MINI CASE STUDY: THE AIIAS STORE

History of AIIAS Store

AIIAS store was established in 1997 under the leadership of Dr. Amponsha, who was the chair of AIIAS business department during the time. It was established as cooperatives and was supported by the MBA students of the department (it is called AIIAS Business Club now) as their practicum training. In 1998, Dr. Nasution took over the AIIAS store leadership and changed AIIAS store from cooperative to a hybrid cooperative enterprise that can be used for business learning. This business setting allowed investors to buy shares offered by AIIAS store. During the time AIIAS store owned 51% of the store and the other 49% controlled by other investors. Due to great profit, in 1999 the store was expanded. The store space was doubled, and more items were offered. The shares were also split, giving every par owned by the investor doubled.

However, during auditing visit in 2002, the auditor suggested that AIIAS store was operating illegally since it is not a registered business. There were worries that tax officials would come and caused a problem. By the end of 2002, the administrative committee of AIIAS decided to buy all the shares. And since then, the AIIAS store is solely operated under AIIAS. AIIAS store has been a great help for AIIAS students. Despite of its products high price compared to outside store, AIIAS still maintains good sales for many years. Its customers range has gone over the AIIAS boundary, attracting regular visitors from SSD, 1000 MM, and others.

Description of Store Performance and Opportunities

AIIAS store experiences financial lost and low sales for the last 3 years (even before the pandemic). A business analysis was conducted, and the results revealed that there might be several reasons for low sales. Apparently having high turnover of students every semester can be one the cause of the low sales since it takes time to orient new customers. Other factor is the appearance and service of the store. The store looks like a traditional store and is very crowded with aisles of items, giving a small space for customers to walk. With no air-condition facility; it can get warm inside the store during summer time. Customers complain that the store provides limited variety of items. And often there are some items out of stocks. The store is still using the manual store system and the manager of the store has a hard time to manage the inventories. The manager also finds out that there are some missing items suggesting that they may have been stolen. AIIAS Store also faces strong competitions from nearby supermarkets within 3-5 km.

And furthermore, there was little effort of marketing campaign done by the store. Many times

AIIAS dwellers are not aware of the products offering of AIIAS store.

There are some main strengths of the AIIAS store. First is the offering of unique items like vegie products, vegetarian lunch meal, international products (sold by students) and others products, that are not available in other supermarkets nearby. Second, the store has steady customers (other than AIIAS dwellers) from Adventist members from 1000 MM, SSD, and ADRA Philippines.

For AIIAS dwellers, the store is the closest store they can go to buy necessities. And finally given to the strong technology (network) environment in AIIAS and the current high trend of internet usage among AIIAS dwellers, the store could take advantage to boost its sales.

Q1. Layout the IT infrastructure plan for this system.