Questions and Answers of Food service management

1. ● Product companies often try to differentiate themselves by offering services. Many struggle to make money at it.25 This phenomenon is called the ‘Service Paradox’. Why is it so difficult
1. ● Do you think the reverse also holds true, i.e. should service companies start thinking about offering products as well? Why? Why not? Can you come up with examples?
1.● Do you think manufacturing companies can afford not to offer any services? Why? Why not? Do you see differences in this respect in relation to the type of industry?
1. ● Analyse the challenges and opportunities faced by the call-centre sector with respect to internationalization. See the report in Financial Times ‘India learns language of customer
1.● Based on the description of the Walmart case at the beginning of the chapter, identify the drivers for internationalization in the retail sector. Why was Walmart in the end not successful? What
1. ● Recall the service typology we have been using throughout the book and which makes a distinction between maintenance, task- and personal-interactive services. Would you expect differences
1. ● An increasing number of business schools develop web-based MBA programmes (i.e.using the distance learning concept). How would you look at this from the perspective of a traditional business
1. ● Identify and document in your environment three retail companies that follow one of the three generic strategies (cost leadership, differentiation and focus) described in this chapter. How
1. ● Companies like McDonald’s or Disney have developed so-called universities to train their employees. How does this fit in with concerns that have been described in this chapter?
1. ● What are three typical strategic issues for service firms?
1. ● What is the best defence against imitation by competitors? Illustrate using three concrete examples.
1. ● Why do flag carriers in the airline industry create separate ventures in order to compete with the low cost carriers? Why don’t they integrate the low cost strategy into their traditional
1.● What are the themes to be included in a service firm’s strategy statement?
1. ● Suppose you are a successful R&D manager in a large manufacturing company. You are asked to develop the R&D activities of a large international bank. While the offer is very interesting, you
1.● How important is innovation for the long-term survival and growth of service firms?Why? Can you give examples? Would you consider this importance the same for all sorts of service industries?
1. ● Evaluate the SLA between the DSU and the local police districts in Exhibit 14.4. Evaluate the approach the project team took in Table 14.3? Did the project team define the right performance
1. ● Read Exhibit 14.2 about the implementation of SLAs at Securis. It is clear that Securis applies SLAs in its own particular way. What are the differences between the theory and the practice of
1.● Look up an example of a firm using a service guarantee and evaluate it (for example, does it contain all the necessary information required of a service guarantee?) What is the purpose of the
1. ● What is the importance of a service concept in the implementation of an integrated performance measurement system?
1. ● Is it possible for firms in the service business to develop organizational capabilities in such a way that they have an excellent performance in each of the operational measures(quality,
1. ● In Exhibit 13.3, we described the failure of the Belgian railway company to run its trains on time. This leads to dissatisfied customers. Employees are confronted with complain ing and angry
1. ● How can a service manager break the trade-off between service quality and service productivity?
1.What kinds of input- and output variables were included in this study? What were the managerial lessons? What were the advantages and disadvantages of this DEA method?
1.● DEA has been used in many different sectors to measure service efficiency. Find in the literature a study describing the use and the results of DEA in a certain service context.
1. ● Servqual has been used in many different sectors to measure service quality. Find in the literature a study describing the use and the results of Servqual in a certain service context. How did
1.● What are the similarities and the differences between integrated performance models such as the BSC and the EFQM Excellence model?
1. ● Consider a company where you buy regularly, and discuss your current level of experi ence and engagement behaviour. What would be needed to enhance your engagement behaviour?
1. ● Think about four different types of company you patronize (e.g. public transportation, bank, restaurant, hairdresser, etc.), and reflect upon the following three questions:(i) Are you
1.● The Net Promoter Score is a simple and useful metric to capture loyalty intentions and get an indication of the firm’s ability to grow, but firms might benefit from looking at other metrics
1. ● If these social dynamics are indeed crucial in terms of knowledge creation and diffusion, what might supportive HR practices look like?
1. ● Herbert Simon once said that ‘all learning takes place within an individual’s head’. Would you agree? How does this idea relate to the social dynamics outlined here?
1. ● Would you agree with the statement that certain competencies are irrelevant for certain service jobs (e.g. personal characteristics for service employees working in cleaning com panies)? If
1. ● In terms of implementation, what are, according to you, crucial prerequisites and/or ingredients of (change) programmes aimed at introducing – or further developing –empowerment within the
1. ● Does the road towards empowerment lead eventually to strategic autonomy (at the indi vidual level)?
1.● Would you agree with the statement that empowerment is not relevant for low skilled employees? Why (not)?
1. ● What do you think of the arguments used by Colruyt to bring the experiment to an end?
1. ● What are the advantages of both the snake queue system and of the classical multiline queueing system?
1. ● What are the alternatives?
1. ● How revolutionary is the snake queue concept?
1. ● Read Exhibit 10.7 and answer the following questions:
1. ● Apply the demand management policies to a postal service.
1. ● Explain how the planning system at McDonald’s described in Exhibit 10.2 can be seen as a pull system. What is the pull signal?
1. What is the implication for managing these resources? Develop a resource planning system for a supermarket.
1. ● Is the demand for cashier resources in a supermarket dependent, independent, quasi dependent or quasi-independent?
1. ● In St Luke’s hospital, there are four lifts for visitors. While the average capacity of the four lifts is sufficient to transport the visitors during the day, visitors have to wait about 3
1. How could you reduce the working time without increasing the number of employees?
1. ● In the bank example (see Figure 10.5), what is the reason, despite an utilization rate lower than 95%, for customers having to wait 30 minutes?
1. ● Apply the model of Figure 10.3 to a (non-fast food) restaurant. How will capacity and capacity management influence your perception of the service offered?
1. ● Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a snake-like entry system that you find at a Disney park versus the ‘funnel’ entry you might find at other places?
1. ● How will the use of a number-taking system influence your waiting experience?
1.● State the capacity of a highway with the following characteristics:– One lane, marked with ‘kilometres’ markers.– Speed limit 120 km/h.– All cars drive at the speed limit.– Average
1. ● With respect to e-business, pricing seems to be extremely difficult. What do you consider as relevant approaches to price the (different?) services the Internet entails? And which part should
1. ● The idea of price bundling is not only very fashionable but also very controversial (e.g.Microsoft). Under what conditions would price bundling be relevant and acceptable?
1.● Being first in the market allows deploying different pricing strategies; which one would you prefer under which conditions?
1. ● Look up examples of advertisements for ‘pure’ goods and ‘pure’ services. Compare the content of these advertisements.
1.● Look up examples of service companies with a very strong service brand. Using the dif ferent components of the service branding model (see Figure 8.2), discuss how these companies are able to
1. ● Look for companies (other than the Mayo Clinic) that are successful in linking the service concept, and the design of the service system and service encounter. How do they clue in their
1. ● Select a service setting (such as casinos in Exhibit 7.3) and describe the different dimen sions of the servicescape in this setting.
1. What are the decision variables in the location models for service firms?
1. ● What are the most common elements used in determining a specific location of a service f irm?
1.● Select a specific service process in a firm and describe the extent of customer contact, the amount of coupling of activities and how the employees are grouped in performing these activities.
1. ● Some futurologists indicate that what is happening now on the Internet is just the beginning of the ‘digital age’; in a couple of decades, we will be surrounded by ‘ambient
1. ● Sceptics may argue that e-commerce will never be more than a phenomenon like mail order sales, appealing to certain segments of the market but, all in all, remaining a modest phenomenon. Would
1.● It is clear that certain business models do actually work on the Internet and that there are even companies who make a profit using them. Notable examples include eBay (auctioning), Google,
1. ● For some managers, stress is just an individual ‘problem’; do you agree? What arguments do you see in favour of this view? And which corroborate the opposite? What are the implications of
1.● Is role stress a variable that should be ‘reduced to zero’? Why (not)?
1.Would this imply as well forms of ‘competence accounting’ and ‘competence valuation’?
1. ● It is often said that people are the most valuable assets of an organization. What are the consequences of this statement for competency management within service organizations?
1. ● Would you agree with the statement that certain competencies are irrelevant for certain service jobs (e.g. personal characteristics for service employees working in cleaning com panies)? If
1.● Despite the crucial role of human resources, and hence human resources management, in relation to value creation, many companies still do not adopt HR practices accord ingly. Why is this the
1. ● Take the same service process and try to understand the meaning of customer actions, onstage contact employee actions, backstage contact employee actions, support processes and physical
1. ● Think about a specific service process and give examples of the customer-induced vari ability in these processes.
1. ● How do you incorporate the customer experience into service process design?
1. ● Discuss the advantages and the disadvantages of using QFD, ISO 9000, Six Sigma and Lean in service companies. Is there any relationship between the process type (mass service, service factory,
1.● Take an example of a service company (or take the service company you are working for)and determine the dominant process type. What are the consequences of this type of process for the design
1.● It is a fact that many utility companies providing gas, electricity, water and waste processing are taking a second look at this multi-utility concept, with many of them going back to a reduced
1.Do they have competitors that are much more focused? How do these generic service providers react to this competition? Who is performing best in terms of profit and growth?
1. ● Life is easier for service firms that are able to focus on well-defined market segments. This means that a ‘we do everything for everyone’ strategy is not the best strategy in service
1.● Look for a service that is not delivered up to your expectations. Describe the service and the firm delivering the service. Using the gap model, which gaps are responsible for not being able to
1. ● What efforts does this suggest in terms of designing, delivering and marketing the service?
1. ● How are these elements supposed to be perceived by the target market segment? By the market in general? By the employee? By others?
1.● What are the important elements of the services to be provided, stated in terms of results, produced for the customer, for the employee and the company?
1. ● Based on what you have learned in this chapter, discuss the following question: ‘How confident can Waldemar Schmidt be that ISS will keep their contract with BAA?’
1. ● List different examples of service experiences where the negative or positive employee behaviour had an impact on customer satisfaction (or dissatisfaction). What can we learn from these
1. ● Look for an example of a service firm where a clear cycle of failure is working. Describe how the cycle of failure is working. Try to figure out what kind of issues caused the start of the
1.● Select a service firm and look for examples of maintenance-, task-, and personal-interactive services in this service setting. Does this firm take into account the different natures of these
1. ● Discuss the different characteristics of services. How might they affect the nature of services management?
1.● Discuss the following extract on the relative importance of manufacturing and services to economies: "The relative importance of manufacturing and services to economies, and the
distinguish the major types of legal actions related to automotive repair
Please match the term from the column on the left with the best definition provided in the list to the right.___ 6. personal protectivea. disabling unsafe equipment equipment ___ 7. lockout/tagoutb.
5. Based on OSHA regulations, _________________ must know what they can do to control hazards and how they should respond when an unsafe or dangerous situation arises.a. the owner of the company.b.
3. Which of the following statements is not a requirement of OSHA?a. No employee undertakes a job until he or she has been trained how to do it properly.b. No employee undertakes a job until he or
2. The federally required document that provides detailed information on-site explaining the chemical composition of every hazardous material isa. MSDS.b. CCOHS.c. EASHW.d. HAZMAT.
1. Occupational health and safety lawsa. are very similar in the U.S. and Canada.b. have been enacted across all of Europe.c. are intended to protect employees.d. all of the above.
10. If a customer brings a car into your shop and declines the repairs that you recommend you are _________________.a. fully responsible for the safety of that vehicle.b. still responsible if the
9. The “universally accepted” minimum warranty for automotive repair and parts isa. lifetime warranty.b. 3 years/36,000 miles.c. 5 years/50,000 miles.d. 90 days / 4,000 miles.e. 12 months/12,000
8. As a certified technician who conscientiously works on vehicles and does his best to “fix them right the first time” you could still be taken to ____________ if a customer is dissatisfied with
7. As a(n) ____________________ the customers expect us to have the knowledge and skills to accurately and completely resolve their vehicle problems at a reasonable price.a. charitable
6. There are four major areas of information that must be completed on a repair order. Which of the following is not one of those four areas?a. customer approvals.b. current service specials.c.
In Questions 1–5 please match the term in the left column with the best definition provided in the right column. Indicate the letter of the definition on the blank provided to the left of the term.

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