Consumer Electronic Retailers in Sweden – Project topics materials

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Retailing strategy of SIBA

SIBA is a forecast driven retailing company. Pure speculation is used for almost all the products that they sell and perform the retailing functions for. Historical Data and estimated budget is used to manage inventory. Also, SIBA uses forecasts that have been based on previous market trends and consumers‟ patterns of purchases. Demand forecasting is an important function in the company, future events are kept in consideration while predicting demand and inventory is adjusted to this forecast. As demand is forecasted, the company invariably faces demand that is different from the forecast. This result in loss of sales in some categories of products and in other categories there tends to be overstocking which leads to loss by means of high storage costs for these categories. This dual mechanism of losses brings down the profit margin of the company. Uncertainty in demand leads the company to use forecasts and speculative measures and thus the problem for it is loss of sales and profits. SIBA makes weekly forecasts for its inventory. The same is forwarded to its vendors and suppliers who in turn replenish its inventories to its desire. There is no reconfiguration observed in SIBA. Only a very initial level of customization is practiced in the personal computers category. The figures for loses by way of lost sales range 12-17% of sales and 6-10 % of customers are lost due to unavailability of products. The buying function at SIBA is centralized for Denmark, Norway and Sweden and the centralized warehouse of SIBA is located in Gothenburg, Sweden (Kent Johansson personal communication, at A6 shopping centre, 14th April, 2010.).

Position of the current CODP in the company

To meet customers‟ requirements, the company should balance flexibility forces and productivity forces (Rudberg & Wikner, 2005), exercising the position of the CODP either up or down the stream. The position of the CODP depends on the retailers‟ ability of using speculation or postponement strategy (Rudberg & Wikner, 2005). The current positioning of CODP in SIBA is at the point of distribution because of their speculative strategies applied to most product categories as stated in the retailing strategy of SIBA. This is because, at SIBA, cost is the major competitive priority, and because of that productivity force pushes the position of the CODP downstream. So, the location of the CODP is downstream after distribution as described in figure 4-1 below.

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Current position of CODP for different product categories

To identify the current strategies of SIBA for the different product categories, the authors analyzed appropriate P/S determinants and location of CODP for each category. In choosing the appropriate determinants, the authors used the following factors: product characteristics, market & demand and manufacturing & logistics, as criteria for understanding the current strategy employed. As described in the Model of this paper, the current position of the CODP is determined for each product category. This identification will help SIBA in balancing Flexibility and productive forces. All of the determinants are selected taking into consideration the basic theme of the profile analysis (Pagh & Cooper, 1998), i.e. choosing INADEQUATE determinants will not reflect the true P/S strategy used in SIBA.

1 Introduction
1.1 Background Information:
1.2 Problem Definition
1.3 Purpose
1.4 Research Questions
1.5 Outline of Thesis
2 Frames of Reference
2.1 Retailing
2.2 Consumer Electronic Retailers in Sweden
2.3 Supply Chain Strategies
2.4 Benefits of postponement in the supply chains
2.5 Types of Speculation/Postponement Strategies
2.6 Determinants of Postponements
2.7 Supply Chain Flexibility (SCF)
2.8 Agility
2.9 Decoupling Point
2.10 Identifying feasible customer order decoupling points
2.11 Relation between CODP and Postponement Strategies
2.12 Profile Analysis
2.13 Working Model
3 Methodological Considerations
3.1 Choice of method .
3.2 The case study approach
3.3 Case design
3.4 Limitation
3.5 Data Collection .
3.6 Trustworthiness
4 Empirical Finding and Analysis .
4.1 Background of the company
4.2 Product categories at SIBA .
4.3 Retailing strategy of SIBA
4.4 Position of the current CODP in the company
4.5 Current position of CODP for different product categories .
4.6 Consequences of current strategies applied in the company .
4.7 Redefining retailing strategy and position of CODP at SIBA
4.8 CODP for Product category A
4.9 Benefits of the proposed strategies
5 Conclusion
5.1 Conclusion
5.2 Discussions for Future Research
6 References:
7 Appendices