Abstract

CVS Bay Area made a contract with Sunkus in 1996, where CVS Bay Area got obtained rights to use Sunkus’s name. Since CVS Bay Area uses Sunkus’ name, CVS Bay Area need to follow some of the Sunkus’s rule and also uses their products. However, they both operate as different company with same name. Sunkus has it own organization and their own stock holders where as CVS Bay Area also has it own organization with different stock holders. Since both companies think that they are different company, they hardly communicate with each other. Moreover, CVS Bay Area does have open policy, where anyone is allowed to say anything but there is issue on the communication climate between the store managers and the headquarters. Therefore CVS Bay Area has two issues which are externally where they do not communicate with Sunkus and internally where there is different climate. For external issue, CVS Bay Area and Sunkus should held meeting and should have communication center or make hotlines where they could receive ideas or feedbacks. For internally CVS Bay Area should need hotline as well, give out survey, make voice input system and should train their employees.

Company Overview

History

Sunkus is one of the famous convenience store at Japan but around 1980’s, it was not still famous as it was now in modern society. Sunkus was first founded in July 1980 but opened the store on November 1980. By the year 1987, the Point of Sale system was introduced and at the same time, they built Sunkus West Saitama Corporation. Then in August 1988, East Saitama Sunkus Corporation was found. Sunkus successfully continued to build more corporations such as Sunkus Tokai in August 1989 and by 1991 Sunkus had open more than 1000 stores, and at the same year, Sunkus changed their name to Sunkus and associates. Then in 1992 they build Sunkus in West Shikoku and Aomori and Ishikawa in 1994. By the year 1996, they made contract with CVS Bay Area where CVS Bay Area was founded by Sunkus. In 1997, Sunkus registered there shares in the market. By this time, Sunkus had over 2000 stores. By the year of 2004, Sunkus and Circle K and C&S had merged together and build Circle K Sunkus.

Company’s Vision

    Company wants to be exciting enterprise, improving the quality, having sustainability, steady growth, provide safety and build trust with customers. They want the customer to be fulfilled in their needs. Make customer enjoy their shopping, and also be responsible to the society and engage in environmental protection. Company wants the customer to will the excitement.

Competitors

            Circle K Sunkus has many competitors such as Seven-Eleven, Family Mart, Lawson, and am/pm. However, the biggest is the Seven-Eleven and the Family Mart. Seven-Eleven and Family Mart has better brand image where every one knows that they service and quality is high. Because of good service and high quality, most people tend to go to Seven Eleven and Family Mart. Since most people are fan of these companies, they are very successful. They opened more store which could represent was success in the industry. (See Exhibit 1 for number of Stores) Compare with Seven Eleven, Circle K Sunkus has not opened as much as Seven Eleven. By this we could say that Seven Eleven and Family Mart is strongest competitor for Circle K Sunkus.  

Communication Issue between Sunkus and CVS Bay Area

            CVS Bay Area is different company from Sunkus therefore it has its own organization. (See Exhibit 3 for Company Structure) Since Sunkus and CVS Bay Area are working for Sunkus, they should communicate with each other. However, the issue here is that Sunkus and CVS Bay Area do not consider each other as a same company. Because of different climate where they both do not recognize as same company, they both do not share the most information. If they share the information then the company probably could grow much better. They could probably have better way to operate their stores. Moreover, they could gather more information about the customer and their needs. However, there is a seminar provided by Sunkus twice a year to show what kind of product that Sunkus are willing to sell. Also every order that CVS Bay Area makes will be sent to the Sunkus. These are the time that Sunkus and CVS Bay Area communicate which is not enough. According to the CVS Bay Area Manager, some of the employees from Sunkus investigate some of CVS Bay Area stores to see what kind of products they sell and how they operate. Since CVS Bay Area also has their own development, they have their own product. Once employee from Sunkus checks the product at CVS Bay Area, they try to make similar product. This is another issue because if they communicate each other, Sunkus and CVS Bay Area could improve their quality and have more variety of products. Since Sunkus is not the parent company of CVS Bay Area, they both do not share any idea. If both companies could work as one company then each departments will have more time to brainstorm ideas of making their products and service better.

Communication issues inside the CVS Bay Area

   CVS Bay Area has an open policy according to the manager. Having open policy is very important because it give rights and freedom for employees to speak out. Most of the traditional Japanese organization does not have open policy. It is top-down system where the people on the top make the decision and demand to the employees. Therefore people that work for CVS Bay Area might feel comfortable. Moreover, Store Manager and the top people such as supervisor and district managers has meeting once in every week to discuss about they performances. Also most of the time supervisor comes to the store and discuss with the managers about any problems that exists. These help the managers to work more efficiently. When store managers have a problem and need to have conference with their managers but cannot reach them, then store managers will feel stressed out. Communication could help the mental issue for the employee. Having good communication could give employee a good health. Also store managers will feel that they are important and are secured. However, the issue is that not all supervisor or district managers are the same. Even though there is an open policy, different climate still exist in this company where Supervisor gets pressure from the top people and gets stressed out. When this occurs, supervisor makes an atmosphere that is not comfortable, gives an impression of hard to talk to, and gives fear. Very often this issue occurs, therefore some store managers could not even speak out of what they need to say. Moreover, there are also discrimination going on where store managers are nice and week. According to the managers, some supervisor shouts at the store managers without any reason. Worse situation is that whenever supervisor feels stressed out, they get angry at the store manager whom is nice and week. Some supervisor thinks that week people cannot do anything so they just go there and shout. When this happens, this will create a bad atmosphere between the supervisor and the managers. Having bad atmosphere could results to bad mental health and could give stress to the part time people. When this cycle is build up then it could also lose customer because all of the employees that interact with customer could give their customer bad impression from being stressed out. Employees could be rude to the customer, tough or rough to the customer, and have bad manner in front of customer. If customer feels that there are bad atmosphere inside the company or the store, then they will not be royal to the company. This could give negative impact on the company therefore having bad climate is not acceptable. Another issue is that supervisor also gives many project and pressure to the store managers; store managers do not have time to review of their performances and do not come with good idea. Also because of the bad atmosphere, store managers do not try to communicate with supervisor or give out any idea to the top people. They just do whatever top level decided. However, as a company, having information and idea from the store is very important because they know what is going on. By looking at the data of how many people came, what they bought, the age, gender, and how much one person buys does not tell you the exact consequences that happened to the store. For instance when the part time people did not push the right button of the Point of Sale system, then the information could be changed. Another example is when one person buys many milk chocolate of Meiji which is not a good product and when the head quarter see this data that milk chocolate was being sold, top level people might think this is a good product. Therefore there will be many misunderstanding about the product and customer needs. For this reason, store manager needs to give idea or feedback to the company.            

Solution of the communication issue

Solution for external communication for CVS Bay Area

            What Sunkus and CVS Bay Area need to do is the first they need to come together as a one company. Since both companies do not interact each other, they should start from having formal meeting every once a month. They need to discuss freely of what they are planning to do. Also they need to share their information to each other so that they could come to a conclusion with bigger idea. Also the reason of recommending starting from meeting is because they both companies barely know about each other. Using electronic mail or electronic devices could lead to misunderstand the key message. Also people cannot tell who they are by electronic devices. The best way is to face to face conversation. By doing this they could build trust. Without trust, any idea will just be bypass and be ignored. To keep a good idea then they need to have a trust and royal to others. Once they could build trust, they should also build hotlines. By building hotlines, each company is freer to make communicate. Having a place to give a feed back or idea is very important. Since both companies refrain to communicate, it is hard for two companies to give idea or get feed back because depending on how companies express, it could be powerful criticizing. Also some employees might not want to tell their names. The benefit from making hotlines is to gather all the idea and feedback, having idea could bring to most profit. If both companies gather then there will be twice a more so could lead to be treasure. Also having a feedback could lead to continuous improvement. Since there are two companies, employee will be more aware of the problem that they are facing and what they need to improve. If this happens then as Sunkus’s vision says that they want to have higher quality and give excitement to the customers, it will happen. It is obvious that they will have better quality of product and service.         

Solution of internal communication in CVS Bay Area

            Same as the external solution, CVS Bay Area will need to have their own hotlines so that more employees will have freedom to speak out about what they want to say about the company. Since there is different climate, it will be easy for each employee to communicate more comfortably and do not need to care about the atmosphere. This could make company grow. Also this could make more employees to be more energetic and try to participate in the growth of the company. This could motivate the employee who is week because they have a place where they could get help and be protected. If they make a comment of what they dislike about the top levels then there is high possibility of top level to change. This could end the discrimination against the week employees. Moreover, CVS Bay Area should have a survey. Since survey could be passed to the part time job as well, there will be more information and idea will be sent to the head quarters. Survey is also effective because unlike hotlines, managers gives to the each employee by hand and then most employee will fill in the survey and make a comment about it. So if there a survey, there is more possibility of the company to have more employees to participate in the communication. In addition, most survey do not require writing name, therefore most people are able to say whatever they want to say. Every one could be treated equally. Having hotlines and survey, the company could improve their skill and could improve their service quality. Since hotlines cannot make all people to participate so survey could cover and fulfill the part the hotlines cannot do. Beside hotlines and survey, company should make voice input system where Seven Eleven is working on it. Voice input system is managers, or other input there voice in the device. By using this system, people do not need to be there to listen to instruction or comment. This basically helps where managers and employee shifts are different. Since convenient store is 24 hours open, there will be a time where managers would not be in the store. This is the way voice input system could be helped. However, there is another useful way of voice input system. Some people might not be good at talking to people by face to face or since some top level people make the atmosphere bad, some people just get frighten and do not want to be there. Also they will want to run a way to talk to them by face to face.  Therefore in this situation, people could use this system. Even the top level of person do not have to yell at that person, therefore they will not destroy the atmosphere. For employees, it will be easier to listen to what they need to say about. Person being their or not there is a difference that people care. Having voice input system could make people more comfortable to listen and make communication with their managers. Last point is to train the people. This may not be the most efficient but by training people, they can improve they communication skill. Also teach how to control their emotions is also important. If people could get trained how to communicate with people and how to control their emotions, this could help to give out instruction or comment more smoothly and effectively. Also people will listen to more and could participate more. Also they could lead people to better directions. Also making communication based on emotions is very difficult to follow and can make people tired. Again this could lead to have bad service. Also people should change the attitude. Since there are many projects and managers have difficulty, most managers or supervisor gets frustrated so which leads to bad cycle. So by changing attitude could help people. Try not to give pressure instead be more flexible so people could create better atmosphere.       

Conclusion

CVS Bay Area might have open policy and try to communicate but they do not have great communication because, they do not communicate with Sunkus and also there is bad atmosphere created by the top level so          Sunkus and CVS Bay Area should have communicate more by making more meeting and building hotlines could lead to the continuous improvement where they can raise their quality level and better services. For internally CVS Bay Area should work on Voice input system where managers do not need to be there which could make people comfortable to listen, make hotlines and survey so that many employee could participate more and company can grow as whole.    

References

Corporate Information. 組織図. http://www.cvs-bayarea.co.jp/corp04.html

Corporate History. Circle K Sunkus Website. http://www.circleksunkus.jp/english/

Ishikawa, Akira. “The Success of Seven Eleven Japan.” http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=JU3n170AGeYC&dq=The+success+of+7-Eleven+Japan&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=ja&ei=FNh6S6eSBM6HkQWp4Oj6Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Management Philosophy. Circle K Sunkus Website.

Number of Stores. Circle K Sunkus Website

Number of Stores. Family Mart Website. http://www.family.co.jp/english/

Number of Stores. Seven Eleven Website. http://www.sej.co.jp/english/

Exhibit 1

Number of Store the expanded by Seven Eleven in January 31, 2010.

Number of Store expanded by Family Mart in January 31, 2010

Monthly opening and closure

Exhibit 2

Number of Store expanded by Circle K Sunkus in August 31, 2009.

Exhibit 3

Circle K Sunkus and CVS Bay Area’s company’s structure