In the fall of 2013, Healthcare.gov launches as an insurance exchange for consumers to buy health insurance. The launch is filled with glitches, and some worry if it will imperil the fate of the entire ACA.

In 2015, the Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications reflects on his four years leading the company and considers strategic repositioning for the future. Meanwhile, a rising leader within the organization, Marni Walden, leads change with a new, company-wide product development organization. Walden's group holds promise but must overcome cultural, structural, and technical barriers to innovating in a giant telecom. In the midst of change, executives debate the wisdom of Verizon's push into developing products and services that leverage its dominance in connectivity. Should Verizon go "above the network"?

Following a leadership crisis, the chairman of Tse Sui Luen Jewellery (TSL) had revitalized the company and now wondered which initiatives TSL should tackle next. An event showcasing TSL’s newest designs had been the latest push in her campaign to renew the family business, which was renowned for its entrepreneurial and innovative spirit. With the upcoming year promising to be a busy one, the chairman and her management team must plan and implement new strategies to capture opportunities while maintaining TSL’s core values and capitalizing on its revitalized brand.

Following a leadership crisis, the chairman of Tse Sui Luen Jewellery (TSL) had revitalized the company and now wondered which initiatives TSL should tackle next. An event showcasing TSL's newest designs had been the latest push in her campaign to renew the family business, which was renowned for its entrepreneurial and innovative spirit. With the upcoming year promising to be a busy one, the chairman and her management team must plan and implement new strategies to capture opportunities while maintaining TSL's core values and capitalizing on its revitalized brand.

This note (which is based on an earlier technical note, "Perspectives on Brand Equity," UVA-M-0668) provides a resource to aid in understanding brand equity: its creation, maintenance, measurement, and value. Suitable for use in introductory courses in marketing at the undergraduate and MBA levels, this note presents an overview of brand perspectives including those of Millward Brown, Young & Rubicam, David Aaker, William Moran, and Interbrand.

"Not another Bochum." Nokia Board Chairman Jorma Ollila was clear in the goals he set for the 2011 restructuring that Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop, had decided was necessary to address the dramatically changed competitive environment the company faced in smartphones and mobile phones. The strategy shift would include transitioning Nokia's phone operating system to Microsoft Windows, and closing phone R&D centers and factories in 13 countries, with layoffs that would eventually impact 18,000 employees. Yet with several important R&D projects still under development, and capacity needed in factories for many more months, Nokia's board and leaders wanted to avoid the mistakes the company had made in a plant shutdown in Bochum, Germany in 2008. EVP of Corporate Relations and Responsibility Esko Aho was mandated to develop a "Nokia way" to implement the restructuring that would reflect the company's values and allow them to maintain morale and commitment among the employees who would eventually lose their jobs. The case describes the development of Nokia's "Bridge" program, a comprehensive approach to helping employees find new employment opportunities and to replacing jobs in communities where Nokia had been a major employer. The case challenges students to make decisions such as when and how to tell employees about a layoff, how to manage local government leaders, and what support to provide in 13 different countries, each with its own legal and regulatory environment, cultural norms, and expectations and needs of employees and local communities.

Nokia's leaders reflect on the Bridge program, lessons learned during its implementation, and the business benefits it brought to the company. Nokia's Bridge program resulted in 60% of employees knowing their next step the day they exited the firm. It also helped employees start 1,000 new companies, and replaced jobs in communities where Nokia was a major employer. One-third of all mobile phone sales between 2011 - 2012 came from new products that were developed at R&D sites and manufactured at factories that were to be closed down or downsized as part of the restructuring.

The (A) case described the early days of Movile, a Brazilian mobile phone company, and debated the decision to open an office in Silicon Valley. The case went into the history of the firm and the mobile phone industry in Brazil. It discussed how the firm grew throughout Latin America through acquisitions and failed in earlier attempts to expand organically. The (A) case also outlined the unique culture of the firm, which blended a highly innovative culture with Movile's focus on achieving targets and results. The question of whether to expand into Silicon Valley raised the issue of the importance of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the growth trajectory of a firm. This issue was particularly significant at this point in Movile's life cycle when it needed to evolve from being a feature phone business to diversifying to include new smartphone technologies in their product offerings.

The (B) case explained how Movile expanded their business, moving into the smartphone market from their core business of feature phones in Latin America. The case described the two parts of Movile's strategy. The first was Movile's development and launch of a smartphone app, PlayKids, which, as of the end of 2014, was the number-one children's app in the world (by sales in the Apple app store). The second aspect of this strategy involved investing in mobile-enabled offline start-ups in Brazil. The (A) case may be taught as a stand-alone case. The (B) case requires the (A) case to be read beforehand.

The case looks at how The Abraaj Group has emerged as a global private equity firm and came to define its focus and strategy in this process. While the local knowledge and relationships is considered to be critical for value creation in the private equity industry, firms often seek to expand geographically as their funds and resources increase. The case explores how a global firm like Abraaj can balance the need to focus on local networks and knowledge with a global stretch. It tries to answer this question by focusing on how Abraaj creates value, how the firm differentiates itself from local and global competitors, and how local-global dynamics manifests itself through the different phases of the firm's business.

This case study describes how Fiat Brazil developed a collaborative platform that combines crowdsourcing, open innovation and creative commons in order to develop a "futuristic concept car" called Fiat Mio. Over 15 months, the Fiat Mio team managed interactions with 17,000 participants, from 160 different nationalities, and the selection and processing of more than 11,000 ideas. When Fiat Mio was launched in December 2010 at the Sao Paulo Auto Show, hundreds of people showed up to claim the prototype as their own.

In the summer of 2013, the managing director of Tata Chemicals Magadi, Africa's largest soda ash manufacturer and one of the oldest and largest export earners in Kenya, was wondering how he was going to respond to a growing number of challenges. As a producer of a commodity product, the company was vulnerable to escalating energy costs, oversupply and economic cycles. Global growth had been sluggish since the 2008 economic recession and competition was intense, especially since the emergence of Chinese producers. Magadi Township, where the company's production facility was located, was one of the poorest in the country, subject to droughts and without many of the basic public services typically provided by government such as roads, health care, electricity, water and education. To address these needs, the company migrated from a top-down, paternal, ad hoc and resource-intensive approach to a bottom-up, collaborative, holistic and resource-sharing style that focused on community capacity building and self-governance. However, the issue now is how to best balance the strong need to reduce costs while remaining committed to the sustainability of the surrounding community.

In 2009, the Mahindra Group, a US$16.3 billion multinational corporation based in Mumbai, India, had introduced a new positioning called "Rise" to provide meaning to its brand and help unite its various businesses under a common umbrella. Successful integration and implementation of the new positioning required the company to re-examine its brand architecture, which was currently a complex, inside‐out arrangement that resulted in a diffused image. Aligning diverse and legacy businesses would be a complex task, and resources were limited. A clear brand architecture would not only help the company to efficiently allocate advertising dollars but could also help in identifying investment opportunities and risks among the different sub-brands. Landor Associates India, a global brand consulting firm, was tasked by the board to suggest a relevant brand architecture model that would be relevant across geographies. Should the Mahindra brand be used by all businesses, products and services? Should the company follow a conglomerate approach and create a "house of brands" as P&G and Unilever had done, or should it follow a hybrid strategy?

In the summer of 2013, the managing director of Tata Chemicals Magadi, Africa’s largest soda ash manufacturer and one of the oldest and largest export earners in Kenya, was wondering how he was going to respond to a growing number of challenges. As a producer of a commodity product, the company was vulnerable to escalating energy costs, oversupply and economic cycles. Global growth had been sluggish since the 2008 economic recession and competition was intense, especially since the emergence of Chinese producers. Magadi Township, where the company’s production facility was located, was one of the poorest in the country, subject to droughts and without many of the basic public services typically provided by government such as roads, health care, electricity, water and education. To address these needs, the company migrated from a top-down, paternal, ad hoc and resource-intensive approach to a bottom-up, collaborative, holistic and resource-sharing style that focused on community capacity building and self-governance. However, the issue now is how to best balance the strong need to reduce costs while remaining committed to the sustainability of the surrounding community.

In 2009, the Mahindra Group, a US$16.3 billion multinational corporation based in Mumbai, India, had introduced a new positioning called “Rise” to provide meaning to its brand and help unite its various businesses under a common umbrella. Successful integration and implementation of the new positioning required the company to re-examine its brand architecture, which was currently a complex, inside?out arrangement that resulted in a diffused image. Aligning diverse and legacy businesses would be a complex task, and resources were limited. A clear brand architecture would not only help the company to efficiently allocate advertising dollars but could also help in identifying investment opportunities and risks among the different sub-brands. Landor Associates India, a global brand consulting firm, was tasked by the board to suggest a relevant brand architecture model that would be relevant across geographies. Should the Mahindra brand be used by all businesses, products and services? Should the company follow a conglomerate approach and create a “house of brands” as P&G and Unilever had done, or should it follow a hybrid strategy?

Colburn University is the largest private university in the fictitious state of Columbia and is often recognized by people from distant parts of the country for its award-winning Division I athletic teams. That's why when athletic director Harry Ritchie makes an offhanded comment about Colburn student-athletes with eating disorders, the press pounces. This incident coupled with a complaint from a parent draws the attention of Dean Francis Reilly, who finds himself needing to peel back some of the layers embedding college athletics on the issue of eating disorders among athletes. Throughout the narrative, different perspectives on sports and eating disorders are revealed from top-level administrators, like Dean Reilly, to the student-athletes themselves. As the story concludes, the conversation about eating disorders has begun, but questions still remain on how to make Colburn University a healthy environment for its student-athletes.

NationWide Primary Healthcare Services has launched a chain of primary healthcare clinics in India with the aim of bridging the gap between fragmented general practitioner services and highly expensive, specialist hospital care. The potential need for primary care is immense, though its delivery through organized retail is a new concept in India. The case describes the organization’s initial four years’ of operation. The clinics are not doing as well as expected. The initial business model and its subsequent refinements are discussed as the company tries to balance its core logic with its strategic choices for creating, delivering and capturing value.

In August 2012, the chief executive officer of Cconma.con, an online shopping mall based in Chung-Ju, South Korea, is considering his company’s future. The company has grown substantially since it was founded in 2005 and is now preparing to further expand into Hong Kong, China or to a second location in the United States. The company’s vision, rooted in an ethic of corporate social responsibility, is to build a happy and healthy community, including employees, customers and sellers. By focusing on its customers’ basic necessities, products for a healthy life and the needs of its producers to minimize sales costs, the company has found its niche where no other online retailer has dared to venture. Its success demonstrates that it is possible to be good and profitable at the same time. Expanding to a new location will bring myriad challenges, some of which can be anticipated while others will need to be resolved on the fly. The management team needs to focus on defining the specifics of their go-to-market plan. When should they enter? With which local players should they collaborate? Will an increased marketing effort or local outreach be necessary?

An executive has just joined adult entertainment producer Private Media Group Inc. (PMG) as a strategy consultant. Despite being a highly controversial industry, adult entertainment has been credited with furthering the widespread adoption of major technologies such as the VCR, Internet and digital transmissions over hand-held devices.<br><br>In preparing for his first meeting with PMG’s president, the executive wonders if he should recommend pursuing larger productions with higher costs and higher sales versus the current mixture of large productions ($100,000 or more in production costs), medium productions ($75,000) and small productions ($5,000). He also believes there is an opportunity to increase PMG’s brand awareness through licensing. Finally, the executive knows that the adult entertainment industry is quick to adopt new technologies so he wants to prepare PMG for the inevitable demise of DVDs. See the supplement to this case, 9B15M026.