Cerebral Chocolates makes custom- labeled, high-quality, specialty candy bars for special events and advertising purposes. The company employs several chocolatiers who were trained in Germany. The company offers many varieties of chocolate, including milk, semi- sweet, white, and dark chocolate. It also offers a variety of ingredients, such as coffee, berries, and fresh mint. The real appeal for the company’s product, however, is its custom labeling. Customers can order labels for special occasions (for example, wedding invitation labels) or business purposes (for example, business card labels). The company’s balanced scorecard for 2013 follows. For brevity, the initiatives taken under each objective are omitted.

Required
1. Was Cerebral successful in implementing its strategy in 2013? Explain your answer.
2. Would you have included some measure of customer satisfaction in the customer perspective? Are these objectives critical to Cerebral for implementing its strategy? Why or why not? Explain briefly.
3. Explain why Cerebral did not achieve its target market share in the candy bar market but still exceeded its financial targets. Is “market share of overall candy bar market” a good measure of market share for Cerebral? Explain briefly.
4. Do you agree with Cerebral’s decision not to include measures of changes in operating income from productivity improvements under the financial perspective of the balanced scorecard? Explain briefly.
5. Why did Cerebral include balanced scorecard standards relating to environmental and social performance? Is the company meeting its performance objectives in theseareas?

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Target Perfor Actual mance Performance Objectives Financial Perspective Increase shareholder value Measures Operating-income changes from price recovery Operating-income changes from growth Cost savings due to reduced pack aging size $500,000 $100,000 $20,000 $750,000 $125,000 $25,000 Customer Perspective Increase market share Market share of overall candy bar market Number of new product offerings 8% 7.8% Increase the number of new product offerings Increase customer acquisitions due to sustainability efforts Percentage of new customers surveyed who required recycled paper options 35% 3 days 7 points 30% 40% Internal-Business-Process Perspective Reduce time to customer Increase quality 3 days 8 points 32% Average design time Internal quality rating (10-point scale) Recycled materials used asa percentage of total materials used ncrease use of recycled materials Learning-and-Growth Perspective Increase number of professional Number of chocolatiers chocolatiers Increase number of women and ge of women and minori- minorities in the workforce ties in the workforce 40% 38%