Business Paper help. It is due 10/9 before 6:00pm.

In addition, RadioShack has financial issues and there are ways to fix the problem. RadioShack has an excessive number of stores located near each other. Blokhin from Investopedia states “there were 25 stores near Sacramento, California, located within a 25-mile radius, and seven stores within five miles around Brooklawn, New Jersey.” We need to collect data and information on which stores have the highest sells and the lowest sells, the population in the area and statistics on how far customers are willing to travel. According to Access, The National Consumer Study Summery mentioned “93.2% of consumers patronize local merchants within 20 minutes/miles from home, consumers will typically travel no more than 10 minutes from home for frequent purchases made once or more per week. Consumers are willing to travel further away from home for regular, yet less frequent purchases, but typically not greater than 20 minutes/miles from home.” Figure 2 shows a study on how far an average consumer is willing to travel for each good (Access, 2017). While we are collecting the data, the web designer would create a website and app, this would allow the company to invest less money on signing into long lease and create a profit from online purchase and RadioShack that have a high foot traffic. RadioShack has fallen behind on each newest trend, besides moving the company to e-commerce, they were also late when prepaid phone was booming. Moore said, RadioShack was behind the Prepaid phone trend, companies such as Walmart and Target easily sold prepaid phones to consumers who had low credit scores. “Commission on Prepaid are one fifth or worse than what a postpaid activation pays and below the profit margins Shack needed to maintain in their stores. Prepaid had been between 10% and 20% of the wireless channel prior to 2006.” Prepaid phones were sold the most when the economy collapse from 2006 to 2008 and it continued to increase in 2010. Radio Shack could not meet the same margins as Walmart and Target. (Moore, 2017)

Figure 2. Consumers are willing to travel for goods.

Milestones

As mentioned earlier, RadioShack has an excessive number of stores, to solve this issue we would need to collect sales data, foot trafficking, and the rent amount on each location. Then we need to research the population around the location, who is the demographic? Are there other competitors close by? Where is the nearest neighborhood? Is the location in a mall or shopping plaza? After collecting the data, the company must compare each store from the greatest number of sales to the least, which location has the most population near them, the cost on rent in each location. From the information that we had gathered, we can decide which locations can stay and which ones we can close, this way the company can save some money. During the removal processes, the web designer should be working with the advertisement team on developing a website and an app for consumers to use and shop. We can take the sales data before and after the launch of the new digital system and compare them making sure we are hitting our target margins.

To improve the management problem, RadioShack should make all employees and management meet up with district management to discuss and evaluate, the team’s concerns, interest, issues, skill levels, etc. The district manager should have report on all the staff including managers then have a district meeting to discuss the information that has been gathered. The company should send out a new updated availability sheet to the team every six months, this would allow employees to change their availability if needed and lets the corporate and district managers be constantly informed, making sure the employees do not reach overtime and if overtime has been reached, ensuring we have enough money in our budget when our employees and management work overtime.

RadioShack should stop selling prepaid phone and focus on providing customers with a cheaper contract alternative phone service. These phone services are getting expensive, according to Money Saving Pro states “Americans aged 25-64, paid $114 a month on average for cell phone service in 2018.That's a staggering annual cost of $1,368 per person!” (Money Saving Pro, 2021) Chart 1. Shows a list all the phone providers including the cost of the data plan. RadioShack can gain new clients while keeping the loyal ones.

Chart 1. Phone providers with their prices and plans

Risk Factor

With every plan there is a risk factor. This risk includes not hiring a web designer in an appropriate time, unsatisfied employees and managers with the new changes that are implemented, breaking lease with landlord leading to pay more in rent, website and app crashing due to a malfunction, finally falling behind on the leading trends.

Technical Requirements

To begin, RadioShack should release job opportunity for web/app desiners by holding a hiring event and post listing on to websites such as, Indeed, Glassdoor, Google jobs, and ect. Then the hiring manger should hold interviews, making sure the person is well knowledgable, and experienced, the questions should be: what one project you are most proud of? Tell me about a time you received harsh criticism from a client. How did you handle it? What steps do you take during your design process and how much do you involve clients? How do you incorporate current design trends into your projects? And ect. After quetioning, the hiring manger should ask the applictant for a portfolio of their work and a copy of their resume. Once we hire a web designer, we need to work closely with the designer. The app and the website should include a reward system, curbside pickup option, discounts and coupons, scan and pay, scheduling option for repairs, instore pick up, rates and reviwes. After the app and website is completed, we need find a lunch date to celebrate the completion of the app to help promote it, we can advertise it throughout social media, and layout flyers in the RadioShack store locations.

Figure 4. Smartphone with apps