Paez Portugal

: efficient decision making in location strategies : a case on location strategies and entrepreneurial decision making

Abstract

Paez is an Argentine brand of espadrilles, created by three friends who wanted to give a twist to the traditional Argentine espadrille. The brand was taken to Portugal by two Portuguese students who learned about it during their exchange program in Argentina. Paez was well accepted by the consumers and soon began to spread around the country. When Paez opened their second store in Lisbon, they decided to open it in a newly revitalized commercial area called Príncipe Real. They soon realized that Príncipe Real wasn’t being as successful as they expected, because the area wasn’t being as advantageous as they thought it would be. With this, Carlos Coutinho, Paez’s CEO, had to make a decision. Either they would open a new store in Chiado and leave Príncipe Real’s store open, or they would move the store from Príncipe Real to Chiado. The decision required a full analysis of both options. Coutinho had to evaluate the profitability of each option by analysing two main possible causal factors: the consumer behavior in both a broad and a location related perspective, in order to conclude if having both stores open would be inefficient due to proximity and similarity of market segments reached; and the total balance of both options to conclude whether the investment needed to keep both stores open would be worth it and compensated by the profit coming from Príncipe Real. Students are presented with Paez’s and consumers’ facts and figures in order to make them able to develop a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the situation.

Date of Award	2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Paulo Gonçalves Marcos (Supervisor)