Bus 310 Week 4 X Assignment - Lenscrafters Case Study

Lenscrafters Case Study

Lynn Auriemma

Operations Management

Professor Reinke

October 29, 2015

Lenscrafters Case Study

Lenscrafters is a company which came up with a new business idea so as to overcome competition which is always in the market. Lenscrafters came up with the idea that they can use eye ware as a fashion trend same as the shoes and the clothes. This was a crazy idea as termed by many people, but the Lenscrafters were ready to take the risk. They wanted to put all the optical frames in their company so that anybody in need of optical would choose from a wide range of optical in their company. Crazy ideas come bring about crazy benefits in the business. We all know that opticals are used for those with eye problems but Lenscrafters were ready to show the world that eye ware could be a trend too.

The company had a strategy on how to beat the competitive problem which is in the market. The company realized that the one way out to beat the competition in the market of eye ware was by introducing something which was not in the market. Coming up with something new in the market would enable them to get more customers than their competitors. Developing a wide range of frames from which a customer can choose from was a business strategy. Lenscrafters had lenses and frames in their company such that a customer could choose a frame and it would be fixed to the lens required by the vision capability of the customer. This was a big boost for the company to earn customers. Therefore, the business strategy of Lenscrafters Company to beat their competitors was to come up with a wide range of frames under "one roof", which was a lacking aspect in the other companies. At that time there was nothing like a "one stop shopping center" (Normann & Ramirez, 1994).

Operation management activities have for a while now been an obstacle to customer experience. Operation activities are the processes used by a company or a firm in production of their products (goods or services). In our case we have Lenscrafters coming up with a new wide range of frames which the customer is not conversant with. The other example of a business operation management operation is starting a new sales channel. For example, the company may be selling their goods to wholesalers and retailers only who later on sell to the consumers, but the company may initiate a new module of sales by allowing the consumers also to buy the goods directly from the company. This can affect the experience of the consumers because buying the goods directly from the company is a new thing to them, and they also do not know the formalities to follow so as to buy the goods from the company directly (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2010).

In our case, the consumers had never experienced a one stop shop there before, so they lacked experience. This was a big challenge to Lenscrafters because they to look for a way to get the customers understand their products, and also get to know the advantage of having a wide variety of frames in the same shop. The other lack of experience of the customers would be in ability of choosing amongst the many types of frames. The customers at that time knew that optical are used to enable a person to see clearly if he has eye problem (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2010). They knew that the most important part in the optical is the lens; therefore, they did not care much about the frames. This was another challenge to Lenscrafters.