As a result of carefully reading the Case Study, students should be able to: appreciate the importance of customer service as part of the overall product offered by organisations, understand how customer service helps to give an organisation a competitive advantage, illustrate how customer service enables an organisation to build a strong business capable of growing faster than its competitors.

As a result of carefully reading the Case Study, students should be able to: identify how the business maintains sustained financial growth through acquisition and development of the existing business, understand how a customer service programme can help to improve performance and ensure long term financial stability, explain the key components of the marketing mix and how implementation of the mix will enhance customer satisfaction.

This business and the environment case study shows how Travis Perkins has built an EMS based on the International Standard ISO 14001 in order to reduce costs and make a major contribution to ‘sustainability’. Therefore, it intends to minimise its impact on the environment.

This recruitment and selection case study emphasises the importance of training. In doing so it focuses upon the management trainee programme developed by Travis Perkins. This illustrates how its training scheme has been used to build a fast-growing business in a competitive business sector.