ISSN 1940-204X

Northlake Bookstore: Benchmarking for Performance Evaluation
Hugh Grove University of Denver Tristy Hillestad University of Denver Lisa M. Victoravich University of Denver

IntroductIon
In September 2004, Wendy Wiley, the Northlake Bookstore manager, was considering the implications of a shocking development. For the first time in her seven years as the Bookstore manager, textbook sales for this fall had decreased from the prior fall sales. The sales decrease was approximately $180,000, or 3% of annual textbook sales. Wendy wanted to address this problem before it got worse. She found that this sales decrease was due to two emerging technology problems, possibly of equal magnitude: 1) the students’ increasing use of online …show more content…

total sales cost of Goods Sold

5,185,712 1,488,414 518,235 332,519 698,426 1,295,043 869,481 722,778 11,110,607 cGS 46.7% 13.4% 4.7% 3.0% 6.3% 11.7% 7.8% 6.5% 100.0%
GM %

4,100,486 1,266,066 498,095 109,008 634,677 919,151 1,032,966 640,685 9,201,132 cGS 44.6% 13.8% 5.4% 1.2% 6.9% 10.0% 11.2% 7.0% 100.0%
GM %

4,080,462 1,112,628 533,166 93,050 612,036 810,761 971,819 551,243 8,765,163 cGS 46.6% 12.7% 6.1% 1.1% 7.0% 9.2% 11.1% 6.3% 100.0%
GM %

new texts Used texts Class notes General Books supplies & sundries Clothing Computers software & accessor. total Cost of sales Gross margins

3,969,948 947,651 401,411 229,710 436,121 686,562 829,308 551,550 8,052,260 3,058,347

23.4% 36.3% 22.5% 30.9% 37.6% 47.0% 4.6% 23.7%

3,162,516 808,577 387,414 78,411 383,828 486,788 928,598 524599 6,760,730

22.9% 36.1% 22.2% 28.1% 39.5% 47.0% 10.1% 18.1%

3,248,727 737,618 377,456 66,461 395,493 434,528 924,587 431,883 6,616,751

19.9% 35.0% 24.0% 30.0% 35.4% 46.4% 4.9% 21.7%

27.5%

2,440,403

26.5%

2,148,413

24.5%

wondering how to analyze this financial information for her benchmarking analysis report.

BEncHMArKInG
Benchmarking is the process of identifying superior performance of other