Define Lawn Care’s current strategic mission, strategy, competitive priorities, value chain, and how it wins customers.

“Chris, we make the highest quality grass seed and fertilizer in the world. Our brands are known everywhere!” stated Caroline Ebelhar, vice president of manufacturing for the Lawn Care Co. Yeah! But the customer does not have a PhD in organic chemistry to understand the difference between our grass seed and fertilizer compared to those of our competitors. We need to also be in the lawn care application service business, and not just the manufacturer of super perfect products. This ongoing debate among Lawn Care’s senior management team had not been resolved but the chief executive officer had been listening very closely. Sone they would have to make a major strategic decision.

The Lawn Care Co., a fertilizer and grass seen manufaturer with sales of almost $1 billion, sold some of its products direclty to parks and golf courses. Customer service in this goods producing company was historically very narrowly defined as providing the right product to right customer at the right time. Once these goods were delivered to the customer’s premises and the customer signed the shipping documents, Lawn Care’s job was done. For many park and golf course customers, a local subcontractor or the customers themselves applied the fertilizer and seed. These application personnel often did the job incorrectly, using inappropriate equipment and methods. The relationship among these non-Lawn Care applicatioin service personnel, The Lawn Care Company and the customer also was not always ideal.

When claims were made against the Lawn Care Co. because of damaged lawns or polluted lakes and streams, the question then became one of who was at fault. Did the quality of the physical product or the way it was applied cause the damage? Either way, the customers lawns or waterways were in poor shape, and in some cases the golf courses lost substanital revenue if a green or hole was severly damaged or not playable. One claim filed by a green advocacy group focused on a fish kill in a stream near a golf course.

One of Lawn Care’s competitors began an application service for parks and golf courses that routinely applied the fertilizer and grass seed for its primary customers. This competitor bundled the application service to the primay goods, fertilizer and grass seed, and charged a higer price for this service. The competitor delivered and applied the fertilizer on the same day to avoid the liability of storing toxic fertilizer outside on the golf course or park grounds. The competitor learned the application business in the parks and golf course target market segment and was beginning to explore expanding into the residential lawn care application service target market. The Lawn Care Co. sold the highest quality physical products in the industry, but it was not currently in either the professional park and golf course or the residential “application service” lawn care market segments. The Lawn Care Co. considered ites value chain to end once it delivered its products to the job site or non Lawn Care application service. The compeitor sold the customer a beautiful lawn with a promise of no hassles. To the competitor, this included an application service bundled to grass seed and fertilizer.

Questions:

1. Define Lawn Care’s current strategic mission, strategy, competitive priorities, value chain, and how it wins customers. What are the order qualifiers and winners? Draw the major stages in its value chain without an application service.

2. WHat problems, if any do you see with Lawn Care’s current strategy, vision, customer benefit package and value chain design, and pre- and postservices.

3. Redo questions 1 and 2 and provide a new or revised strategy and associated customer benefit package and value chain that is more appropriate for today’s marketplace.

4. What does operations have to be good at to successfully execute your revised strategy?

5. What are you final recommendations?