The vice-president and general manager for Michigan Plastic Inc.'s Shelby Division (Shelby) is faced with various options. Shelby specializes in thermoforming plastic gasoline tanks for global automotive companies such as General Motors, Ford and Toyota. The vice-president is looking at ways to restart growth at Shelby, a division that has been the subject of a turnaround effort from 2007 to 2010. In fact, the vice-president has committed to his chief executive officer to double sales in the next five years. This case looks at the competitive environment - competitors and the state of technology - and the vice-president's challenge in selecting the growth option.
By the spring of 2014, the founder of EarthWear Face & Body is in desperate need of part-time employees to help run her successful skin care retail business, which she runs out of her home in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. After eight years of hard work, she has turned her part-time hobby making all-natural skin care products into a thriving business. She sells her products online, through retail stores, at craft and trade shows and at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market. But her successful business has become too much work for her to manage on her own. A failed attempt to bring on a part-time employee made it clear that she needs to develop a targeted recruitment strategy. How can she effectively communicate her corporate culture to attract the best candidates?
In July 2009, C&F Consulting, Inc., based in Toronto, sends a team of five brand strategists to work with a client in China on marketing and advertising for a car brand specific to the North American market. The team, consisting of four men and one woman, often meet for dinner after their day's work, which consists of conducting a crash course in North American-style marketing for the Chinese client's cohort of new recruits. The woman feels that one of the men on the team treats her with great disrespect, bordering on sexual assault. If she brings up the issue, will all four of her male colleagues take offence? Will they gossip about her at the office and isolate her at work? What might be the impact on her career if she is perceived as anti-social or thin-skinned? How will her superiors react to her accusations? What is the definition of sexual assault in Canadian law, and can she pursue a civil case against her alleged assailant although the acts happened in a foreign country?
Near the end of November 2013, Lululemon Athletica (Lululemon) became the subject of a viral firestorm after a series of negative events seriously ruptured the company's reputation. The company found itself facing its worst quality control problem to date, with a recall of 17 per cent of its Luon pants due to issues with sheerness. In addition, the company's chief executive officer had stepped down. Was Lululemon destined to follow Blackberry as another example of a failed Canadian company, or could it resurrect its former glory by facing its critics head on?
Culture is a highly complex set of learned behaviors that function at multiple levels. Cultural challenges go beyond overcoming language differences and navigating different national legal systems. Cultural values interlock with many national systems, which influence the way business is developed and how deals are made. Managers who understand how to navigate such differences are in high demand.
Near the end of November 2013, Lululemon Athletica (Lululemon) became the subject of a viral firestorm after a series of negative events seriously ruptured the company's reputation. The company found itself facing its worst quality control problem to date, with a recall of 17 per cent of its Luon pants due to issues with sheerness. In addition, the company’s chief executive officer had stepped down. Was Lululemon destined to follow Blackberry as another example of a failed Canadian company, or could it resurrect its former glory by facing its critics head on?
In July 2009, C&F Consulting, Inc., based in Toronto, sends a team of five brand strategists to work with a client in China on marketing and advertising for a car brand specific to the North American market. The team, consisting of four men and one woman, often meet for dinner after their day’s work, which consists of conducting a crash course in North American-style marketing for the Chinese client’s cohort of new recruits. The woman feels that one of the men on the team treats her with great disrespect, bordering on sexual assault. If she brings up the issue, will all four of her male colleagues take offence? Will they gossip about her at the office and isolate her at work? What might be the impact on her career if she is perceived as anti-social or thin-skinned? How will her superiors react to her accusations? What is the definition of sexual assault in Canadian law, and can she pursue a civil case against her alleged assailant although the acts happened in a foreign country?
By the spring of 2014, the founder of EarthWear Face & Body is in desperate need of part-time employees to help run her successful skin care retail business, which she runs out of her home in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. After eight years of hard work, she has turned her part-time hobby making all-natural skin care products into a thriving business. She sells her products online, through retail stores, at craft and trade shows and at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market. But her successful business has become too much work for her to manage on her own. A failed attempt to bring on a part-time employee made it clear that she needs to develop a targeted recruitment strategy. How can she effectively communicate her corporate culture to attract the best candidates? See supplement 9B14C046.
In the midst of the financial crisis, Barclays (the world's 4th largest bank by assets) is forced by UK regulators to raise more capital. Should it take up the UK government's offer to invest, or take funding from investors from the Middle East? Students may price the two deals to determine which is more expensive, and must decide whether avoiding the constraints of government ownership is worth the extra cost.
This note presents two related measures for assessing the financial value of a customer to the firm. The first is the well-known measure of Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV for short. The second, which has received much less attention, treats the acquisition of a customer as a financial investment that has a quantifiable return based on future profit streams. Accordingly, we term this latter measure Customer Lifetime Return on Investment, or CLROI for short, and explain how it is calculated. We further show how employing CLROI can yield wildly different marketing implications relative to CLV (despite the strong link between them), particularly for targeting decisions. The note provides multiple examples to illustrate the concepts and also introduces formal characterizations of the two measures. The relevance of segment sizes, customer dynamics, social network influences, and strategic considerations are discussed.
If you want to create change in public education but are not a school principal or other traditional public education leader, what do you need to do? This long, integrated background note examines the inspiring models and stories of individuals who are improving outcomes for low-income students through innovative social ventures. It shows how small innovations that start outside the traditional public education establishment get off the ground and overcome obstacles; how, if properly set up and tended, they can scale to multiple sites to move inside the "school building" for greater impact. They demonstrate the advanced leadership skills, tools, and principles that courageous education innovators everywhere can use to guide their thinking from outside the school building in.
Apple Inc. sued Samsung Electronics for approximately $2 billion, contending that Samsung violated some of its patents by copying Apple's product features. Apple's expert witness team used a conjoint analysis in order to assign a value to the product features in question-thereby attempting to assess the magnitude of Apples' revenue loss as a result of the patent infringement. This case asks students to evaluate the design of this study as well as the pros and cons of its use in this context.
Dr. John Anderson plans to license a technology that will be used to develop a device that would help physicians detect early-stage cancers. Patients would breathe directly into the device, which would analyze a user's breath for traces of key compounds associated with the most common cancers. In addition to eliminating the need for invasive biopsy procedures, the screening tool would also be inexpensive, easy to use, and provide immediate results. This case describes a hypothetical entrepreneur who must navigate and analyze a year of transactions including establishing a corporation, establishing a licensing agreement, purchasing machinery, and taking out a bank loan, in addition to preparing financial reports for the year.
In early December 2013, Jim Madsen, co-founder and owner of The Farm Winery was preparing the company's current and longer-term financing needs. Madsen needed to develop plans for fiscal year 2014, which included specific goals that were crucial to the success of the business. First, although the founders had historically contributed capital to meet seasonal cash needs, they were determined to achieve a point of self-sustainability. Next, the business required additional capital expenditures to supplement purchases made at the beginning of the business five years earlier. Finally, the team needed to determine whether to make an investment in additional vineyard development that would require a substantial cash outlay in the coming fiscal year but would not yield any fiscal benefit until nearly a decade later. This case describes The Farm Winery's background, past operating performance, distribution/sales, production, and financing in order to develop plans for fiscal year 2014 and determine the attainability of goals crucial to the success of the business.
This three-part case series examines the marketing challenge encountered by a leading medical technology manufacturer, General Electric (GE) Healthcare - a division of General Electric Company - in India. It follows the development of Lullaby Warmer Prime, an infant warmer that was designed, manufactured and commercialized by the Maternal Infant Care (MIC) division of GE Healthcare India from 2011 to 2014. The case series, together with a PowerPoint slide deck and video link, assesses the main issues that business-to-business (B2B) companies face in their efforts to create and capture value in emerging markets. Case A sets the scene by describing the problem of infant mortality, India's healthcare system and the unique challenges in serving what we refer to as low-resource business customers. It culminates with the realization that there is a tremendous market opportunity, which GE Healthcare decided to exploit. The case also provides an overview of the recent history of GE Healthcare India and its "low-cost, high-value" innovation strategy for developing countries. Case B addresses GE's novel approach to product innovation. In creating a new infant warmer for low-resource business customers, GE decided to employ original and unconventional principles for product design and development. Case C discusses how GE adopted fast commercial prototyping in order to diffuse its innovation in India and other emerging markets. Capturing value is the second and biggest hurdle.
Supplement to case IMD739. This three-part case series examines the marketing challenge encountered by a leading medical technology manufacturer, General Electric (GE) Healthcare - a division of General Electric Company - in India. It follows the development of Lullaby Warmer Prime, an infant warmer that was designed, manufactured and commercialized by the Maternal Infant Care (MIC) division of GE Healthcare India from 2011 to 2014. The case series, together with a PowerPoint slide deck and video link, assesses the main issues that business-to-business (B2B) companies face in their efforts to create and capture value in emerging markets. Case B addresses GE's novel approach to product innovation. In creating a new infant warmer for low-resource business customers, GE decided to employ original and unconventional principles for product design and development.
Supplement to case IMD739. This three-part case series examines the marketing challenge encountered by a leading medical technology manufacturer, General Electric (GE) Healthcare - a division of General Electric Company - in India. It follows the development of Lullaby Warmer Prime, an infant warmer that was designed, manufactured and commercialized by the Maternal Infant Care (MIC) division of GE Healthcare India from 2011 to 2014. The case series, together with a PowerPoint slide deck and video link, assesses the main issues that business-to-business (B2B) companies face in their efforts to create and capture value in emerging markets. Case A sets the scene by describing the problem of infant mortality, India's healthcare system and the unique challenges in serving what we refer to as low-resource business customers. It culminates with the realization that there is a tremendous market opportunity, which GE Healthcare decided to exploit. The case also provides an overview of the recent history of GE Healthcare India and its "low-cost, high-value" innovation strategy for developing countries. Case B addresses GE's novel approach to product innovation. In creating a new infant warmer for low-resource business customers, GE decided to employ original and unconventional principles for product design and development. Case C discusses how GE adopted fast commercial prototyping in order to diffuse its innovation in India and other emerging markets. Capturing value is the second and biggest hurdle.