Case Study Answer

Read and complete the case study 

Read the entire case study and answer the 2 questions 

• Paper should be approximately 500-750 words total.
• APA format for your citations when writing up the case.

Wish You Wood is a toy boutique located in the main shopping

strip of a resort town near Piney Lake. People who

own cabins near the lake or come to visit the local state

park enjoy browsing through the towns stores, where they

pick up pottery, landscape paintings, and Wish You Woods

beautifully crafted wooden toys. For these shoppers, Wish

You Wood is more than a store; it is a destination they associate

with family and fun.

The stores owners, Jim and Pam Klein, personally select

the toys from craftspeople and toymakers around the

world. They enjoy their regular customers but believe selling

mostly to vacationers has limited the companys growth.

They decided that the lowest-cost way to expand would be

to sell toys online. However, after several years, they had to

admit that traffic to the stores website was unimpressive.

Thanks to e-mail and Facebook reminders, they were luring

some of their loyal in-store shoppers to the site to make

off-season purchases, but few other people looking for toys

ever found Wish You Wood online.

Jim and Pam concluded that the next-best way to sell

online would be to partner with Amazon.com. Amazons

Marketplace service lets other retailers sell products on

Amazon. The Kleins signed an agreement to list the stores

most popular items with Amazon. For example, if a shopper

is searching for wooden dollhouses, Wish You Woods dollhouses

will be included in the search results. A customer

who chooses to buy from Wish You Wood places the order

right on Amazons website. Under Amazons participation

agreement, the listings must be honest and may not link to

Wish You Woods own website or invite phone calls from

customers. In exchange for giving the products exposure on

the site, Amazon charges a monthly fee plus a commission

on each sale.

Initially, Jim and Pam were thrilled about their decision

to partner with Amazon. They tracked each months

sales and compared them with in-store sales. In the first

five months, sales jumped 45 percent, mainly because

of sales on Amazon. Then, suddenly, sales of popular

toy train sets, which were particularly profitable, stopped

altogether. Puzzled, Jim visited Amazon to make sure the

train sets were still listed. To his surprise, he found that

the train set was there, at the usual price of $149, listed

right after the same set available directly from Amazon,

at $129. He and Pam concluded that shoppers were now

buying the product directly from Amazon. It appeared that

their store had helped Amazon identify a product  consumers

value.

The Kleins worried that they needed a new strategy.

If they matched Amazons price, they would lose most of

the profit on their most popular items. Wish You Wood was

too small of a business to negotiate better prices from its

suppliers. If the store didnt match Amazons price, it would

continue to lose sales at the Amazon site. Jim and Pam wondered

whether they should pull out of Amazon altogether

or find a way to continue working with the partner that had

become a competitor. They also considered rethinking

which toys to offer on Amazon.

Discussion Questions:

1. Prepare a SWOT analysis for Wish You Wood toy store, based on the information given.

2. Using the SWOT analysis, what general corporate strategy would you recommend for Wish You Wood? Should the store continue or change its current approach? (PFA image for to develop ideas)