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 variaties of chocolate, including milk,semi sweet =, white and dark chocolate. It also offers a variety of ingredients such as coffee, berries and fresh mint. Customers can order labels for special occasions (for weddings) or business purposes. 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

Target Performance $500,000 Actual Performance $750,000

Measures: Operating income changes from growth

Target Performance $100,000 Actual Performance $125,000

Measures: Cost savings due to reduced packaging size

Target Performance $20,000 Actual Performance $25,000

Customer Perspective:

Increase Market Share

Measures: Market share of overall candy bar market

Target Performance 8% Actual Performance 7.8%

Increase the number of new product offerings

Measures: Number of new product offerings

Target 5 Actual 7

Increase customer acquisitions due to sustainability efforts

Measures: % of new customers surveyed who required recycled paper options

Target 35% Actual 40%

Internal Business Process Perspective:

Reduce time to customer

Measures: Average design time

Target 3 days

Actual 3 days

Increase Quality

Measures: Internal quality rating (10 pt scale)

Target 7 points Actual 8 points

Increase use of recycled materials

Measures: Recycled materials used as a % of total materials used

Target 30% Actual 32%

Learning and Growth Perspective

Increase number of professional chocolatiers

Measures: Number of chocolatiers

Target 5 Actual 6

Increase number of women and minorities in the workforce

Measures: Percentage of women and minorities inthe workforce

Target 40% Actual 38%

Questions:

1) Was Cerebral successful in implementing its strategy in 2013? Explain your answer.

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

3) Explain why Cerebral did not achieve did not achieve its target market share in the candy bar market but still exceeded its financial targets. Is "market shareof overall candy bar market" a good measure of market share for Cerebral? Explain.

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.

5) Why did Cerebral include balanced scorecard standards relating to environmental and social performance? Is the company meeting its performance objectives in these areas?