The Third Annual American Collegiate Retailing Association's Undergraduate Student Retail Analysis Competition: Location Analysis

ACRA Rocky Mountain Chocolate FactorySimply Map

 

ACRA is pleased to announce the third annual ACRA Undergraduate Student Retail Analysis Competition to be held in conjunction with the Spring 2008 conference, scheduled in Durango, Colorado, April, 2008. Since the upcoming Spring 2008 conference is in Durango, Colorado, the competition this year will focus on Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (RMCF). Faculty are asked to recruit undergraduate students who are interested in retailing to participate. Students (or student teams) will compete by selecting a new site for a RMCF franchise store and developing a business plan to support their site selection. The competition will be chaired by Hyunjoo Oh of the University of Florida, Vanessa Brantley of Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, and Doreen Burdalski of Albright College.

Recruiting Students:

Faculty can choose multiple methods of involving students: class assignment, directed study, outside class project, etc. Students must be attending a four-year degree program, but are not required to be in a specific major or to have completed specific courses in order to participate. Participating students and faculty will have access to SimplyMap, a geo-demographic mapping application similar to GIS. (More information can be found by clicking the link, SimplyMap). Please send names and email addresses of participating students and sponsoring faculty to acracompetition@geographicresearch.com or Hyunjoo.oh@cba.ufl.edu to have access to SimplyMap.

Sponsoring Faculty Member:

All submissions must be sponsored by an ACRA member. Membership materials are available at the ACRA website www.acraretail.org.

Information on Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (RMCF), Inc.:

RMCF is one of Fortune 100’s fastest-growing small business companies. Its headquarter is in Durango, CO. The Company’s principal activity is to manufacture an extensive line of premium chocolate candies and other confectionery products. It operates through two segments: Franchising and Manufacturing. The products of the Group are sold through franchisees and at Company owned stores. The Company’s revenues are currently derived from three principal sources: sale of chocolates and other confectionery products manufactured by the Company; the collection of initial franchise fees and royalties from franchisees’ sales; and sales at Company-owned stores of chocolates and other confectionery products. As of 31-Mar-2006, there were 301 franchised Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory stores operating in 40 states, Canada, Guam and the United Arab Emirates. Its website is found at www.rmcf.com. Franchise information can be found at www.sweetfranchise.com.

Submission Deadline: January 10th, 2008

  • Submit entries as email attachments in a Word format to Hyunjoo Oh at Hyunjoo.oh@cba.ufl.edu
  • All submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter from the sponsoring faculty member.
  • A confirmation of receipt will be sent within three days.
  • Any ACRA member willing to serve as a reviewer for the student competition, please contact Hyunjoo Oh.
  • The five finalists will be judged by RMCF senior management who will choose the final winners.

Winner:

Three cash prizes will be awarded to the winners as follows: first ($750 - $500 from ACRA and $250 from Geographic Research Inc.), second ($450 - $300 from ACRA and $150 from Geographic Research Inc.), and third prizes ($300 - $200 from ACRA and $100 from Geographic Research Inc.). The first-place winner will be invited to the ACRA Spring 2008 Conference. The student winners and sponsoring faculty member will each receive a plaque from ACRA. Winning student papers will have the opportunity to be posted on the ACRA website.

Format:

  • Title page with contact information for both the student(s) and their sponsoring faculty member (authors’ names should not appear on inside pages)
  • Times New Roman 12 point, double spaced, 1 inch margins on all sides
  • 15 page maximum plus attachments (e.g. references, appendices such as charts, site photographs, etc.)
  • Content format: use the suggested format below as a guide.
  • Appendices are not counted in the page length. Appendices include materials that support informed decisions on the location selection and the business plan.
  • References and citations in text: Citations must be used in the text of the paper, using the format of (Author, date of publication) immediately following any quotation in the body of the paper. References must be provided at the end of the paper.

For Students:

“Location, location, location” are the three most important decisions to make in the brick-and-mortar retail businesses, cited in most retail books and articles. Careful determination of new sites is the most critical for successful retail businesses. Participating in the case study competition of retail location analysis is a great opportunity for you to practice the most important strategic decision. You (or your team) will be competing in the selection of a new site for a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (RMCF) franchise retail store and develop a business plan to support your site selection. Making informed decisions for retail locations require the assessment of RMCF customers and markets. Market and site selection should be based on careful evaluation of economic conditions/ demographics/ lifestyles/ competition in the trading areas, location characteristics, and specific characteristics of RMCF stores and may involve data analysis. Use the following sources of information and the format as a guide.

Guideline: Location analysis for selecting a new franchise site for RMCF

  • Cover Page

  • Table of Contents

  • Executive Summary

  • RMCF Overview:

    • A review of RMCF strategy--its products, target market segments and customer buying patterns that lead to sales revenue and its growth

  • Company (franchisee) Description

Market Place

  • Industry:

    • factors and trends (e.g., demographics, geographic locations), the outlook for the future, market size and capitalization, and any barriers or challenges the industry faces.

  • Customer Profile

  • 4 Ps:

    • products/services offered by the RMCF, their features and benefits, and what makes them unique in the marketplace, pricing, advertising/promotion.

  • Competition:

    • both direct and indirect. A competitive analysis involving the key players and plans to operate alongside them

  • Future Markets

Location Analysis

  • Identification of major factors that drive sales revenue and its growth:

    • Examples of major categories include: 1) geo-demographic/lifestyle characteristics, 2) store/location characteristics, 3) competitive and complementary retailers, 4) economic and regulation characteristics.

  • Attractiveness assessment of potential markets:

    • (based on the key drivers)

  • Retail trade area analysis:

    • Examples may include 1) the characteristics of the trading area for a store at the site, 2) site characteristics (e.g., locations within a shopping center, adjacent tenants, restrictions
      and costs, store visibility, etc.) and 3) the estimated potential sales that can be generated by a store at the site.

  • Site selection:

    • a proposed place of business you plan to select and describe the reason for your decision.

Marketing Plan:

Marketing and sales strategies to advertise presence in the marketplace and growth plan
Operations

Financial Plan:

Financial projections for the first year and for a longer range of three to five years

Appendices


Sources of Information

RMCF Stores:

Information below is provided by RMCF. All information presented by RMCF is strictly “CONFIDENTIAL” and must be used only for the current student retail competition project.

Further franchise information is available at www.sweetfranchise.com

Examples of Other Information Sources:

Sponsoring Companies:

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Geographic Research (SimplyMap)

Simply Map

SimplyMap is a powerful web-based mapping application that lets competition participants access thousands of demographic, business, and marketing variables, create professional-quality thematic maps & reports, and export information to Excel, PDF, and Microsoft Word.

Featuring nation-wide data (including all ZIP codes, census tracts, and block groups), students can create advanced queries using several variables, select, sort, and compare data across multiple locations, and share workspaces with other team members. All accounts are secure and work is automatically saved for future access.

SimplyMap turns complex data into valuable information that is easily accessed through an innovative and user-friendly interface. SimplyMap will help students create a clear and professional presentation of their location analysis. For more information, please visit us at www.simplymap.com or contact us at: acracompetition@geographicresearch.com.

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