Reference no: EM133213405

Mini Case Study

Care giving is an important service that is provided to aging seniors. As people get older, they need more care. Often times, the seniors want to receive care while they still live at home and do not want to move into to a care facility. Jill was working with a care giving company called "Home Support Care". She worked as a caregiver for that company for 5 years, felt that while the company provided some services, there were other areas they could improve upon. The interactions with the seniors were more transactional. Therefore, Jill decided to start her own company in 2018 called "Care-Full Services". The idea was that Jill would speak with her clients to find out about their other important needs, so she could better support them. Her company would tailor the needs to the seniors as opposed to what her previous company did, which was just provide basic services.

Jill was so excited to launch her small business. Slowly, she began to hire caregivers that she would be able to send to clients' homes. In many situations, the family members were the people she was dealing with, and she wanted to ensure that the family and the seniors were well looked after. By 2020, she was operating her small business with 10 care givers on staff that provided the services. Jill took great care to train her staff, make sure they were looked after and treated them very well. Her strategy was to treat her caregivers well so they would then enjoy being a part of the company and would stay with her company. This would help provide better care and service to the seniors.

The business seemed to be progressing along, but slowly some challenges emerged. One challenge that Jill began to encounter was meeting the different requests from her clients. Some of the clients needed home care, while others were in the hospital and needed their home to be ready for them when they arrived back from the hospital. Jill would work to get the home prepared. However, there were circumstances where clients would also need home prescriptions or grocery deliveries. Jill wanted to complete all these tasks but found it very difficult. Some of the work needed to be completed on a set time schedule, for example caregivers were required to be at certain homes for set period of time which seemed to work well. In other situations, there were urgent calls or random requests that required her immediate attention and she found this challenging. Jill was not only trying to run her business, but she was also trying to help provide services to meet these random requests. This meant that she was trying to complete the administrative work and provide the hands-on caregiving at times.

1. One important area Jill needs to consider is the idea of her varied services and market segmentation for "Care-full Services". Explain why market segmentation is important and identify one market segment strategy Jill could use and how it would apply in this situation.

2. Identify an area of management skills that she is performing well and another area that she finds challenging. Define each area and apply each management area to this case.

3. Time to offer a solution. Explain a relevant theory/concept you have not discussed in this exam, as a possible solution to address Jill's challenges. Then apply the theory/concept as one solution that impacts her business or a solution that impacts her management challenges.