card Connection’s management takes advantage
of a business model that requires it to place its products in the outlets on a “consignment” basis—
customers don’t buy the stock and only pay for what they sell. This proved to be a success. At the
beginning of 2017, there were 63 franchises across Britain and around 12,000 retail outlets using its
services in ROI. At any given time, the management of Card Connection looks for potential franchisees—
a mix of new and unexplored territories and replacement franchisees. To decide which areas to allocate
to which franchise holder, Card Connection analyzes several data sources. The primary data drivers are
demographic, a combination of raw population figures and number of households. The decision makers
must also analyze the number of potential stockists, competitors in the area, the average income of the
population, and other elements. While the initial process of dividing the United Kingdom and the ROI into
equal portions is simple, as the franchises develop and with changes in demographics, regional and local
economics, and other criteria, the value of each area changes. Each franchise holder has a discrete and
exclusive territory that only they can supply to. It is because of this that Card Connection’s decision-
making process regarding territories often revolves around geography. In most cases, this is how franchise
areas are determined and how territories derived. A major problem arises when a franchisee attracts
business from a customer outside of its franchise area. The franchisor needs to be clear about these
instances. Some franchise agreements allow the franchisor to change the territory, should the
circumstance arise. This is an indicator of changes in the demographics within a territory, a development
in technology, or a rise in the demand for the product or service being offered within the franchise system.

Discussion Questions:

1. What ongoing decisions are necessary about the size of franchise areas?
2. What factors should you consider when deciding to acquire a franchise?
3. How might globalization impact the decision-making process for Card Connection?

CASE APPLICATION 2

Manchester City: Football Big Data Champions


In most football teams, the minutes before the match are spent in the locker room where the coach
provides last minute tips and delivers a motivational speech to the players. However, for Manchester City
Football Club the ritual is a bit different. The team spends 15 minutes before each match meeting the
club’s performance analyst team, discussing things they had done well or wrong in previous matches. For
instance, the defense examines several factors—the number of crosses, effective or ineffective tackles,
balls lost or recovered, the relationship with midfield, and movements in protecting their penalty area.
The day after the match, the analysis team, headed by Gavin Fleig, gives each player a detailed and
personalized report of all their movements during the match, thus, enabling each player to get an accurate
feedback on improvements required. In a 2012 interview released to Forbes, Fleig declared that the goal
of the performance analysis unit is both to help the club make smarter decisions by relying on objective
and more informative data, and to enhance players’ performance by helping them to become more
reflective and aware of their unique features, actions, and movements on the pitch. To illustrate how the
performance analysis team helps better the team’s performance, let’s look at Manchester City’s
performance and the set-piece goals scored in the 2010–11 season. According to the analyst team, City
was underperforming more than any other club in Premier League with only one set-piece goal scored
over 21 matches. To understand what led to the goals scored across several European leagues, the analyst
team studied more than 500 corner kicks. The players were then presented with videos illustrating the
best tactics and movements applied by other teams. This helped City to score 9 goals in the first 15
matches of the next season from corners, which represents a tremendous improvement in their
performance. Data analysis is a critical decision-making support tool for Manchester City’s managers at
all levels, including for youth teams. For example, future young players are helped in understanding their
strengths and weaknesses within the different formation plays and what aspects they need to focus on to
develop their talent. It is important to note that big data is just a means to facilitate the achievement of
Manchester City’s strategic goals concerning youth team development, which is to integrate young
homegrown-talents into the first team’s formation. The performance analysts have helped the team to
become very successful—Manchester City got the best defensive records for two consecutive years since
2012, and it won the title in the seasons 2011–12 and 2013–14 after more than four decades of no wins.
Of course, big data is not the only factor behind these successes, but it was very important. To continue
being a leader in football big data, in 2016, Manchester City organized a global Hackathon, with more than
400 applications received from all over the world, where data and football experts created algorithms and
simulations using data from real players that have never before been available to external actors. The
challenge was to create algorithms that could help identify new movements, passes, runs and pressure to
be more effective on the pitch. The winning team, who received a cash prize of £7000 and the promise to
collaborate with the performance analysis team, created a learning machine algorithm that tracks
decision-making during games.

Discussion Questions

1. What types of decisions are made by football managers? Would you characterize these decisions
as structured or unstructured problems? Explain.
2. Describe how big data can help football managers to make better decisions and how this has an
effect on the decision-making process.
3. What type(s) of conditions are more likely to influence the performance analyst team’s work:
certainty, uncertainty, or risks? Explain.
4. Do you think it is appropriate for football managers to use only quantitative information to
evaluate their players’ performance during a season? Why or why not?
5. How can big data transform football decisions in the future?

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