Gardini Chocolates makes custom-labeled, high-quality, specialty candy bars for special events and advertising purposes. The company employs several chocolatiers who were trained in Germany. The company offers many varieties of chocolate, including milk, semi-sweet, white, and dark chocolate. It also offers a variety of ingredients, such as coffee, berries, and fresh mint. The real appeal for the company's product, however, is its custom labeling. Customers can order labels for special occasions (for example, wedding invitation labels) or business purposes (for example, business card labels). The company's balanced scorecard for 2017 follows. For brevity, the initiatives taken under each objective are omitted.

Required
1. Was Gardini successful in implementing its strategy in 2017? Explain your answer.
2. Would you have included some measure of customer satisfaction in the customer perspective?
Are these objectives critical to Gardini for implementing its strategy? Why or why not? Explain briefly.
3. Explain why Gardini did not achieve its target market share in the candy bar market but still exceeded its financial targets. Is "market share of overall candy bar market" a good measure of market share for Gardini? Explain briefly.
4. Do you agree with Gardini's decision not to include measures of changes in operating income from productivity improvements under the financial perspective of the balanced scorecard? Explain briefly.
5. Why did Gardini include balanced scorecard standards relating to environmental and social performance? Is the company meeting its performance objectives in these areas?

Target Performance Performance Actual Objective:s Financial Perspective Increase shareholder value Measures Operating-income changes from $1,000,000 $1,500,000 S200,000 250,000 $50,000 price recovery Operating-income changes from growth Cost savings due to reduced packaging size $40,000 Customer Perspective Increase market share Market share of overall candy bar market 8% 7.8% Increase the number of new Number of new product offerings product offerings Increase customer acquisitions Percentage of new customers due to sustainability efforts surveyed who required recycled paper options 35% 3 days 7 points 30% 40% 3 days 8 points 32% Internal-Business-Process Perspective Reduce time to customer Increase quality Average design time Internal quality rating (10-point scale) Increase use of recycled Recycled materials used as a materials percentage of total materials used Learning-and-Growth Perspective Increase number of professiona Number of chocolatiers chocolatiers Increase number of women and Percentage of women and minorities in the workforce minorities in the workforce 40% 38%