Running Header: DOLLAR GENERAL CORPORATION CASE STUDY

Dollar General Corporation Case Study

Dollar General Corporation Case Study

Introduction

Formerly known company JL Turner & Son, Inc was founded in 1939 which, in 1968, changed its name to Dollar General Corporation.Dollar General serves the mid to lower income households with annual incomes of less than $50,000. Many of the people in this demographic are extremely cost conscious and are often of limited means. Dollar General Customers like the convenience of the small location as well as the low price points. Dollar General has recently been adding more perishable goods to their stores to meet those needs.

Dollar General Corporation operates deep-discount store offering clothing, packaged food, beauty and health aids, house wares .Its strategy is to keep cost as low as possible with most items selling for $1. Dell General Corporation has no computerized method for monitoring stock at each store. This paper will be a Dollar General Corporation case study and its approach towards information technology. Further, it will address the process and decisions made before investing in information system solutions.

Discussion

Dollar General competes almost exclusively on price and convenience. Dollar General does not need to offer differentiated prices, rather only cheap ones. Dollar General because of their volume is able to make competitive contracts with suppliers to deliver the best possible price to the customers. Dollar General sells basic goods or basic consumables that can be purchased at most retail outlets. This means that they essentially sell products almost like commodities. There is no distinction between toothbrushes at Dollar General than one at Wal-Mart. The only difference is the price point. Dollar General only differentiates on price point and convenience. There are little to no differences in the products themselves.

Management's role in Dollar General is to successfully maintain low costs and high profits and to enable consistent customer satisfaction.When a new store is about to be opened Dollar Management in headquarters appoints store merchandise key roles are to coordinate the store opening process by managing the staff, installing the IBM point of sale terminals, building shelves and stocking them with products. They are also there to test the software and link up connections with headquarters. They are also used to close or reorganize a store if need be.

Once this process is finished it is then up to the store manager to maintain general control. Organization is a key role in Dollar Generals have set guidelines on how stock must be placed on shelves and how set ups must be controlled. This way management is able to keep an eye on stock and general running of the store with out the use of information systems. However there are many areas where organization could do with being reviewed especially in the sense of incoming and outgoing stock.Dollar General Corporation has no automated method for keeping track of inventory at each store.

Technology is very thin within the Dollar General corporation they use a very advanced system in Spacenet and Triversity allowing headquarters to receive daily sale information ...