Excel workbook Essay example

Submitted By tomhhopkins
Words: 415
Pages: 2

Tom Hopkins
Akin
12/8/13

The Twinkie Failure, and How to Fix it

What’s the problem? My article, ‘Hostess Twinkie Defense is a Management Failure’, spoke about the problems with Hostess’ approach to staying relevant and why their collapse was completely the managers fault. By discussing primitive cost-cutting techniques, the failure to adapt, and the managers’ inability to take blame, this article sheds a light on the primary influencers of the failure. The main problem made was the firm’s inability to adapt to the changing tastes of the market and their ineptitude of successfully marketing their products.

Why did the Problem occur? This problem occurred for many reasons, as virtually no major problem has one cause. That being said, the main causes of this failure have to do with not being able to adapt to the market and act accordingly to the changes. By sitting back and only attempting to cut back on costs and work with a small margin of error the company left themselves very vulnerable to market shifts. The article compares Hostess’ problem to Sears’, which went through a similar problem -23 straight quarters of declining sales (Hartung)- of an inability to adapt.

What is my Remedy?

After reading through this article and looking at other examples found online I have developed some ideas and have come up with a remedy of my own to fix Hostess’ problems, and prevent them from coming back. As I have learned in all of my classes with Akin is that you need to know your customer base and be able to keep up with their ever-changing needs. I would devote more money to market research and hold more focus groups so that I could