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 ingrediants, such as coffee, berries, and fresh mint. The real appeal for the company's product, however, is itscustom labeling. Customers can order labels for special occasions (for example, wedding invitations 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.

Objectives

Financial Perspective Increase shareholder value

Measures Operating Income changes from price recovery $500,000 (Target Performance) $750,000 (Actual)

Operating Income changes from growth $100,000 (Target) $125,000 (Actual)

Cost savings due to reduced packaging size $20,000 (Target) $25,000 (Actual)

Customer Perspective

Increase market share (Measures) Market shares of overall candy bar market 8% (Target) 7.8% (Actual)

Increase # of new products (Measures) Number of new product offerings 5 (Target) 7 (Actual)

Increase cust. acquisitions due to sustanability efforts (Measures) % of new customers surveyed who recycled paper options 35% (Target) 40 % (Actual)

Internal Business Process Perspective

Reduce time to customer (Measures) Avg. design Time 3 days (Target) 3 days (Actual)

Increase Quality (Measures) Internal Quality Rating (10 point scale) 7 points (Target) 8 points (Actual)

Increase use of recycled materials (Measures) Recycled Materials used as a % of total materials used 30%(Target) 32% (Actual)

Learning and Growth Perspective

Increase # of professional chocolatiers (Measures) Number of chocolatiers 5 (Target) 6 (actual)

Increase # of women and miniorities in workforce (Measures) % of women and minorities in workforce 40% (Target) 38% (Actual)

1) Was Cerebral successfulin implementing its strategy in 2013? Explain the answer.

2) Would you have included some measure of customer satisfaction in the customer perspective? Are these objectives critical to Cerebral for implementing strategy? Why or why not? Explain.

3) Explain why Cerebral did not achieve its target market share in the candy bar market but still exceededits 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 Cerebrals 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 these areas?