What went wrong at Plinkers

Case overview / Abstract

Raafay came to me in my office after the class “Sir I want to discuss something with you.” I guessed he may have some academic or personal issue to discuss as I have been always welcoming students for counseling. “Sure,” was my instantaneous response, “Sir I had a failure in a venture that I did in Charity Carnival last month. I want to discuss that with you. Can you give me an appointment for this? I had forgotten about that event but our today’s discussion in class has let me think of discussing this with you.” It was a hot day in May of 2011. The spring 2011 semester at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) was approaching towards its end. I was teaching management accounting course in spring 2011 which was the third course in accounting in BBA curriculum of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA). This course included, among others, the cost volume profit analysis and decision making on the basis of relevant costs and profits, budgeting, pricing and costing of products and services. The course pedagogy was lecture based but I identified in the course outline and had announced today as well that the remaining few sessions towards the end of the semester shall be devoted for case study discussion and analysis, to see the application of management accounting techniques. Raafay was fourth semester BBA student, had ventured into an entrepreneurial activity by participating in the IBA Charity Carnival last month. His venture was a shooting stall, ’Plinkers International’ that turned out to be a failure. “Can you brief me on this” I asked. “Sir, last month I with four of my friends had a stall at the charity carnival organized by Community Welfare Society. We suffered 72% loss and I lost my money, but that’s not the matter I am concerned about. I am not able to figure out where I went wrong? Were my financial projections for the venture not realistic, or there was an issue with the pricing, or we did not operated well or marketed enough? I want to figure out and learn from my mistakes” said Raafay. I asked Raafay to document and email me his experience in whatever way he can, including his budgets and financial results. Raafay’s first email had some missing stuff so I requested him to make up the missing information. Few days later, I received his email and I realized that actually he wanted to let his experience discussed as a case by itself in our next class.

Case Areas

Cost Volume Profit Analysis, Entrepreneurship, Evaluating Entrepreneurial Losses, Management Accounting

Case Type

Article

Industry

Food and Beverage Sector

Disciplines

Business

Teaching Notes

No

Faculty / School

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Department

Department of Accounting and Law

Was this content written or created while at IBA?

Yes

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