MANUTAN INTERNATIONAL MAIL ORDER EUROPEAN SUCCESS

Manutan International S.A. is a specialist mail-order business providing industrial and office equipment and supplies to the business-to-business, collective, and public sectors. Based in France, Manutan has built up a pan-European network of 24 subsidiaries in 20 countries, from Portugal to Russia and from Sweden to Italy. Manutan also has a strong online presence with 18 e-commerce websites and a workforce of around 1,500 staff. Manutans more than 200 catalogues feature over 200,000 items and serve more than 600,000 customers throughout Europe. While mail-order houses had been in operation in France for many years, they have tended to focus primarily on the consumer market. In 1966, however, Andre Guichard, joined by son Jean-Pierre, set up a company dedicated to providing mail-order services to the business sector. The companys major innovation was in its choice of goods, that of industrial equipment, especially materials handling equipment. Manutan quickly recognized the potential of entering other European markets. The companys first choice was the United Kingdom, where, as in France in the 1960s, the market for mail-order materials handling, lifting, and storage equipment was more or less non-existent. Manutans success in the United Kingdom led it to quickly move into a large number of new foreign markets after 1974. Manutan focused on its mail-order operations until the early 2000s. In 2001, however, the company expanded and established a presence on the Internet, launching its first e-commerce-enabled website. That site later provided the platform for the rollout of 18 websites targeting each of the companys markets. By 2005, the company had posted more than 1 million in sales through its e-commerce sites. During the recent global financial crisis, Manutan made a strategic decision not to cut its market- ing and commercial investments. On the contrary, Manutan maintained its promotional expenditure, and refocused part of its staff on direct selling, thereby increasing the multi-channel contact with their customers. This strategic insight seems to have paid off: the company recorded revenues of 563 million during the 2010 financial year, an increase of 15.2% over the previous year.

DISCUSSION

Q. One common approach to measuring the quality of a companys services is through the use of customer satisfaction surveys. Suppose in a random sample, Manutans customers are asked whether the last office equipment transition with Manutan was outstanding (Yes or No). Assume Manutan supplies these equipments from two different locations and that the office equipment customers can be divided according to where their equipment was supplied from. Suppose a random sample of 45 customers who bought office equipment from warehouse 1 results in 18 saying the service was of excellent quality and a random sample of 51 customers who bought office equipment that came from warehouse 2 results in 12 saying the service was of excellent quality. Use a confidence interval to express the estimated difference in population proportions of excellent ratings between the two groups of customers. Does it seem to matter which warehouse the office equipment comes from in terms of the quality rating received from customers? What would you report from these data?

Sure, you can construct a hypothesis test instead of confidence interval for the estimated difference. That's your choice :)