Having just raised a Series B financing, the case protagonist is faced with a tough decision: should she "step on the gas" and scale the customer base, or continue focusing on fine-tuning the product and business model. The case describes the various marketing channels employed by the BabbaCo team (Search, Email, Social Media, Deal Sites, Affiliates, etc.), including the strategy and effectiveness for each. Readers can use this knowledge to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing efforts to date and determine whether they think the company is ready to scale those efforts or whether it is premature to do so.
This case describes in rich detail the change challenge the director of pharmacy services at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) faces in September 2011. She is responsible for implementing project HUGO, an acronym for Health Care UnderGoing Optimization. HUGO is a computerized system that requires a switch from paper and pencil to fully electronic patient records. This project is the most complex and comprehensive one that London area hospitals have ever undergone: the project includes a total of 11 healthcare organizations in London and surrounding region, with expected project costs in excess of $25 million. Implementing HUGO has the potential to save lives in the hospital, where critical errors are often linked to manual processes that involve multiple steps and people. Despite the strong reasons for implementing this project, the director expects significant resistance from nurses, doctors and staff who are used to their way of operating. It is clear that this change challenge involves not just the adoption of new technology but a significant cultural change.
The Himalaya Drug Company is interested in obtaining insights into how the lifestyle of consumers is associated with the use of face washes, especially of its own brand. As the population of India, which is primarily under the age of 35, becomes more affluent and self-conscious, personal grooming has become more important. Several brands have positioned themselves in the market according to various attributes and benefits. Himalaya wants to understand the impact of values and lifestyles both on the category of face washes and on the brands in this category. The case makes use of a consumer survey conducted in December 2011 that investigated the lifestyle of consumers and connected it to various face wash brands through the concept of laddering. Were the attributes and benefits of the brands associated with the lifestyles of the consumers? How were values associated with brand association? Himalaya hopes to obtain insights through these questions to discover how it can effectively compete with its competitors through branding association.
This case considers the hedonic goals that motivate consumers to make choices among various options that offer them unique experiences. As a birthday gift to his girlfriend Danielle, Jack presented two game-day options to watch the Denver Broncos. Option 1 offered seats with excellent views close to the action while Option 2 offered a more diverse experience including tailgating, souvenirs and concessions, but with seats more removed from the action. As a passionate Broncos fan, Danielle struggled to choose an option that would maximize her "Broncos experience." Through class discussion from the point of view of both consumers and management, students will be encouraged to think more about what hedonic elements are important when making buying choices.
In late 2012, Kori Tuggle, director of marketing and business development at Ocean Mist Farms, a California produce company, examines her social media-based marketing program and her attempts to create a brand for a bulk commodity.
Patrick Coveney, CEO of Greencore, one of the top producers of private label prepared foods sold through U.K. grocery retailers, was assessing Greencore's growth options. Growth potential was limited in the U.K., a mature market in which retailers were unlikely to grant much greater market share to Greencore or any of its competitors. In the U.S., where Greencore had struggled to gain traction since its initial entry in 2008, the market for fresh, chilled prepared foods was far less developed. Can Greencore translate its success in the U.K. to the U.S.? Should Coveney focus on developing the U.S. market or on maximizing Greencore's position in the U.K.?
The Himalaya Drug Company is interested in obtaining insights into how the lifestyle of consumers is associated with the use of face washes, especially of its own brand. As the population of India, which is primarily under the age of 35, becomes more affluent and self-conscious, personal grooming has become more important. Several brands have positioned themselves in the market according to various attributes and benefits. Himalaya wants to understand the impact of values and lifestyles both on the category of face washes and on the brands in this category. The case makes use of a consumer survey conducted in December 2011 that investigated the lifestyle of consumers and connected it to various face wash brands through the concept of laddering. Were the attributes and benefits of the brands associated with the lifestyles of the consumers? How were values associated with brand association? Himalaya hopes to obtain insights through these questions to discover how it can effectively compete with its competitors through branding association.
This case considers the hedonic goals that motivate consumers to make choices among various options that offer them unique experiences. As a birthday gift to his girlfriend Danielle, Jack presented two game-day options to watch the Denver Broncos. Option 1 offered seats with excellent views close to the action while Option 2 offered a more diverse experience including tailgating, souvenirs and concessions, but with seats more removed from the action. As a passionate Broncos fan, Danielle struggled to choose an option that would maximize her “Broncos experience.” Through class discussion from the point of view of both consumers and management, students will be encouraged to think more about what hedonic elements are important when making buying choices.
In April 2011, Sony’s PlayStation and Qriocity services were attacked by an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into the company network, compromising user account information. For five days, the corporation turned off both its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services while it conducted a full and complete investigation with the help of an external security firm. Although brief statements about the issue were posted on the PlayStation blog site, Sony did not publicly disclose the full extent of the security breach or the expected date when network services might return to normal, leaving many people speculating if personal or financial information had been illegally obtained. The timing was complicated by the imminent announcement of the launch of Sony’s first tablet computer. With its public statement, Sony intended to communicate key points of information about, explanations of and solutions to the network interruption. With over 70 million PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user accounts worldwide, customers, industry analysts, investors, consumer protection groups and government officials were all waiting for answers.
Cheick Sanankoua is an MBA student who believes that he has found the perfect investment property, a small, independently-owned hotel, on the Ivory Coast. However, he has had trouble raising money for the investment beyond friends and family. Through contacts in the private equity industry, he has one last opportunity to pitch the deal to Asdar Capital. If unsuccessful, the time on Sanankoua's exclusivity agreement with the owners will run out.
Jim Bush, Executive Vice President of American Express (Amex) World Service, was confronted with a challenge in the mid 2000s: After working for Amex for 24 years, he began to worry that the company was focusing too much on cost reduction. Customer service was eroding as the company strove to stay competitive during hard economic times. In response, he led the organization in a large-scale reinvention of its customer service strategy with an initiative called Relationship Care. By empowering employees with technology and information, Amex greatly improved its customer service and profits. Moving forward, students must help Amex address the challenges of taking "Relationship Care" global.
In the relatively short time since Groupon was founded, the response to "daily deals"-services that promote businesses by marketing deeply discounted, pre-paid vouchers to an online subscriber base-has by all accounts been spectacular. Our evaluation of daily deals is a cautionary tale for merchants: a substantial percentage are unlikely to benefit, and might well lose money, by using this type of campaign. But a careful analysis of the right data provides clear indicators of both what types of merchants are likeliest to benefit, and which factors that influence profits should receive the most management attention.
In mid-2012 Lit Motors had created both engineering and design prototypes and conducted initial customer tests on less than $750,000 of investment. Lit Motors' founder, Daniel Kim had started the company to design and manufacture an efficient electric 2-wheeled vehicle. The company had refined the designs for the key technologies required and had a working prototype, an understanding of the manufacturing processes to be used and a list of the components required. They also had a design prototype that they had used to conduct customer tests and establish reactions to pricing levels. At this point, management was aiming to raise $15M to get closer to manufacturing prototypes, but had they sufficiently proved out both the manufacturing feasibility and the market demand? How could they address the next hurdles in terms of partnership building, supply chain management and go-to-market strategy?
The funded search model is one alternative for individuals who, at some point in their career, want to run their own companies. This note looks at the funded search, as a means to entrepreneurship through acquisition and describes the path to buy and run a business using debt and equity as a means of financing the purchase. While applicable to an early career choice, many of the process steps are applicable to unfunded searches at later stages of a career.
On a mission to give "hope, chance and choice" to underprivileged students, Erwin Huang started the social enterprise WebOrganic to sell quality computers and internet services to students at below-market prices. In its first year of operation, the company had already served more than 7,000 low-income families, and had expanded from being a technology distributor to becoming a provider of a full-fledged service surrounding online learning. Now entering its second year, WebOrganic continues to face resistance from parents and educators in e-learning adoption as it introduces tablet computers to its product mix. This case is about creating a blue ocean in the overlapping zones of the computer and internet services retail market and a growing e-learning market. It explores ideas pertaining to the design and execution of a blue ocean strategy; including such topics such value innovation, the four actions framework and tipping point leadership. The case also touches on concepts of strategic relationship management and social entrepreneurship.
HealthCraft's three founders are about to craft their founding agreement and split the equity among themselves. Uncertainty lingers over each member's future contributions, though-how is the team to devise a durable and effective split? Ever since consultant Kevin Rumsfeld conceived of the idea for HealthCraft, he had worked resolutely to begin building the company by recruiting a talented colleague to help with marketing and fundraising, and a junior member of one of his project teams to help him build the product. All three had been enthusiastically working on HealthCraft part-time for the last few months, contributing from personal savings to build a prototype. But now the pressure is on to discuss and finalize a founding agreement. What should they include in the agreement, and how should they structure their equity split?