In July 2022, a senior data scientist for Guell Appliances was aggregating customer reviews from the company’s recent appliance launch. The previous month, the company had launched a revamped product line that required a significant amount of investment in research and development. The success of the product line was paramount because it defined the success of the company. The senior data scientist wanted to apply modern analytical techniques to thousands of product reviews to thoroughly understand the preferences of customers, based on what they were saying about their new appliances.
Kae Jonishi, the protagonist in the case, is a marketing analyst at Force Energy (Force). Her company has advertised with Major League Baseball (MLB) teams in the past and has gained moderate amounts of exposure from these marketing campaigns. However, Jonishi’s manager wants to increase the company’s exposure to MLB fans. One way to do so is to sponsor teams that are likely to advance into the MLB post-season, or playoffs. The top performing teams during the MLB regular season advance into the playoffs and increase their fan base, which results in greater marketing exposure for advertisers.<br><br>Jonishi has access to a data set that contains aggregate team statistics for offence and pitching performance during all MLB seasons from 1995 to 2019. With adequate knowledge of both baseball and data science, Jonishi begins by analyzing and visualizing the data. She then builds a machine learning model that can predict whether a team will make the playoffs. Using this model, Jonishi can input future offence and defence performance predictions to determine if the team would have advanced to the playoffs in previous years.
By 2015, HCF, Australia’s largest not-for-profit health fund, had become a tired brand that did not appeal to younger consumers despite eighty years of success. The market was changing and the combined pressure of competitors and consumer market dynamics meant that HCF was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its position. Yasmina Pinto, the company’s head of brand, had been given the responsibility of revitalizing its tired brand so that it would once again become fresh and appealing to consumers. What was the best way forward for HCF as a brand and as a provider of high quality health care services for Australians?
"This case follows the decision-making process of Erik Wolfe, senior product marketing manager at Sound Agriculture, an agriculture technology company, to develop a go-to-market strategy for a new product. Founded in 2013 and financed through venture capital, Sound Agriculture was generating revenue by 2020 thanks to the success of its flagship product, the foliar spray SOURCE. It is now April 2022 and Sound Agriculture needs to quickly explore options for continuous revenue growth to hedge against a potentially slower venture capital investment pace. An initial feasibility study identified a viable opportunity in entering the turfgrass market with a SOURCE-inspired derivative product. The study suggested that a 5% share of the golf course market was obtainable within five years. Wolfe has a timeline and high-level strategy but faces many challenges including: Defining the target market and developing a product name, logo and packaging; projecting future financial scenarios based on assumptions; aligning Sound Agriculture's sustainability mission with the golf course market. Students will use a supplemental MS Excel worksheet (that accompanies the case) to guide them in preparing and analyzing financial data to support their marketing strategy decisions."
"This case follows the decision-making process of Erik Wolfe, senior product marketing manager at Sound Agriculture, an agriculture technology company, to develop a go-to-market strategy for a new product. Founded in 2013 and financed through venture capital, Sound Agriculture was generating revenue by 2020 thanks to the success of its flagship product, the foliar spray SOURCE. It is now April 2022 and Sound Agriculture needs to quickly explore options for continuous revenue growth to hedge against a potentially slower venture capital investment pace. An initial feasibility study identified a viable opportunity in entering the turfgrass market with a SOURCE-inspired derivative product. The study suggested that a 5% share of the golf course market was obtainable within five years. Wolfe has a timeline and high-level strategy but faces many challenges including: Defining the target market and developing a product name, logo and packaging; projecting future financial scenarios based on assumptions; aligning Sound Agriculture's sustainability mission with the golf course market. Students will use a supplemental MS Excel worksheet (that accompanies the case) to guide them in preparing and analyzing financial data to support their marketing strategy decisions."
Second Place Winner; 2023 DEI Global Case Writing Competition Rhino Foods is a U.S.-based Benefit Corporation (B Corp) owned and operated by the Castle family. A food ingredients supplier to global brands, the company grew to $60 million in annual revenue by 2019. Rhino Foods was best known for inventing and manufacturing the cookie dough found in Ben & Jerry's top-selling ice cream flavor. The case's central topic is how Rhino creatively emphasized inclusive hiring and retention, though balancing people-centric, product quality, and financial goals were continuing challenges. Many Rhino employees were new Americans who came through waves of refugee resettlement programs. Integrating these non-English-speakers into a production floor laden with heavy machinery necessitated investments such as translating the operations manual, adding subtitles to training videos, and pairing new employees with experienced workers with the same native language. Religious and cultural factors new to Rhino became important, as well. Rhino then began to recruit people who had dropped out of the labor force, including coming out of incarceration or rehabilitation for substance use. It created a No Background Checks program to remove barriers to entry like proof of past experience or having a criminal history. Students are challenged to suggest how the leadership team can better understand employee turnover, provide innovative methods of support, alleviate employee concerns regarding new hires, and continue to grow the company in a healthy way.
Honorable Mention; 2023 DEI Global Case Writing Competition This case combines a strategy issue (merger) encompassing the disciplines of organizational behavior and human resource management. Issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) are intertwined in the case, ranging from gender discrimination to sociocultural and hierarchical social class discrimination. The case provides a glimpse into one context (Peru), using a realistic fictional situation, as an example relatable across cultures and a variety of industry and organizational settings. In less than two years, Sweet Mountain Bakery (SMB) lost substantial market share in Peru's cookie market. Top management was shocked to find the main reason was the high-growth performance of a relatively small firm in the country's Andes Mountains area, All You Knead (AYK). The competition became so fierce that employees of SMB and AYK regarded each other as rivals to defeat. In late 2022, after several aggressive yet ineffective competitive moves, SMB solved the situation with a buyout of AYK. Unanticipated in this merger was a set of serious DEIB challenges that emerged post-acquisition. Negativity between the two groups of employees undermined company efforts to attain synergy and efficiency and increase productivity. Students put themselves in the shoes of Victoria Huaman, SMB's new human resources vice president. She is the only woman and the only previous AYK manager among the direct reports to the CEO. Her task is to prepare a report addressing not only DEI issues but also the issue of belonging.
First Place Winner; 2023 DEI Global Case Writing Competition American clothing company Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) had a diverse workforce and prided itself on not discriminating against employees based on their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. LS&Co. reported treating its employees equally and with gender pay parity. It had diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives in place. However, in May 2020 the company recognized that women held a minority of higher-level positions and Latinx/Hispanic and Black employees were underrepresented, as well. Consequently, the company hired Elizabeth A. Morrison as its new chief diversity, inclusion & belonging officer. Morrison's challenges included developing a talent pipeline of Black designers; ensuring pay equity in all the company's markets; improving the recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce; and establishing an ongoing inclusive culture. With LS&Co. as an example of a firm with both DE&I shortcomings and accomplishments, students can understand the concepts of diversity, racial discrimination, pay parity, gender equity, and inclusion, and how to apply them in business settings.
In January 2022, the vice-president of technology for Nata Supermarkets was reviewing the company's performance against its competitors for the 2021 calendar year. The company had been performing poorly both based on its internal metrics and against competitor growth rates. The vice-president also noticed that many competitors began revealing new data analytics initiatives in their annual reports. Many companies experienced industry-leading growth because of these changes and upgraded their guidance for the following year. To compete with an increasing number of data-driven competitors, Nata Supermarket created its internal data set to collect information on customer shopping habits and customer demographics such as age, educational background, and frequency of complaints. With the emergence of visualization tools and data analytics, the vice-president was wondering what useful insights could be drawn from its internal data set. Could this information be useful to resolve various issues such as targeting promotions and forecasting demand?
In July 2022, a senior data scientist for Guell Appliances was aggregating customer reviews from the company's recent appliance launch. The previous month, the company had launched a revamped product line that required a significant amount of investment in research and development. The success of the product line was paramount because it defined the success of the company. The senior data scientist wanted to apply modern analytical techniques to thousands of product reviews to thoroughly understand the preferences of customers, based on what they were saying about their new appliances.
Kae Jonishi, the protagonist in the case, is a marketing analyst at Force Energy (Force). Her company has advertised with Major League Baseball (MLB) teams in the past and has gained moderate amounts of exposure from these marketing campaigns. However, Jonishi's manager wants to increase the company's exposure to MLB fans. One way to do so is to sponsor teams that are likely to advance into the MLB post-season, or playoffs. The top performing teams during the MLB regular season advance into the playoffs and increase their fan base, which results in greater marketing exposure for advertisers. Jonishi has access to a data set that contains aggregate team statistics for offence and pitching performance during all MLB seasons from 1995 to 2019. With adequate knowledge of both baseball and data science, Jonishi begins by analyzing and visualizing the data. She then builds a machine learning model that can predict whether a team will make the playoffs. Using this model, Jonishi can input future offence and defence performance predictions to determine if the team would have advanced to the playoffs in previous years.
By 2015, HCF, Australia's largest not-for-profit health fund, had become a tired brand that did not appeal to younger consumers despite eighty years of success. The market was changing and the combined pressure of competitors and consumer market dynamics meant that HCF was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its position. Yasmina Pinto, the company's head of brand, had been given the responsibility of revitalizing its tired brand so that it would once again become fresh and appealing to consumers. What was the best way forward for HCF as a brand and as a provider of high quality health care services for Australians?
In late 2021, Ben Carr, Director of Analytics and Capital Modeling at Aviva Plc (Aviva)-a leading insurer with core operations in the UK, Ireland and Canada,-was preparing for an upcoming presentation before the company's board which included its CEO, Amanda Blanc, featuring the results of Aviva's performance in the Climate Biennial Exploratory Scenario (CBES) exercise mandated by the Bank of England. The CBES required all major banks and insurers in the country to formally assess the financial risks arising from both the physical impacts of climate change and the transition to a net zero economy. As Carr was in the final stages of refining and updating the CBES findings, he and his team were tasked with discerning how potential climate change consequences might influence each element on Aviva's balance sheet. Additionally, the team was charged with not only evaluating the existing assets and liabilities on Aviva's balance sheet, but also pondering the future operations of the business. Carr was aware that assessing climate risk was a complex task, fraught with its unique set of challenges and limitations. He was prepared to further discuss these issues, as he knew the board would be keen to delve deeper into their intricacies.