Additional Cases
Rand rvlcNally Maps Out a Trip into a Digital Future
In 1856 William Rand and Andrew McNally founded a small printing shop in Chicago which they called Rand McNally. The company did not begin printing maps until 1916, but it has been the leader in maps ever since, credited with creating the mapping conventions for our current numbered highway system. In 1924 Rand McNally published its first Rand McNally Road Atlas. The various versions of this atlas have sold 150 million copies in the years since, making it the all-time best selling map product from any publisher. Today Rand McNally has 1,200 employees, mostly at its Skokie, Illinois headquarters.
Through the following decades the company continued to develop
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To accomplish these objectives, the company had to address two needs that all types of travelers experience: the need for quick information about travel conditions and recommendations on meeting those needs along the way. To accomplish this the Web site must not only help travelers to plan the trip, but travelers must be able to bring the Internet with them as they travel. Travelers need online road maps, detailed driving instructions, and road condition updates while they are on the road, which means they will have to be delivered through wireless technology as soon as it matures. The Rand McNally Web site also needed to work with third parties to provide other travel information such as timely weather and hotel reservations. The site also had to have a very userfriendly interface, one that can be used comfortably by people who are not highly skilled Internet users. Profitability remained a critical goal for both management and the investors. Profitability requires services that are good enough that customers will be willing to pay for them.
Rand McNally's main online competition was MapQuest, whose Web site has been highly successful. In March 2000 the site had
5.5 million visitors who viewed and printed its electronic maps. During the same month Rand McNally had only 255,000 visitors. In
addition, MapQuest had partnered with many corporate and Internet business forces whose visitors need to use maps
Net Sales – totaled $4,485,000.00 for year 6, and grew +33.3% or $1,495,000.00 between years 6 to 7.
the long run. The customers are also an important stakeholder as they hold a high expectation on
with their return on investment, employees are paid and treated fairly, and customers are satisfied with the
Before the days of the Internet, if a family wanted to travel to a far-off, exotic locale, they would have to either find a local travel agent or call a travel agency and plan their getaway. In the 1990’s, the Internet became a staple of everyday life and began entering many homes. As the availability of the Internet increased, so did the services available to clients. With the increasing availability of the World Wide Web the travel industry found itself faced with revolutionizing changes. All of the tools that were once solely available to travel agents now became readily available to anyone with access to the Internet and a search engine. Websites quickly formed around the idea of providing consumers with quick vacation planning ideas at low costs. Getting
Henry Ou, Derrick Kwok, the President and the Vice President of Air & Sea Travel Center also serves as Tour Director of our company who would plan, organize, and conduct short-distance, long-distance travel, tours, and expeditions for individuals and groups. Mr. Ou and Mr. Kwok have experiences of planning and organizing trips, make sure everything runs according to the itinerary and make sure our valued clients safe and enjoy the trip. To be a successful Tour Director, personal skills and qualities are often more important than formal qualification. In memorable trip, our clients expect not only what they are going to visit, eat, and play, but also the excellent “people” skills of our Tour Directors who would bring them happiness, surprises, and make sure that arrangements for the group to run as smoothly and enjoyably as possible since the tourism industry is characterized by high-contact services in which co-creation of clients plays a major role (Grissemann & Stokburger-Sauer, 2012). Joylyn, Ina, and Phoebe are responsible for organizing and setting up the tour by making reservation for hotels, restaurants, cruises, gate tickets, and more. In most of the time, they would make a reservation earlier and deliver special requests to the service provider from the client in order to have availability to everyone in the group and make our client feel that they are valued because we listen and we care.
chain to Interstate Stores in 1966 for $7.5 million, retaining a seat on the company’s Board. When
Today’s on-line travel market is succeeding because the companies are using a more software-centric, online business model termed “E-commerce.” This has become the popular avenue for businesses as it mirrors the ideas of mobility. The sheer amount of data available, coupled with the advanced operating systems and social media platforms, have created new possibilities for E-commerce organizations. The infrastructure of E-commerce has expanded into platforms such as peer-to-peer networking, crowd-sourcing, social websites, and mobile devices and media. E-commerce trends are findings ways to incorporate every aspect of our daily lives into an online package associated with our everyday needs (Fishbein, 2013).
|Commercial |Providing good quality customer service will make the organisation successful and able to keep their |
quality products and services is also what makes customers want to come back to an organization.
Of the total travel market only 1% was generated from the online travel market, and consumers still depended on customer call centers to confirm payment status. To counteract the risks it is important that Lucky Air create an effective business-consumer-business model that will do the obvious and draw consumers to their site and make an online purchase of airfare. To draw in consumers Lucky Air will need to focus on Web 2.0, which is the unique feature or features of e-commerce and the Internet coming together as applications and social media technologies. Web 2.0 will allow for a better online experience with inter-human connections, consumer interacted blogs and the staff to constantly monitor the site to provide consumer feedback. Web 2.0 is crucial to providing customer relationship management. Promoting reviews from consumers in regards to destinations and airline experience are important so the consumer can feel they are important enough to expose the truth from other consumers even negative remarks. But the single most important part of focusing on e-commerce is the ability to provide a online experience and advanced technology that enables customer self-service without the need for multiple customer call centers. Customers should be able to pay for fares, cancel fares, use a safe payment method that can verify a credit card, check on the status of flights and use rewards programs
With a fast changing supply chain in the 21st century, companies need an effective delivery system, which attract new customers daily, and keep the current customers happy with their current service. Amazon is a very popular ecommerce company that delivers thousands of products daily. In the past few years, they have been trying to develop drone technology that could account for a large portion of their deliveries which would also provide substantial cost savings. I will discuss all of the benefits along with the drone technology system that Amazon hopes to put in place in the near future.
I have always believed customers are the focal point of any business. I found that having satisfied customers does not mean you are doing a good job. It may mean the customers are satisfied because their expectations are so low and there is no one else doing any better. Having
It would have been good if this fundamental vision was in place right at the very beginning of the company’s formation. In the end it is the customers that make the company, so it makes sense to work towards satisfying this customer relationship. To become profitable and achieve market share are secondary objective that can be measured on a annual basis and overall company well being targets can be rewarded with incentives that link into the company’s performance as opposed to individual contribution to the company’s success.
* The technology plays a roll very relevant in MapQuest, so the level of technology must be enhanced in order to get performance in cost efficiency and gain competitive advantage.
This will help the company to deliver product and services that satisfy customers, hence increasing profitability.