Unearth, Inc., refines petrol and sells it through its own Unearth gas stations. On the basis of market research, Unearth determines that 60% of the overall petrol market consists of “service-oriented customers,” medium- to high-income individuals who are willing to pay a higher price for gas if the gas stations can provide excellent customer service such as a clean facility, a convenience store, friendly employees, a quick turnaround, the ability to pay by credit card, and high-octane premium petrol. The remaining 40% of the overall market are “price shoppers” who look to buy the cheapest petrol available. Unearth’s strategy is to focus on the 60% of service-oriented customers. Unearth’s balanced scorecard for 2020 follows. For brevity, the initiatives taken under each objective are omitted.

Required

1. Was Unearth successful in implementing its strategy in 2020? Explain your answer.
2. Would you have included some measure of employee satisfaction and employee training in the learning-and-growth perspective? Are these objectives critical to Unearth for implementing its strategy? Why or why not? Explain briefly.

3. Explain how Unearth did not achieve its target market share in the total petrol market but still exceeded its financial targets. Is “market share of overall petrol market” the correct measure of market share? Explain briefly.
4. Is there a cause-and-effect linkage between improvements in the measures in the internal-businessprocess perspective and the measure in the customer perspective? That is, would you add other measures to the internal-business-process perspective or the customer perspective? Why or why not? Explain briefly.
5. Do you agree with Unearth’s decision not to include measures of changes in operating income from productivity improvements under the financial perspective of the balanced scorecard? Explain briefly.

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Objectives Financial Perspective Increase shareholder value Customer Perspective Increase market share Measures Operating-income changes from price recovery Operating-income changes from growth Market share of overall petrol market Internal-Business-Process Perspective Improve petrol quality Improve refinery performance Ensure petrol availability Learning-and-Growth Perspective Increase refinery process capability Quality index Refinery-reliability index (%) Product-availability index (%) Percentage of refinery processes with advanced controls Actual Target Performance Performance £80,000,000 £85,000,000 £60,000,000 £62,000,000 4% 92 points 91% 99% 94% 3.8% 93 points 91% 99.5% 95%