Marketing Operations of Nordstrom, Inc.

Nordstrom, Inc. has featured greatly in the market as an organization that takes pride in customer interests. This paper focuses on its 2004 annual report, which mainly used financial attributes as the company’s scorecard. The paper therefore gives a critical look at the scorecard and presents more aspects of the balanced scorecard that the company should put into consideration such as more financial measures, customer perspective measures, internal business measures and learning and growth perspectives.

From the analysis, the common conclusion is that all the broad aspects of the balanced scorecard are crucial in measuring the performance of an organization such as Nordstrom.

Inc. , as their interplay is crucial to performance. Introduction Nordstrom, Inc. is a large department chain store operating in the United States. Its name was derived from its founder, John W. Nordstrom (Spector, 2005). The store began as a shoe retail store and later developed to retail in clothing, handbags, accessories, cosmetics and jewelry, as well as fragrances in some of its stores (Spector, 2005).

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The chain store is popular among its customers for the lower prices that it offers relative to its competitors (Spector, 2005). The company also pays a lot of attention to customer relations as one way of achieving its objectives- customer satisfaction being a priority (Spector, 2005; Fearn-Banks, 2002). The scope of this paper is focused on Nordstrom’s performance subject to its 2004 annual report. The report had a scorecard based on the company’s performance, which seemingly does not suffice a comprehensive analysis of the company.

This paper therefore presents other aspects of the balanced score card with reference to Nordstrom, Inc.

Nordstrom’s strategy for success in the marketplace Nordstrom’s marketing strategies are customer-oriented. The company believes that recording high sales is not what makes great success, rather, success lies in building grand relationships with customers at a personal level (Nordstrom, Inc. Annual Report 2004). This then leads to customer loyalty and repeat business.

According to Fearn-Banks (2002), Nordstrom, Inc. operates on the principle that it considers the customer first and believes that with the customer in mind, dollars will definitely come. To emphasize this, the company’s organizational structure is unique in that it is represented by an inverted pyramid that has customers at the top and the company’s co-chairs at the bottom. In deed, the company’s employees are constantly reminded to make decisions that favor customers before the company (Fearn-Banks, 2002).

This truly signifies that the company gives its customers top priority, the importance of its management notwithstanding. The company also exhibits some of the best attributes of operational excellence in the retail market. This is shown in the company’s level of accountability as noted by Fearn-Banks (2002): “one of the most well known aspects of Nordstrom, Inc. customer relations policy is the returns policy.

” According this policy, if a customer is displeased with any purchase from Nordstrom, the store takes it back without asking questions (Fearn-Banks, 2002). This implies that Nordstrom is focused on quality and aims at achieving customer satisfaction. In fact, the company has been giving refunds for worn out shoes to customers who want back money (Fearn-Banks, 2002). Along this line, the company believes that 98 per cent of such customers are honest in their demands and should not be punished for the deceitfulness of a few (Fearn-Banks, 2002).