Bounded Rationality
Case 1
You are the lead consultant for the Diligent Consulting Group. It is mid-October. One of your top clients, Sunshine Floor Barn, has just closed the books for the first three quarters of the year (January through September). Sunshine Floor Barn requests that you analyze the sales performance of its 5 product lines over this 3-quarter period. From past consulting work you have done for the company, you know that Sunshine Floor Barn has 4 regions and 18 total store locations. Each Regional Manager at the company has compiled the data for his/her region. The raw data provided consists of the sales revenue for each of the 5 premium flooring lines for all 4 regions and 18 locations for the first three quarters of the current year.
The data have been provided in list format. Generate a Pivot Table Report with Charts. Use the Pivot Table and Charts to analyze the data. Following your in-depth analysis of the data, write a report to Sunshine Floor Barn in which you discuss and analyze the data, and make appropriate recommendations relative to how Sunshine Floor Barn should improve its sales performance going forward.
Assignment Expectations
Data: To begin, download the list data here: Data chart for BUS520 Case 3
SLP
Scenario: You are the Vice President of Franchise Services for the Lucky restaurant chain. You have been assigned the task of evaluating the best location for a new Lucky restaurant. The CFO has provided you with a template that includes 6 criteria (attributes) that you are required to use in your evaluation of 5 recommended locations. Following are the 6 criteria that you will use to evaluate this decision:
Traffic counts (avg. thousands/day)—the more traffic, the more customers, and the greater the potential sales.
Building lease and taxes (thousands $ per year)—the lower the building lease and taxes, the better.
Size of building (square feet in thousands)—a larger building is more preferable.
Parking spaces (max number of customers parking)—more customer parking is preferable.
Insurance costs (thousands $ per year)—lower insurance costs are preferable.
Ease of access (subjective evaluation from observation)—you will need to “code” the subjective data. Use Excellent = 4, Good = 3, Fair = 2, and Poor = 1.
Now that you have collected the data from various sources (your CFO and COO, local real estate listings, personal observation, etc.), you have all the data you need to complete an analysis for choosing the best location. Download the raw data for the 5 locations in this Word document: BUS520 Module 3 SLP.docx
Assignment
Review the information and data regarding the different alternatives for a new restaurant location. Then do the following in Excel:
Table 1: Develop an MADM table with the raw data.
Table 2: Convert the raw data to utilities (scaled on 0 to 1). Show the utility weights in a second table.
Table 3: Develop a third table with even weights (16.7%) for each variable.
Evaluate Table 3 for the best alternative.
Table 4: Complete a sensitivity analysis by assigning weights to each variable.
In a Word document, do the following:
Discuss the process used to put together Tables 1–4 above.
Provide the rationale you used for choosing for each of the weights you used in Table 4.
Give your recommendation of which location the company should choose (based on results of Table 4).
