Analysis for Effective Planning

Analysis for Effective Planning
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate personal strengths and weaknesses in how to effectively plan as a manager. Considering how you react in certain situations can help analyze a manager’s strategic strengths (Daft, 2014). When a manager is aware of their strategic strengths they know what areas or capabilities they should work the most (Daft, 2014). In the first portion of Daft’s (2014) analysis there are two sections of strategic management: implementer and formulators, which we will later discuss within the paper.
The strategic management process is an evaluation of ways to improve or better specific problems without hindering the organization’s morals, values, or objectives (Daft, 2014). Some organizations may form a plan to change or improve areas that are not currently working for them. So a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is a planning tool to help the organization stay focus on the needs and opportunities as they strategically plan how to make the necessary changes. It is recommended that companies and organizations review their SWOT analysis annually and based on specific needs more frequently (Simoneaux, 2011). Effective planning requires you to make certain changes due to looking into the possibilities rather than reacting to conflicts (Simoneaux, 2011). I plan to learn how effective I am in executing plans as well as learning various perspectives to organize and carry out those plans.
Problem
Identifying an opportunity is very important in the beginning stages of any plan because you must be aware of a problem in order to seek a solution. The problem that I have identified within DELiA*s, a clothing store for pre-teen-college aged girls, is their need for effective marketing which strongly impacts their customer growth. DELiA*s is a very well know teenaged fashion store as it began as an online catalog in 1993. The company was purchased by another catalog company, Alloy in 2003 and began opening fiscal store locations in 2005 (Diamond, 2010). The company is aware of their target audience but seems to struggle with the challenge of satisfying the wide-range of pre-teen – college-aged girls without appearing to be too mature for preteens and too childlike for college girls.
Analysis. DELiA*s is well-known amongst the younger aged groups. Parents love the brand due to the high quality of clothes and the many promotions and sales that makes it reasonable. The company has over 300 stores and accommodate those cities and/or states that they are not in with online promotions daily. They stay on top of the latest trends and very current of what is popular in today’s fashion. DELiA*s also are very active on social media, they encourage customers to follow their Instagram and Twitter accounts, they have a Facebook page as well as a Twitter account.
In my opinion, DELiA*s target customer range is too wide. With every new inventory it gets more confusing as to who they feel are their most frequent shopper. In the mall which I work my store is located between Children’s Place and Justice. Children’s Place is a clothing store for children aged newbord-10 and Justice is for 10-13 year old girls. My store definitely have more teenaged girls than college-aged girls because of location. The college-aged girls shop at stores like: Abercrombie, Aeropostale, and American Eagle, to name a few and all are located on the opposite end of the mall.
The company has very poor marketing strategies. They send mass emails daily to their current customers which really annoys customers than make them want to shop. They could be really effective if they did commercials, magazine ads, or send catalogs to cities that they are not in to incorporate more loyal business. They should incorporate more referral sales to obtain more new business based on word of mouth. A huge opportunity is to ensure that their most popular items are