In the late 1970s, Kip Tindell (chairman and CEO), Garrett Boone (chairman emeritus), and John Mullen (architect)

Question:

In the late 1970s, Kip Tindell (chairman and CEO), Garrett Boone (chairman emeritus), and John Mullen (architect) drew up plans with products that were devoted to simplifying people’s lives, such as commercial parts bins, wire drawers, mailboxes, milk crates, wire leaf burners, and many others. Some critics questioned whether a store selling “empty boxes” could survive. However, the concept took off, and in the past 40 years, the company has expanded coast to coast in the United States with stores in 90 locations. Now headquartered in Coppell, Texas, the Container Store has more than 4,000 employees and annual revenues of over $800 million. The company also maintains an e-commerce website and ships orders to customers in Canada and to international destinations. Besides their innovative product mix, some of the keys to the success of the Container Store are the enthusiasm with which their employees work, the care that employees give to the customer, and employee knowledge of their products. For 19 straight years, the Container Store has made Fortune magazine’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work For.” Generally rated in the top 40 of this list each year, the company was number one for the first two years that it applied for consideration. The current president, Melissa Reiff, credits the company’s devotion to recruiting and retaining a highly qualified workforce as one of the keys to its success. Company sources say that the Container Store offers more than 240 hours of formal training for fulltime employees in the first year of employment with the company and that this compares to about 8 hours of such training with other companies in the industry. According to company sources, the Container Store believes that its employees are its number one stakeholder and “The Container Store is an absolutely exhilarating and inspiring place to shop and an equally exciting place to work. ”In addition to innovative products and motivated employees, the Container Store has embraced a commitment to the environment. Chairman emeritus Garrett Boone says that it firmly believes that there is no conflict between economic prosperity and environmental stewardship. The Container Company is embracing sustainability as a key to its economic future. As part of this effort, it sells eco-friendly products, uses highly efficient HVAC units in its stores and warehouses, sponsors an employee purchase program for compact fluorescent lights, is switching from neon to LED lighting in all exterior signage, and offers an employee battery and light bulb recycling program.

Discussion1. Among other things, the Container Store has grown and flourished because of strong customer relationships, which include listening to customer needs, selling storage products that meet customer needs, having salespeople who understand both customer needs and the products, and creating a store environment that is customer-friendly both in layout and in culture. Suppose company management wants to formally measure customer satisfaction at least once a year and develops a brief survey that includes the following four questions. Suppose that the survey was administered to 115 customers with the following results. Use techniques presented to analyze the data to estimate the population responses to these questions.2. The Container Store is well known as a great company to work for. In addition, company management states that the employee is the number one stakeholder. Suppose in spite of its history as an employee-friendly company, management wants to measure employee satisfaction this year to determine if it is maintaining this culture. An analyst hired by the company randomly selects 21 employees and asks them to complete a satisfaction survey under the supervision of an independent testing organization. As part of this survey, employees are asked to respond to questions by providing a score from 0 to 50 along a continuous scale, where 0 denotes no satisfaction and 50 denotes the utmost satisfaction. Assume that the data are normally distributed in the population. The questions and the results of the survey are shown below. Analyze the results using techniques. Discuss your findings.