Scenario: Erica's Garden Centre

Erica's Garden Centre sells garden supplies to consumers - mainly plants, garden products and ornamental furnishings. Erica's has garden centres in twenty (20) locations in Victoria with their head office co-located near the original garden centre in Ballarat. Head office employs 25 people and is responsible for branding, state-wide advertising, the organisation's website and social media pages, and designing the business processes. Head office also advises on stock management, manages deliveries of store and online order/ store pick-up stock, provides staff training, and conducts marketing research. Each Erica's Garden Centre location has between 25 and 45 employees, with the nursery's manager responsible for ensuring plant health and product display, customer service, staff recruitment, and day to day management, as well as ensuring stock meets local needs, site maintenance, and cost control. Many Erica's Garden Centre branches have some local competition, however, Erica's Garden Centre is the largest specialist plant nursery business in the state (in terms of both volume of sales and overall sales value). Both head office and local managers are conscious, however, that competition at the local level needs to be managed. This is because even though local specialist competitors generally have less resources at the organisational level, their structure makes it easier for them to respond to local market demands. In addition, large, more generalist organisations are getting better at competing in this space. Erica's Carden Centre is particularly concerned with remaining competitive by balancing both customer service and product line depth. Head office has asked you to develop a metrics system that will help their nursery managers ensure they are competitive in their local markets, as well as enable Head Office to be able to monitor their branches' competitive performance.

Answer following questions:

A.Analyse the risks in the scenario chosen and identify the elements of the decision environment relevant to the selection of metrics

B.Identify five metrics that will help the organisation in the case address the issues identified in the scenario, and clearly show how those metrics will help the organisation achieve its objectives (maximum 5 metrics, 2 marks per metric)

C.Context is important when selecting metrics. Choose two of the metrics from 2b of this section. For each metric discuss the context related factors that impacted on the choice of that metric, and how specific changes in context would lead you to choose a different metrics. (Remember, the two metrics selected here cannot be the same as the two metrics selected for part D)

D.Metrics are quantitative measures built from data. Choose two of the metrics from 2b of this section. Discuss how you would construct both metrics from data source to visualisation

E.Critically evaluate how the metrics selected related to each other and form a metrics system that contributes to the marketing decisions relevant to the case

Please include any references if possible