How do you make money when you tell your customers 'don't buy our stuff unless you really need it?'" This was the question that Yvon Chouinard, founder of the clothing company Patagonia, asked himself as he considered developing a new partnership with eBay in which customers would buy and sell used Patagonia gear on eBay rather than buy it new. As he considered this new partnership, Chouinard would have to balance the environmental priorities upon which Patagonia was founded with its financial well-being. This is a two-part case. Part A presents the decision which Chouinard is considering, while Part B presents the decision that Chouinard chose. This case presents the decision about a potential partnership with eBay that Yvon Chouinard, founder of the clothing company Patagonia, chose to pursue. The A and B cases were written by graduate students Allyson Johnson, Courtney Lee, Steven Rippberger, and Morgane Treanton, under the supervision of Professor Andrew Hoffman.
In January 2000, World Championship Wrestling (WCW)’s executive VP was faced with a challenging decision. He had been appointed as executive VP just three months ago, and was tasked with restoring the company to a profitable position. However, WCW’s on-screen performance was suffering; ratings for the flagship WCW Monday Nitro television program had fallen to their lowest levels in nearly three-and-a-half years. WCW was losing its market leadership position, its viewing audience, and even some of its on-screen talent to its major competitor, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). The executive VP faced problems on a number of fronts: a talent roster low on motivation and morale, turnover among both the writing staff and company leadership, and a rapidly shrinking audience. Furthermore, the current instability in leadership meant that another major change would seriously impact the already low morale among WCW’s on-screen talent and support staff.
Bihar State Milk Cooperative Federation (COMPFED) had been marketing its milk and milk-related products under the Sudha brand name in the Bihar and Jharkhand regions of India for three decades. It operated through six unions and two dairies to process the milk collected from nearly 4,000 village-level cooperatives. COMPFED appeared to have a competitive advantage for its supply of milk, since it maintained the largest network for milk procurement, which spanned a large area and was unmatched by its competitors. However, due to various environmental forces, the ability to procure an adequate supply had declined in the last two years, which negatively affected the profitability of the organization.<br><br><br><br>The marketing manager of COMPFED had been facing difficulty in serving the growing demand and maintaining profitability. Since he operated in an industry with high fixed costs, the declining supply of milk procurement meant lower sales. As a result, there was no opportunity to significantly lower operating costs to match the limited supply.<br><br><br><br>The marketing manager thought of two reasons in the external environment that contributed to this situation. First, a series of floods had caused damage to grazing land and livestock operations. Additionally, private players were disrupting the supply chain by offering short-term higher payments to some suppliers/farmers. These players did not face the same regulatory and hygiene guidelines that COMPFED did. The marketing manager’s options included two very different alternatives: trying to work with these agents or securing a process to minimize or eradicate their activities.
Looking back on the disastrous vacation of an American couple in Indonesia, this case shows how a globally branded North American hotel chain disregarded the basic tenets of maintaining their global brand promise, ignored generally accepted customer service standards, failed to instigate delivery failure recovery, and leveraged firm-specific capabilities to maximize shareholder wealth. The reaction of the local manager at the Indonesian hotel and adaptation of the value proposition are told from the perspective of the vacationing couple that experienced the diluted brand firsthand.
The Schon Klinik is a private, for-profit German hospital group trying to establish itself as a premium health care provider in a competitive German market. The case details Schon Klinik's founding, its early focus on measurement and improvement, and the design and implementation of a system-wide structure for measuring and reporting actual health outcomes. The case details the care cycle for eating disorder patients and highlights the role outcomes measurement has played in improving eating disorder care over time. It ends with a discussion of Schon's innovative bundled reimbursement models and challenges the reader to explore how to develop new pricing and care delivery models that encourage integration of care around patient medical conditions. The case also discusses the German health care system, its regulatory constraints, and Schon's attempts to change the paradigm of competition in the sector.
Social media applications-including collaborative projects, micro-blogs/blogs, content communities, social networking sites, and virtual worlds-have become part of the standard communication repertoire for many companies. Today, with the creation of increasingly powerful mobile devices, numerous social media applications have gone mobile and new entrants are constantly appearing. The purpose of this article is to take account of this evolution, and provide an introduction to the general topic of mobile marketing and mobile social media. Herein, we define what mobile social media is, what it is not, and how it differs from other types of mobile marketing applications. Further, we discuss how firms can make use of mobile social media for marketing research, communication, sales promotions/discounts, and relationship development/loyalty programs. We present four pieces of advice for mobile social media usage, which we refer to as the 'Four I's' of mobile social media. Finally, we conclude by providing some thoughts on the future evolution of this new and exciting type of application.
Millennials have heavily influenced social media's evolution into an important source of product information. They are increasingly basing their product evaluations on information gathered from online reviews. Thus, companies targeting Millennials may wish to pay heed to online reviews. Which products are affected by Millennials' online reviews? Do the reviews tend to be positive or negative? Where do Millennial customers look for information amongst the plethora of online venues? As presented herein, a survey of 227 Millennials reveals that this generation is undeniably posting reviews online and being influenced by these reviews. Respondents show a definite preference for two online venues, Facebook and company websites, when voicing their opinions. Reviews are broken down by positive and negative comments, and how product categories fare for each type. Contrary to popular thinking, the respondents were more prone to post positive reviews than negative reviews. Males voice their opinions online significantly more often than females, and specific gender differences are observed by product category. Recommendations are provided for selling to Millennials by leveraging online reviews.
This article examines the characteristics and applications of 3-D printing and compares it with mass customization and other manufacturing processes. 3-D printing enables small quantities of customized goods to be produced at relatively low costs. While currently used primarily to manufacture prototypes and mockups, a number of promising applications exist in the production of replacement parts, dental crowns, and artificial limbs, as well as in bridge manufacturing. 3-D printing has been compared to such disruptive technologies as digital books and music downloads that enable consumers to order their selections online, allow firms to profitably serve small market segments, and enable companies to operate with little or no unsold finished goods inventory. Some experts have also argued that 3-D printing will significantly reduce the advantages of producing small lot sizes in low-wage countries via reduced need for factory workers.
Trust is at the heart of a collaborative innovation capability. Without a foundation of trust, collaborative alliances can neither be built nor sustained. Using a two-stage qualitative research method, we discovered that managers understand neither the nature of trust nor the dynamics of trust building. To help alleviate these knowledge gaps, we herein develop a definition of collaborative trust, describe a trust maturity framework, and discuss the competitive power of trust. We conclude by presenting a dynamic systems model that elaborates on the process of building trust to improve collaboration, innovation, and competitive performance.
The service sector is dependent upon customers' willingness to contribute their knowledge, skills, and abilities to co-produce the service experiences they want and expect. Service organizations therefore seek to employ strategies that will enhance their customers' ability to do whatever they must to be successful in co-producing those experiences. Applying the concept of self-efficacy, we offer a theory-based approach to developing these strategies that firms may utilize. These strategies involve focusing both employee training and environmental cues on how to enhance the self-efficacy of the customer in performing whatever tasks are necessary toward a successful service experience.
While the impacts of culture on international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) have been much discussed, the influence of languages has been underappreciated in international business. We address this paucity by integrating literature from international economics, international business, Chinese business history, and linguistics to examine the transaction costs of languages. While we recognize that languages represent both a tool in international economic transactions and a vehicle to transmit cultural values, our results point out that this tool is employed differently in international trade and in FDI. Communication costs for both FDI and international trade show a hierarchy, with English the most inexpensive among major trade languages; however, we find that communication costs are much more important in FDI than in international trade. Herein, we offer practical suggestions corporations may implement regarding the matter.
A strategy called software product line engineering, or SPLE, is taking hold in industries in which software is an integral part of product offerings. Where it has found a foothold, SPLE has brought about remarkable results such as unprecedented product variation, substantial production cost savings, slashing of time to market, and massive productivity gains. SPLE is the software version of an old manufacturing concept: building a suite of products from common parts assembled under a common design in a common production facility. The special properties of software make SPLE a particularly high-payoff proposition. SPLE exploits the commonalities among products to achieve economies of scale, by creating core assets-assets that will be applied to multiple products in the product line. SPLE accommodates the differences among products by explicitly identifying and planning for those variations in product behavior and qualities. This management of variation allows the organization to achieve economies of scope and provides the capability of mass customization where every market is treated as a niche. Management ensures that core asset developers create effective core assets and product builders efficiently build products by using them. This requires oversight, coordination, and melding of purpose of groups that have slightly different inherent goals.
Foro Energy developed proprietary and patent-pending fiber-laser technologies that could disrupt existing processes and services for the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. These breakthrough laser technologies were protected by a strong intellectual property (IP) portfolio, which provided Foro with the flexibility to pursue a number of different business models. The market potential for oilfield applications was large, as global spending in the O&G E&P industry was expected to approach $600 billion in 2012.
The chief executive officer of Mission Hills, a Chinese golf course operator, is reviewing a handful of expansion options. In August 2011, Mission Hills has three large land holdings in Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Haikou, 12,000 employees, and 22 golf courses. In addition to golf courses, it owns two luxury hotels and sells houses built within its properties. Mission Hills occupies an average of 60 per cent of the land it currently owns, and Chu is trying to decide if growth should come by expanding to a third Chinese province or if it should continue building in its current land holdings. He wants to identify and mitigate some of the risks that come with running a high-growth business.
This case is a two-part series on Dunia. Case A is set in 2008, where founder CEO Rajeev Kakar has just spent 20 months setting up Dunia, a finance company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The enterprise originated from a partnership between his former employer, Fullerton Financial Holdings (FFH) and a couple of key entities in the UAE that were keen on building a financial presence in the region. On September 15, 2008 - as the Dunia team is preparing to announce the opening of its first branch in Abu Dhabi - news breaks on the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. For Kakar, it means that the product programmes he has lined up, as well as his funding assumptions for Dunia, have crashed. Dunia A deals with the time frame before the launch of the company and covers factors such as pricing risk and uncertainty, along with a broader view that covers the struggles presented with new ventures and entrepreneurship.
Nawaal Motlekar is the managing director of Kwenta Media and founding editor of Mamas & Papas, a recently launched parenting magazine in Southern Africa. From her early entrepreneurial experiences, Motlekar developed a personal and professional interest in parenting magazines. As a Black South African women, married to an Indian man, in an increasingly multi-racial and multi-cultural society, Motlekar recognized a gap for a parenting magazine that would appeal to a wider and more racially and culturally inclusive target market. After extensive research and development, she launched the Mamas & Papas magazine in early 2009. The case charts Motlekar's journey as an entrepreneur, as well as her efforts between 2006 and 2009 to bring the magazine to life. The case explores the quantitative and qualitative research approaches employed by Motlekar, as well as her marketing and branding initiatives towards building a Mamas & Papas brand beyond just the physical magazine. With the magazine having been on the shelves for 12 months, Motlekar and her board faced a number of decisions. These included options to increase advertising revenues and circulation, as well as choosing how to extend the Mamas & Papas brand into related categories.
In January 2000, World Championship Wrestling (WCW)'s executive VP is faced with a challenging decision. He had been appointed the executive VP just three months ago, and was tasked with restoring the company to a profitable position. However, WCW's onscreen product was suffering; ratings for the flagship WCW Monday Nitro (Nitro) program had fallen to their lowest levels in nearly three-and-a-half years. WCW was losing its market leadership position, its viewing audience and even some of its on-screen talent to its major competitor, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). The executive VP faced problems on a number of fronts: a talent roster low on motivation and morale, turnover among both the writing staff and company leadership, and a rapidly shrinking audience. Furthermore, the current instability in leadership meant that another major change would seriously impact the already-low morale among WCW's on-screen talent and support staff.