Essay: The Will Group INC and Dash In Food Stores

The Will Group, INC is privately held corporation, and it provides a wide range of business in USA. It has spend almost 88 years to fulfill customer needs. Headquartered in La Plata, Maryland, USA, it ranked as 14th largest private company in Washington Metro Area and has over $229 Million in assets. It is also a parent company for 4 major operating affiliates.
Dash In food Stores is the convenience stores operated in three states of USA. SMO started it services in 1937 and provided automatic service deliveries of fuel oil, and in 2010, SMO Energy upgraded the websites and introduced another industry with the launch of its customer e-commence portal.
Its mission statement is focused on customers as company management believes that they are in market because of its customer, and that it is their responsibility to provide the best service.
The Will Group’s first full sized Dash In store opened in Laural, MD, making it the state’s first convenience store to feature fried chicken and potato wedges. It has spent almost 35 years to fulfill customer needs. In the early years, store designed full service food programs including sandwiches, deli, fried chicken and potato wedges. It has brief philosophy regarding employment. ” hire good people, take good care of them, get out of their way, and let them do their work”
SWOT analysis is divided into two parts. Internal Analysis and External Analysis
Within the internal analysis, Dash In’s biggest strength is its name and it serve diversified markets and geographic regions of three states, MD, DE, and VA, whereas its weakness is to raise capital for more growth of the company because private companies have some limitation.
In the external analysis, however, Dash in has opportunities to develop a strong regional based chain and upgrade its assets, whereas it has faced great competition with the renowned companies such as WAWA, Sheetz, Circle K, 7 Eleven, BP Connect, Royal Farm.
According to text, ‘value chain is the set of activities that transforms raw resources into the goods and services end users (house holds, for example) purchase and consume’ (P 4).
People prefer Dash In food store because of variety of reason, for example, they are easy to approach, have long opening hours, but prices are higher in this store as compared to supermarket. However, People agree to pay because Dash In offer high-quality food products, snacks and soft drinks and also provide other services such as lottery, money order, ATM. People come in and feel a friendly environment because of excellent customer service.
Dash In always researches on customers trend as to what they are looking for. Dash In offers all those convenience products in its store which are in demand. Dash In opened stores all the key areas of three states: MD, DE, VA, where customer interested.
Staple Goods: Items that are constantly use by customers such as toothpaste, milk, or bread.
Convenience Goods: small, inexpensive items that customers purchase frequently such as gum, bottled water, and cold drink.
Seasonal Goods: Products that are popular only at a certain time of year such as Easter donut, Valentine day special products.
According to text, ‘Managers make pricing decisions in part to determine whether they wish to participate in the market’ (P 119). It further mentions, ‘two approaches ‘ life-cycle product costing and pricing and target costing from target pricing’ (P 122-123).
Research and development also perform a big part for setting of price because these two approaches are based on research.
Known Value Item (KVI)
Customer generally know what the price should be
High volume products
Necessity Category items
Pricing Guidelines
Price Competitively
Price Consistently
Utilize the price book
Price all Products / Use Shelf Tags
According to Dash In, ‘ordering is the most important job in the store’. Dash In think that any time its provided goods and services are not available and customers return without food then they will never come back, even though the store is clean and the service is impeccable.
According to text, ‘Companies now partner with suppliers to increase the efficiency in the supply chain’ (P 15).
Dash In has good relation with their suppliers and provide timely payment to suppliers.
According to ‘Valuation of inventory on a regular basis is an important activity of the business. For accounting purposes, there are various methods available that include Last In, First Out (LIFO), First In, First Out (FIFO), Weighted and moving average’ (P 55).
There are three approaches of Inventory Methods
Inventory: The amount of goods stored by a business
Perpetual Inventory: a method of tracking inventory on a constant basis. The information required to maintain this inventory system through a point of sale system.
Physical Inventory: system where stock is visually inspected or counted to determine the quantity on hand.
Combined System: involves using both the perpetual and physical inventory systems.
Dash In has provided different ABC Analysis as compare to the text, but objective is the same.
According to text, ‘Activity-based costing (ABC) is a two ‘ stage product costing method that assigns costs first to activities and then to the products based on each product’s use of activities’ (P 333).
Furthermore, Serdar Ozkan and Yasemin Zengin Karaibrahimoglu state in their article, ‘ABC is a cost accounting method that identifies the activities involved in the production and the resources consumed by each activity in order to properly allocate activity costs over product / services’ (P 422).
Dash In food store does required to analysis accurate costs for its offering products; however it need to find out:
Which products are profitable
Which products should be available
Customers trends toward products and services
Dash In web site provides different option to its customer such as directions to its locations in the mean time portraying the best possible image, it also provides information about services offered and entices customers with promotions and specials. Dash In also offers Mobile app service in which customer can receive push notifications, view menu / service details, submit feedback, access loyalty integration program ‘ future, play a game to earn points and win prizes, and receive coupons and special offers. Furthermore, it focus different marketing tactics to promote the brand name and increase awareness; such as digital marketing, free gas for a year sweepstakes, open store dashboard, digital signage, community connections, seasonal marketing, local store marketing and etc.
Customers initially come to a business for what they want or need materially (motor fuel, convenience store items, etc), but they choose to continue to become habitual patrons of that business based on the fulfillment of their goals and needs. When customers fail to get their needs met, they can experience a variety of negative emotions. Best-in-class customer service recognizes and anticipates the consequences of unmet needs and interjects efforts to resolve the situation and recover the customer’s confidence
Dash In focuses on cares Model for providing customer services.
Courteous: Greeting the customer is a common Courtesy
Attentive: Eye Contact reassures the customer that your attention is focused on them
Responsive: Open Body Language shows the customer you are willing to respond to their needs in a supportive manner
Engaged: smiling and thanking the customer for their business shows that you are engaged in the interaction
Speedy: Working with a sense of urgency tells the customer that you value their time