Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons^™

Paul M. Klekner (B), Roger R. Schnorbus

Robins School of Business White Paper Series, 1980-2022

This is a fictitious case study, including the name of the restaurant and the people involved.

Paul Klekner graduated first in his class from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in 1998; his fellow students named him the chef most likely to succeed in the future. After graduation, he and his wife, Sarah, moved back to his home in Richmond, Virginia where he was employed as a chef at several restaurants including Bottega and Old Original Bookbinders. In 2003, he decided to open his own restaurant, Rogerios, in the Tobacco Row section of Richmond. With an inheritance of $300,000 he …

An Alternative Strategy For Building Sales Of Computers: Generic Advertising, Min Lu, Steven M. Thompson, Yanbin Tu

Management Faculty Publications

Frequent upgrading and aggressive price-cutting have become standard practice in the computer sector. While necessitated in part by declining production costs and a highly competitive market, these strategies have also served to make computers more affordable, growing the size of the overall market. Recently downturns in the sales of computers motivate us to examine the impact of these strategies on overall sales growth. We find evidence to suggest that excessive upgrading and overly aggressive price-cutting can be detrimental to overall sales growth. We also find that the computer sector exhibits characteristics that suggest that generic advertising would be an effective …

Evaluating Direct-Mail Effectiveness In Building Sales And Attracting New Customers, Carol Beth Spivey

Master's Theses

This independent research project describes the direct-marketing efforts of Ukrop's Super Markets through its Ukrop's Valued Customer® Program, with special emphasis on the "zip code test" conducted in August, 1989. The purpose of this test was to acquire new Ukrop's Valued Customers from a population of non-Ukrop's customers.

While the test did yield a positive net present value, in evaluating the post-test shopping behavior of the two test groups and the control group, the author determined that there were no long-term benefits from these test mailings. Recommendations for improvements (if Ukrop's undertakes a similar campaign in the future) include additional …