Browsing by Author "Korhonen, Pekka, Prof. Emeritus, Aalto University, Finland"

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  • Supporting Hypermarket Chain Leadership with Data Management Tools in Competition Strategy Implementation
    (2022) Siljamäki, Aapo
     School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)
    This dissertation describes the decision support methods and operating models used in the development process of the S Group's Prisma hypermarket chain in Finland in 1990-94. Fierce competition forced management to look for new business ideas, tools and methods that would provide a clear competitive advantage for the rapidly growing chain. In order to find new perspectives, it was decided to use statistical approaches and various Decision Support System options. For the research and analysis, a large database was compiled, including data on purchasing behaviour, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), customer and product records. The main focus of the development was to identify and profile customers, how they behave and to find new innovative ways to meet their expectations. In addition to Descriptive Analysis and Multivariate Statistical Methods, the development project also generated new ways of looking at chain performance, both from the perspective of a single unit and the chain as a whole. An Ordinal Principal Component Analysis method was developed for intra-chain benchmarking and used for multicriteria ranking between units (Article 1), a Data Envelopment Analysis method was used to assess efficiency, extended with the concept of Value Efficiency Analysis (Article 2), and a Decision Support System was developed for strategy work to provide perspectives for scenario building and monitoring (Article 3). The immediate contribution of DSS modelling to decision making came from its ability to provide Decision Makers with sensible, better solution options to support their decision making. The final impact of decisions could be assessed over a longer period of time, which in the case of the Prisma development project results meant several comparable financial years and eventually decades. Finland suffered exceptionally badly from the financial crisis and the global economic downturn in 2008-2009. The Prisma chain has survived the periods and crises described above without any loss-making years, and the whole chain has grown from 16 units in 1992 to 68 units in 2020.