Mrs Fields Cookies Essay

Mrs. palm Cookies was founded by Debbi field in the late 1970s. She and her husband Randy field opened their first insert in 1977 in Palo Alto, California, selling home do-style cookies which pronto grew in popularity. ProductsMrs. Fields Cookies came in 14 varieties. All baked products were made on premises in the individual stores and the bon ton especi onlyy focus on the fresh cookies. If the cookies are not sold within both hours, they were given away and discarded. CompetitorsMrs. Fields competitors included New Yorks Davids Cookies, Atlantas Original Great American coffee balk Cookie Company, and the Nestle Companys Original Cookie Co. Challenges 1. suffering barriers to entry and mall locations rival In the early 1980s, cookies were cheap to acquire and the barriers of sweet snack industry to entry were low. There were some cookies producers and many consumers in the securities industryplace, and no tune had total fancy over the market price. Beca enforce some 80% of Mrs. Fields outlets were in shopping malls, so the competition for the most favorable mall locations was fierce.2. Franchising Financing and performance of alter marketMrs. Fields had pursuant(predicate)ly refused to franchise their stores, because she viewed franchising as a loss of control over the end product and loss of touch with the customers. To find coast financing and additional capital for expansion, Mrs. Fields tried to go human beings and made initial public offering on the London exchange in 1986, but this experience was not successful, because buyers did not know the company and did not believe that Mrs. Fields wrinkle could be sustained harvesting without franchising. The result was that the stock price rose slowly.Business Strategyorganisational strategy Mrs. Fields had a non-hierarchy organization with decentralized termination making. Typically, thither was no official organization chart in company which way Mrs. Fields wanted to take advantage of th e intelligence and trust the notion of employee throughout the company, instead of relying on a small set of decision makers. The employees at Mrs. Fields were given much more responsibilities such as local marketing decisions were made by the regional and district managers, because they essential to be able to respond quickly to the demands of target customers. Mrs. Fields alike encouraged employees to be wacky and personable, so that customers feel comfortable buy cookies. The company placed high value on employees by development promote from within strategy, employees were rewarded for their performance with a bonus system of rules.Information dodging strategyInformation technology played a rattling grievous role at Mrs. Fields. MIS enabled Mrs. Fields to have network structure and use centralized instruction system out of Utah and distribute it to either store as needed. Mrs. Fields approach of information technology was consistent with an ad-hoc cost/benefit analysis . All stores were running under implementation of information systems at Mrs. Fields to promote sales and control labor and cookies cost. Mrs. Fields overly believed that it was not necessary to flourish staff to accommodate business growth, and smaller groups of people at Mrs. Fields could make decision to shape business problems faster and better if people could work very rise up with the information technology to develop more new and creative applications, because a useful information system in company could save meter and labor cost, and make business operations more accurate, effective and efficient. trading operations strategyFirst, Mrs. Fields used very friendly and organized design style for their stores to attract more customers. Customers always were drawn into the store by the openness of the design and by the aroma of hot cookies fresh from the ovens. Second, ripe management information system also played a very important role on the business operations. Store man agement system designed by Randy and the MIS organization was integrated with each business process for day planning, production schedule, time clocks, store accounting, inventory, interview scheduling, adroitness testing and electronic mail. Controller at headquarter in Utah was also integrated with system collecting sales information received from all stores. The information system helped controller in generating reports for management review.Expanded store strategy/ diversification strategyFrom 1980s, Mrs. Fields started a series of acquisitions to expand their businesses including a 119-store French Bakery/sandwich chain, La Pette Boulangerie and Famous Chocolate Chip Company. These acquisitions brought a combination of full lines of both cookies and bakery products and presented an opportunity to carve out a niche in a super fractionalized market, and the size of the operation constituted an investment barrier to competition. But the same(p) time, the acquisition also brough t many of overhead functions into the existing organization, including accounting, finance, personnel, human resources, and so on