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Challenges in adopting total quality management
Challenges in adopting total quality management
Written article review on total quality management
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"It was the summer of 1969: Man took his first walk on the moon. Nearly 450,000 people gathered in upstate New York to witness the historic Woodstock concert. And Doris and Don Fisher opened the first Gap store in San Francisco" (Gapinc.com 2007). Today, Gap Inc. is one of the world's largest specialty retailers, with more than 3,100 stores and fiscal 2006 revenues of $15.9 billion. Gap Inc. operates four of the most recognized apparel brands in the world Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Piperlime. Every day, Gap Inc. looks for new ways to connect with customers around the world, providing value to their shareholders and to make a positive contribution in the communities where Gap Inc. does business. Gap Inc brands have a simple, common purpose: "to make it easy for people to express their personal style" (Gapinc.com 2007). Gap Inc. constantly evolves each brand to better meet their customers' needs through innovative and inspiring design; through convenient and engaging store experiences; and by communicating with people in a way that connects to how consumers live, work and play. Gap Inc. involves total quality management through out policies and procedures. In the following information explains how Gap Inc. uses TQM (total quality management), what made Gap Inc. the way it is today, and implementations on total quality management.
When Gap was founded in 1969, Gap was unique and new. Gap's target customers were younger generations. Gap's hottest seller at the time was its "basic" look, which consisted of signature blue jeans and white cotton t-shirts. Gap founders realized that jeans were becoming popular among the younger generation of customers. Nevertheless, the company recognized that despite Gaps popularity among the youth, there were not enough assortments of jeans in the clothing outlets. Capitalizing on this deficit was merely the next step in expanding. Gap's founders were sure that jeans could be sold through a chain of small stores devoted solely to that product. As Gaps business idea became successful, Gap expanded their line of offering and now Gap offers a range of clothing for men, women, and children. As Gap's business began to boom, Gap also began to expand. Gap Inc. added two new entities to the company, Banana Republic and Old Navy. All three chains have their own target markets. Banana Republic is known for their casual luxury, with high-quality apparel. Banana Republic tailors their store to appeal to the unique market of pleasing the most fashion conscious consumers.
Lululemon was founded in Vancouver, Canada in 1998; as of October 2015 they have 354 stores worldwide, making them on of the biggest retailors to solely focus on athletic wear clothing. Their most popular product are their leggings. Created for health conscious yogis, Lululemon prides themselves in creating high-quality products for men and women who live a health focused lifestyle. Lululemon is famous for giving environmentally friendly red and white reusable bags after a purchase and providing the highest quality for their clientele. They also practice social responsibility when they screen their vendors to make sure they have the same environmental and social standards as them ().By examining the main social forces, consumer behavior, and
J. Crew, also known as J. Crew Group Inc., is a private label company known for its preppy fashions that are fashionable yet costly. Essentially, the company was owned by the Cinader family for most of its history. Mitchell Cinader and Saul Charles founded the company in 1947. It was originally known as Popular Merchandise Inc. doing business as the Popular Club Plan, in which Mitchell’s son Arthur was the overseer. The company sold women’s clothing through in-home demonstrations. In the early 1980’s, Cinader and Charles observed catalog retailers such as Land’s End, Talbots and L.L. Bean reporting rising sales in revenue. With intentions to increase sales and duplicate success of these well known companies, Popular Club Plan began its own catalog (http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/j-crew-group-inc-history/).
Levi's had sold to Wal-Mart through a value brand called Brittania in the 80's and the 90s, but that came to an end in 1994 over a dispute in Canada about Levi's Orange Tab jeans. After that, sales dwindled for Brittania, and Levi's sold Brittania to VF Corp. In 2002, however, Levi's was thinking about offering a new value brand for Wal-Mart. It was not that easy of a decision though. They had to think of a way to keep the existing customers in the other channels and not lessen the brand's perceived quality overall.
Jones Apparel Group’s recognized brands include: Jones New York, Polo Jeans Company, Nine West, Napier, and costume jewelry licensed under the Tommy Hilfiger brand. Jones aims to gain stability in the apparel industry as well as retail markets through building “complete lifestyle brands serving a wide breadth of consumers in a wide range of income levels and shopping destination preferences.” (PR Newswire, 2/7/01).
... Marketer of the Year. The publisher of Fashion Network Report observed that "they made their name into a brand. They are one of the few retailers that has that luxury." Gap now spends more than half a billion dollars a year on advertising: almost five percent of the company's sales is devoted to selling the attitude that brands the clothes and the people who wear them.
Like most companies The Gap Incorporated usually has some type of commitment or vision that they want their company to fulfill. The owner, Don Fisher wanted his company to be unique and really help the community. The company does not have a set mission statement but they have made commitment to their stakeholders, employees and they community. One of the commitments the company made was that they will do way more than just sell clothes (Gap Inc. 2014). The Gap Inc. also ensures that everyone that works with the company or is associated with the company will be treated with the up most respect, fairness and dignity (Gap Inc. 2014).
Levi's has always tried to minimize the impact culture has on its ability to produce standardized products and campaigns. This is done to achieve economies of scale and a higher quality but cultural differences can be very important in the global and domestic markets. The characteristics of a particular cultural group will affect the type of products it desires and how they purchase it and use it. From the 1950s to the 1980s Levis was the image of rebellion and counter culture with public icons such as Elvis and Marlon Brando publically seen wearing the brand. This helped in giving the brand an image of originality and authenticity. But what Levis failed to grasp was that culture changes through time and consumer behaviour and choices change along with it. The rap culture which began in 1992 brought about new trends of loose baggy clothes. Levi's which sold straight tapered jeans failed to meet the needs of its consumer market who demanded loose baggy jeans which were considered as "cool" at the time. This demand was fulfilled by competitor brands such as JNCO, Kickwear and Boss etc who were quick to grab on to Levi's market share with products which were more suited to the younger generation. Even the rebellious image of Levis was taken by other brands like Diesel and Pepe.
The period success of GAP had taken a turn since 2002. Profits and revenue continued to decline. From 2008-2010, just in U.S, 6000 retail stores had been closed because of the financial recession; during this period, Gap closed more than fifty of its 3251 stores. The annual income of GAP had also been successively overpassed by ZARA in 2008 and H&M in 2009, which dropped down to the third in fashion industry (Liu, 2013). And continually, the company’s net income declined to $833 million in 2011, which is 17% less than it earned in 2010 (Exhibit 1) (Ciasullo, Blauvelt, & Lambert, 2012). In U.S, the largest market for GAP, the elder generation who bought Gap products in 1990s had gradually left Gap for different requirements with the increasing age, and Gap was unable to keep its success with the younger generation. In addition, although Chinese market currently has been the second largest market for GAP Inc., they still operate the GAP brand as a follower without any distinct positioning str...
INTRODUCTION: As a retail major at Florida State, I have been able to learn a lot about my love for fashion. One thing that is true about me is that I love to understand the origins behind different subjects, whether that is my family or, in this case, piece of clothing. Perfectly tying those two worlds together, I am going to be talking about the origins of denim jeans. First I will go over the history, then I will go over how jeans became popular, and lastly I will talk
In the world of fashion, there is denim. It is one of the world’s oldest fabrics, and has been modified and remodelled to go with the latest fashion trends. The first ones who wore this fabric are workers in the California Gold Rush era, designed by Jacob Davis because of its sturdy material that withstood the harsh working conditions. Not just them, even sailors from Italy use this material too as their sailing uniform. Then, it started appearing as an actor’s apparel, and that’s when denim started to become one of a fashion item. People started wearing jeans as part of their daily apparel and even adding their own ideas, such as studs and colouring it with different shades of denim. It doesn’t only stop around that era, but today, they are seen everywhere and has become a major clothing piece for almost all of the age groups. As a reference, we can see young children already wears jeans as part of their clothing, the teenagers added jeans to their wardrobe, and even for the seniors, they consider jeans as a simple and comfortable clothing pieces.
...ough quality or enough service, satisfaction will result. However, we have evidence to support that quality and service alone can not produce recurrent satisfaction. Satisfaction is a distinct and separate issue.
P&G’s purpose is to provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world’s consumers. P&G values their employees through leadership, ownership, integrity, passion for winning, and trust. P&G entices and recruits best people in the world, builds their organization by promoting and rewarding from within, and believes that their employees will always be the most important asset. P&G has many principles such as (1) showing respect to all individuals, (2) valuing differences, (3) inspiring and enabling employees to achieve high expectations, standards, and challenging goals, (4) valuing personal mastery, (5) believing that all individuals can and want to contribute to their fullest potential, (6)
We always make sure that when they come to our stores they experience the best shopping and that they find what they want to buy and we have a reason for them to buy. We make sure that our merchandising is up to standards and it motivates the customers to shop in our stores.
Making its first appearance in the 1950’s and continuing to grow each day since its increase in popularity in the 1980’s, Total Quality Management is another trend effecting Cost and Managerial Accounting (American Society for Quality, 2016). Total Quality Management is a philosophy that focuses on quality in every part of the business in order to meet stakeholders’ needs with efficiency and effectiveness, all without compromising ethical values (Chartered Quality Institute, 2016; American Society for Quality, 2016). It is important to note that Total Quality Management is not a means to an end, but instead is the end goal itself. Meaning that Total Quality Management is not a process used to achieve a goal, but instead
Introduction Effectively integrating information technology (IT) into an organization’s business processes is critical if the organization wants to increase productivity and remain profitable. IT includes items such as the systems software, application software, computer hardware, and the networks and databases that help manage the organization’s information. When implementing quality standards and processes that are forever changing in the IT world, organizations must balance these changes while continuing to rapidly implement new systems technologies in order to stay competitive. Quality improvements in IT delivery and service support can be improved by measuring and tracking user satisfaction, integration and flexibility early on in the decision process and reinforcing them throughout the review process. Adhering to quality management best practices means ensuring that quality standards are strictly enforced and entrenched into the organization’s philosophy.