Beta Auto Dealers Case Study 1. Case Beta Auto Dealers, a Honda dealership with two locations in the metropolitan Phoenix area (Mesa and Peoria), sells new and used Honda vehicles and provides service and repair. The company currently employs eight salespeople and carries eight Honda models: Accord, Civic CR-V. Element, Insight, Odyssey, Pilot, and S-2000. Beta Auto Dealers is one of many vehicle dealerships in the Phoenix area and currently is struggling to stay abreast of the competition. Fred Beta, owner and president of Beta Auto Dealers, is convinced that business can be improved with better marketing and more information and has requested a management meeting. The following discussion took place in the Peoria location boardroom on a hot July afternoon. Present at the meeting with Fred were Jake Radis and Patrick Murray, dealership managers at the Mesa and Peoria locations, respectively, and Lisa Koepke, the company controller. Lisa had asked Hudson Bradfield, a recent college graduate who had double majored in accounting and information systems, to join the meeting. Hudson, in his role as Assistant Controller has been charged with tactical and strategic planning of information systems. Fred opened the meeting: Fred: I'm convinced that budgeting more for advertising is critical to our growth. It seems that our competition is more visible in the media. I've decided to increase our advertising budget 10 percent and have been in discussions with our advertising agency, Media Works, about how to spend the additional money most effectively. As you know, we currently have seven touchpoints that bring customers into the dealership: newspaper ads, television ads, radio ads, website, word-of-mouth, drove-bys, and Beta owners. MediaWorks is suggesting that we use the additional advertising monies on television advertising. Before I make a decision, however, I'd like to know if this is the area to focus on Jake: I know that television advertising generates a lot of customers for the Mesa location and agree this is where we should spend our money. Here's the June data from our visit information system. As you can see, television advertising generated the most visits to Mesa. (See Table 1.) TABLET June Visit Information from Mesa Information System Touchpoint Source Number of Visits Drove by Beta owner Website 13 Friend (word of mouth) 26 Radio 50 Newspaper SI Television 56 Blank (nothing entered) 57 Total 268 Beta Auto Dealers Case Study 1. Case Beta Auto Dealers, a Honda dealership with two locations in the metropolitan Phoenix area (Mesa and Peoria), sells new and used Honda vehicles and provides service and repair. The company currently employs eight salespeople and carries eight Honda models: Accord, Civic CR-V. Element, Insight, Odyssey, Pilot, and S-2000. Beta Auto Dealers is one of many vehicle dealerships in the Phoenix area and currently is struggling to stay abreast of the competition. Fred Beta, owner and president of Beta Auto Dealers, is convinced that business can be improved with better marketing and more information and has requested a management meeting. The following discussion took place in the Peoria location boardroom on a hot July afternoon. Present at the meeting with Fred were Jake Radis and Patrick Murray, dealership managers at the Mesa and Peoria locations, respectively, and Lisa Koepke, the company controller. Lisa had asked Hudson Bradfield, a recent college graduate who had double majored in accounting and information systems, to join the meeting. Hudson, in his role as Assistant Controller has been charged with tactical and strategic planning of information systems. Fred opened the meeting: Fred: I'm convinced that budgeting more for advertising is critical to our growth. It seems that our competition is more visible in the media. I've decided to increase our advertising budget 10 percent and have been in discussions with our advertising agency, Media Works, about how to spend the additional money most effectively. As you know, we currently have seven touchpoints that bring customers into the dealership: newspaper ads, television ads, radio ads, website, word-of-mouth, drove-bys, and Beta owners. MediaWorks is suggesting that we use the additional advertising monies on television advertising. Before I make a decision, however, I'd like to know if this is the area to focus on Jake: I know that television advertising generates a lot of customers for the Mesa location and agree this is where we should spend our money. Here's the June data from our visit information system. As you can see, television advertising generated the most visits to Mesa. (See Table 1.) TABLET June Visit Information from Mesa Information System Touchpoint Source Number of Visits Drove by Beta owner Website 13 Friend (word of mouth) 26 Radio 50 Newspaper SI Television 56 Blank (nothing entered) 57 Total 268