Question:
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 chocolate, semi-sweet, white, and dark chocolate. They also offer 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 2012 follows. For brevity, the initiatives taken under each objective are omitted.
Required
1. Was Cerebral successful in implementing its strategy in 2012? 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 how 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.
Transcribed Image Text:
Actual Performance Target Performance Objectives Financial Perspective Increase shareholder value Measures Operating-income changes from price recovery Operating-income changes from growth $750,000 $125,000 $500,000 $100,000 Customer Perspective Increase market share Increase the number of new product offerings Internal-Business-Process Perspective Reduce time to customer Increase quality Learning-and-Growth Perspective Increase number of professional chocolatiers 8% Market share of overall candy bar market Number of new product offerings 7.8% 5 Average design time Internal quality rating (10-point scale) 3 days 7 points 3 days 8 points Number of chocolatiers 5