Question: You are a manager of a company that has recently purchased a smaller company. The purchased company has an existing product, which will now be part of your product offering.

You are a manager of a company that has recently purchased a smaller company. The purchased company has an existing product, which will now be part of your product offering. The product is a weight-loss supplement called Kamelon. The product has been very successful for the previous owner, but the company had a limited ability to adjust its manufacturing system to accommodate growth as well as a limited potential sales audience. Your role is to oversee and coordinate all aspects of launching the product from the newly acquired company. You have a far greater manufacturing capacity and more potential customers readily available because you already sell several weight-loss related products to a large base of customers.

Kamelon has been proven successful by a research study. The study consisted of 100 participants, 90% of whom lost at least 15 pounds over a reasonable time period. To date, the study participants have successfully maintained their weight loss by continuing to use the product. Of the users, 80% were able to maintain their weight loss with continued use of Kamelon. The 10% of study participants who were not successful may have been unsuccessful because they did not follow the program’s protocol. An inherent risk in a weight loss product is the inability to determine whether the product has produced results or if the user has not followed directions. Dissatisfied customers present a challenge as a result.

Your success relies upon your external business partner, Synesthor Inc., who manufactures the pill casing for Kamelon. There is a need for 10,000 pills to be manufactured in the next three months to meet the demands of your customers. Synesthor Inc. is a manufacturing company located in a different country, and you will need to work closely with this partner to ensure their manufacturing operation is able to increase as needed in a just-in-time environment to meet sales demands. Your contact’s name at Synesthor Inc. is Fatima Sousa.

You have received a customer complaint via the company’s social media page. The customer is extremely dissatisfied, and the complaint has negatively impacted the company’s image. The customer’s complaint is as follows: “Kamelon does not work! I’ve been using this for a week, and I haven’t lost anything! I’m going on vacation in a couple of weeks and I was hoping to shed a couple of pounds before I left for my trip. Unfortunately, I do not foresee this happening. No one should buy this product! As a faithful member of several weight-loss groups, I will not recommend this product to anyone in my groups.”