A critical question for entrepreneurs starting a business, particularly in a foreign country, is choosing whether or not franchising is the appropriate mode of entry. Franchising offers the entrepreneur instant brand recognition, established business processes and supply chains, regulatory and tax guidance as well as a ready supply of assistance in the early months; however, it deprives the entrepreneur of what many of them crave - the ability to create and grow a business from one's imagination. The two entrepreneurs in this case had regular salaries, but wanted to try their hands at opening a coffee shop - or a chain of coffee shops - in South Korea, which already had many brands with multiple outlets.<br><br>This case is appropriate for use in entrepreneurship, management strategy or international marketing and business courses to introduce mode of entry selection and product/service differentiation. It provides a practical example for students to understand how a mode of entry decision impacts competitiveness in a mature market segment in a mature geographic market. The case can help achieve these objectives as it 1) Encourages students to explore the unique challenges that entrepreneurs face in market selection, mode of entry, product/service offering and brand differentiation strategies; 2) Demonstrates that these critical decisions - market selection, mode of entry, differentiation, etc. - are not linear decisions to be made one after another, but rather pieces of an integrated strategy that have an impact on each other; 3) Allows students to be creative in looking for ways to differentiate a product or service that is a late entrant into a mature market.
The Canadian Pillsbury ready-baked goods cookie line is experiencing disappointing performance, and the marketing manager at General Mills Canada Corporation is under pressure to make strategic decisions that will help turn around the segment. The marketing manager has engaged the help of the consumer insight team to conduct market research studies that will shed light on consumers and their attitudes, behaviours, and preferences towards the product. The results from the market research studies have arrived, and the students, assuming the role of the marketing manager, must filter through them to determine how this information can be used to improve the performance of the cookie segment. More specifically, students will need to determine where the greatest opportunities lie, who the team should target, what brand messaging is the most relevant, and what type of communication plan would be most effective.
The chief executive officer of Maple Leaf Foods, Inc., a food processing company employing 23,000 people in more than 50 locations, has just been advised that a deadly outbreak of Listeriosis has been linked to products shipped from a Maple Leaf Foods plant and that there have been several fatalities and many more severe illnesses linked to this contamination. He must decide what to do immediately, within the next few days, and in the longer term to deal with the problem and the effect that the negative publicity will almost certainly have on the company.
AWARD-WINNING CASE: Adjudged second-best case at the ISB Case Competition 2010 held in partnership with the Richard Ivey School of Business and the Association of Indian Management Schools and sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.<br><br>This case describes the successful journey of Dr. Amita Joshi in a medium-sized Indian pharmaceuticals organization, Samuel Drugs, which was facing serious performance problems. As CEO, Joshi realized that the organization had strong manufacturing capability but that it lacked marketing excellence and badly needed someone who could be tasked with making the company marketing-oriented. Joshi selected a young general manager of sales, Rajesh Mishra, as director of marketing. He proved to be an excellent choice and performed very well in his new role. Samuel Drugs had three subsidiaries and one of them, Eastern Pharmaceuticals Limited, required a managing director and Mishra was selected. He also continued to perform his previous role of director of marketing. Then conflict ensued between Joshi and Mishra. This case reveals the important roles of communication, co-ordination, multiple and diverse stakeholders, and organizational conflict in determining organizational effectiveness. It also highlights the point that managers need to tackle both formal and informal aspects of an organization, rational and social sides of organizational life, and changing dynamics of relationships.
This case describes the situation for Globalive in 2009 shortly after its bid to enter the Canadian wireless telecommunications sector had been denied by the regulatory agency on the grounds that it breached foreign ownership restrictions. The case covers the background to Globalive and the events leading to the regulator’s decision. Andrea Wood, the chief legal officer of WIND Mobile, the wireless brand owned by Globalive, must decide what recommendations to make to Globalive’s chief executive officer.
This case study is based on a high-profile issue facing the Canadian federal government that began in 2008 and was still ongoing as of December 2010. Industry Canada, working from a set of policy objectives crafted over a period of three years, had decided that in the auction sale of wireless spectrum licenses in 2008, it would set aside 40 per cent of the licenses for new entrants. This decision had come about because research indicated that Canadian usage of wireless services had lagged behind that of other developed countries, mainly due to the high relative cost of wireless services. <br><br>One of the new entrants was Globalive Communications Corporation (Globalive), a start-up which was funded by Orascom Telecom Holding S.A.E., an Egyptian company. Despite the fact that Canada had well-defined foreign ownership restrictions for the telecommunications sector, Globalive was allowed to bid. It won, and paid $442 million for its spectrum, began to hire hundreds of staff, and committed another $300 million to investing in wireless infrastructure. From the time Globalive applied to participate in the spectrum auction to the period prior to its official launch, the firm met several times with Industry Canada, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to ensure that its ownership was structured so as to fit within the foreign ownership restrictions.<br><br>Pressure had been put on the CRTC by carriers such as Rogers and Bell to conduct a formal review of Globalive, and this review had determined that Globalive did not fit within foreign ownership restrictions. However, the government had overturned this decision, revealing a conflict between regulation and policy.
The Royal Group Technologies case provides information on insider trading and other allegations faced by the former executive officer and the company’s management team. The executive officer founded the firm after immigrating to Canada from Italy, and built it up into a large conglomerate by the 1990s. However, by the early 2000s, stakeholders were starting to question some of management’s practices, including awarding themselves high levels of compensation and engaging in related party transactions. The allegations led to charges being laid by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2008. An Ontario Superior Court justice acquitted the management team in late 2009, providing a soon-to-graduate MBA student the chance to review the company’s successes and challenges in the hope that some general lessons about corporate governance could be distilled.
A partner and owner of the Sunset Grill at Blue Mountain in the ski village at Blue Mountain, Ontario, had very mixed emotions. The restaurant had just finished its first year of operation and had broken even, and had been named as the Business of the Year in the counties of Simcoe and Grey. Yet the owner knew that operations were still far from perfect. Queues of waiting customers were very long, food orders were delivered slowly, and tensions were rising. What could be done to improve the situation?
Late in August 2004, Chris Higgins was forced into the unenviable position of determining the future of Ring-A-Wing, a London, Ontario-based fast food producer of premium chicken wings for home delivery. After making a personal loan to a friend wishing to invest in the business, the situation devolved in less than nine months from Higgins being a passive lender to being a significant investor to sitting in a bankruptcy meeting trying to determine the future of the business. The issue in the (A) case is whether the Higgins group should reopen Ring-A-Wing.
After its founding in the late 1980s, Cree Inc. quickly grew into a major player in the emerging LED market. By 2007, technological improvements in LEDs had made them suitable for TV, computer, and mobile "backlighting"; and concerns over global warning led to calls to shift to more energy-efficient sources of general lighting (which favored LEDs, as they were far more efficient than the traditionally-dominant incandescents). In this context, Cree faced a strategic conundrum: Should it focus on its historical expertise in manufacturing LED "chips" and components for use in other manufacturers' applications and screens, where LEDs now had established usage? Or should it instead attempt the risky venture of manufacturing its own LED light-bulbs for direct sale to consumers for general lighting? This case presents the history of Cree and information on the LED and general-lighting markets, as background for a debate on Cree's strategic choice.
This case can be used as a capstone valuation exercise for first-year MBA students in an introductory finance course. A senior associate in the business development group at American Cable Communications, one of the largest cable companies in the U.S., must prepare a preliminary valuation for acquiring AirThread Connections, a regional cellular provider. The acquisition would give American Cable access to wireless technology and the wireless spectrum and enable the company to offer competitive service bundles including wireless, currently a hole in the company's service offering. Students learn the basic valuation concepts including DCF (discounted cash flow) using APV (adjusted present value) and WACC (weighted average cost of capital) and they must choose the appropriate approach for situations in which the capital structure is changing or assumed to be constant. Students must consider the effect of constant debt versus the D/V (debt-to-value ratio) in estimating betas and the costs of capital. In addition, students analyze the effects of non-operating assets on valuation. As an additional assignment, instructors can require students to consider the personal tax disadvantage of debt as well as the synergies American Cable expects to achieve following the acquisition.
This case is about the establishment, growth, and direction of the Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park ("Zhangjiang Park"), which is located in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai. Considered to be one of the most competitive hi-tech industry clusters in China, the combined business strategy of Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park Development Co., Ltd. ("Zhangjiang Hi-Tech"), a key operator of Zhangjiang Park, included real estate development, hi-tech investment, and integrated services. As of the time of the case, members of the Board of Directors of Zhangjiang Hi-Tech were faced with open questions such as how Zhangjiang Park would be able to maintain its sustainable competitiveness in comparison with other hi-tech and industrial parks in China. Board members were also concerned with how Zhangjiang Hi-Tech would be able to meet the needs of both capital market and regional development.
During the period 2002-2010 the UK government of the time attempted to relate the rights and entitlements of citizenship with a standard identifier for all British citizens and its representation in a national identity smartcard. The scheme to introduce this identity token for all UK citizens was finally abandoned in December 2010. This teaching case describes the history of this endeavour as promoted by the UK government and its agencies. It also describes the reaction to these plans on the part of numerous other stakeholder groups within the UK. This is a rich case for examining a number of critical, contemporary issues of relevance to Information Systems theory and practice that are occurring worldwide. On the one hand, the attempt to introduce such an identity token brought into focus the critical role that identity and its management plays as supporting infrastructure in areas such as e-Government and e-Business. On the other, the introduction of a national identifier and associated token raised major challenges to data protection, data privacy and public trust in the information governance of this nation state. Indeed, such difficulties constituted a major part of the rationale for the abandonment of the project.
The Hotel Perennial case puts students in the shoes of Dan Jameson, founder and CEO of a boutique real estate private equity firm called EL Investments (ELI), as he wrestles with the decision of whether or not to acquire the distressed Hotel Perennial, a 194-room hotel on the north side of Chicago, Illinois. When making the investment decision, Jameson (and students) must consider various factors: What is ELI's implicit investment strategy, and what are the firm's core competencies? What are Jameson's goals for growing ELI, and how might the acquisition of the Hotel Perennial fit with those goals? What opportunities and challenges might ELI face if it decides to acquire the hotel? How much would a buyer likely have to pay for the Hotel Perennial to achieve an attractive return? In addition to containing a hotel valuation and modeling exercise, the Hotel Perennial case also exposes students to several real estate industry concepts and terminologies, including those regarding the hotel sector, equity sourcing, and distressed investing. The case material assumes that students have taken an introductory real estate finance course or have relevant work experience.
In 1984 the express delivery company Aramex had launched several small offices in the Middle East, hoping to become the first courier company based in that region. Money was tight, and cofounder and CEO Ghandour describes Aramex in those days as a scrappy, hand-to-mouth business. Global courier companies shied away from the Middle East, in part because there was little market demand for their services, and in part because civil wars and complex political relationships presented enormous logistical and bureaucratic challenges. Often the local postal authorities had a virtual monopoly on deliveries. In this context Aramex approached the Seattle-based Airborne Express, a respected logistics company, offering to sell a 50% stake for $100,000. Airborne turned down the offer, but promised to send some regional business Aramex's way. That gave Aramex the credibility to approach other leading couriers; by 1987 FedEx was also a client. Over the next two decades, the Arab start-up took full advantage of Airborne's experience, technology, and global reach to learn and grow. It became part of Airborne's global alliance of regional courier companies, and access to Airborne's package-tracking technology gave Aramex an enormous competitive advantage at a very low cost. In 1996 Airborne acquired 9% of Aramex for $2 million, and the following year Aramex became the first Arab company to trade on the NASDAQ.