No industry is as visible and active in the climate change debate as the energy industry. Almost every day, managers are addressing the short-term and long-term implications of their policies for dealing with this issue. The authors of this article studied 50 firms in the oil and gas industry and found that companies that address the short-term and long-term threats and opportunities of climate change can gain a significant competitive advantage.
The Rong-D companies must decide whether to build a luxury senior housing development in Chengdu, China. Demographics are very encouraging for this new product type, but there are numerous cultural, market, financial and political risks that they must assess before moving forward.
The Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), Bob Joss, must decide whether to make the school's new campus LEED certified. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and was an environmental certification awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED was a system where projects earned points for satisfying specific green building criteria. In addition to the added cost of making the campus LEED certified, which was thought to be around $11 million, but was very hard to estimate, Joss had to take into consideration the differing opinions of the school's faculty, alumni, students and administration. While many of the school's alumni and students were in favor of the certification, faculty tended to be against it. Stanford's administration was decidedly against pursuing LEED certification. There were several arguments for pursuing LEED certification. First, the GSB would take a leadership position in sustainability, which would teach students about the importance of the role of sustainability in business and serve as a model for the business community. It would also give the GSB a competitive advantage in attracting students to the school. There were also arguments against pursuing LEED certification. Would the environmental concerns be put ahead of practical day-to-day operational functionality, such as having sufficient light and air conditioning? Some felt that the LEED system itself was flawed, with a rigid point system, which they believed counted nominal environmental improvements rather than real ones. Also, Stanford's administration argued that the school had its own set of sustainability standards which were strict, yet more suited for campus buildings than the LEED system.
Behind every successful leader is a vibrant culture that engages and energizes employees. In almost every case, that culture has been defined, shaped and personified by the leader. The CEO of a company in what is arguably the most competitive industry, financial services, describes the steps that he took, and that other leaders can take, to build a distinctive, dynamic culture.
Examining the failures of even the mightiest industrial organizations can be a valuable exercise. There are lessons to be learned and applied and others to be avoided at all costs. Managers who want to use those lessons to improve the performance of their own companies will find helpful suggestions in this article.
Call it unconventional or unorthodox, but Creative Execution which can be all of these things is designed to differentiate the company sharply and take it to previously unattainable heights. Leaders will understand why and how after they've read this article.
It had taken Phil Knight sixteen long years to build Nike into the number one athletic-shoe company in the country. When Knight had first conceived of the company for an MBA class project, Adidas had had more than 80% market share, but Knight's marketing approach had revolutionized the industry, his company had developed several ground-breaking shoe technologies, and Nike's brand had become one of the most recognizable in the world. In 1980, the same year that Nike had knocked Adidas off its throne, Nike had gone public and Knight, its founder-CEO, still owned close to half of the company. He had led the company through dramatic changes as it evolved from a scrappy start-up to a large public company. However, now, barely half a decade later, Knight had just received the news that Nike itself had been dethroned by Reebok, an upstart competitor. Knight closeted himself in his office, faced the wall, and sat there, weak and sick and devastated for hours.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. In Chapter 1, Product Emotions (16 pages), the authors consider the relationship between the customer and a product. The authors differentiate between using emotions to encourage the purchase of a product versus developing a product experience that produces an emotion, with the latter as the desired goal. They also explain how branding plays a significant role in product emotions because it forms the basis for the relationship between product and company. The authors argue that an emotional exchange must be genuine and lasting to be effective and that the goal of creating product emotions must be integrated into the company's overall strategy and mission, based on extensive research and careful development.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. Chapter 2, Profitability of Emotions (8 pages), shows that creating product features that engender high emotion often costs little to implement, even for products that are strong revenue sources. The authors consider examples from McDonald's, Black and Decker, and Starbucks to illustrate how low-cost product features such as hamburger wrappers or a different brand name can evoke emotions. They also consider factors that are essential in identifying and developing the right product features, including workforce training and hiring appropriate staff.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. In Chapter 3, The High-Emotion Index: Stock Market Gains from Emotion (11 pages), the authors present their research on the profitability of product emotions. They describe the methodology used to determine if the financial gain from product emotion mitigates the costs of creating that emotion. Extending their model from individual products to the market capitalization of companies, they explain that higher-emotion stocks will outperform lower-emotion stocks, and they provide insight on what this means for managers.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. In Chapter 4, The Paths to Emotion (20 pages), the authors outline two approaches to creating product emotion, through associated emotions or supported emotions. Associated emotions are external to the product and communicated to the customer through messaging, usually advertising. Supported emotions derive from the use of the product or service itself. The authors say that supported emotions are used less frequently and offer more powerful opportunities for managers. They illustrate each path through examples, but focus mainly on associated emotions in the chapter. They consider their own studies and other scientific research that demonstrates how associated emotion can have a positive impact on customers' perceptions of product value.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. Chapter 5, Supported Emotions: The Key to Today's Leading Products (15 pages), delves more deeply into developing an actual product that delivers a high-emotion experience. The authors analyze Apple to illustrate the benefits of successfully supported emotions throughout a product experience. They present research on product packaging to show how every product detail can be used to provide customer value, and they further explore the benefit of supported emotions in business-to-business marketing, services marketing, and in higher education. The authors conclude that successful high-emotion products meet customer needs via both emotion and functionality.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. In Chapter 6, Product Emotion Strategy (20 pages), the authors present a three-step model for creating high-emotion products. The first step is to determine the emotions that the product can produce. The second step is to develop a strategy to produce those emotions. The third step is to take that strategy and make it a reality through the production process. The authors outline 16 core categories of positive emotions that motivate customers and show why a successful strategy requires a solid understanding of the customer. They also explain "eMap" as a tool for creating an emotion strategy in a five-step process, with real world examples from Navistar Corporation, DesignAdvance Systems, and RedZone Robotics.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. In Chapter 7, The Emotion of Form and Touchpoints to Create It (24 pages), the authors focus on using a product's visual form to evoke emotions. They emphasize the importance of creating a "visual brand language" to link the product form and product emotion strategy. They show how Harley Davidson and Buick used consistent visual brand languages to successfully create multiple products under one brand. They explain how an effective visual brand language can drive both product development and market differentiation, drawing from Whirlpool Corporation as an example. They explain a four-step process for turning strategy into touchpoints, or points of customer interaction: identification of attributes, integration into design, product testing, and production and evolution.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. Chapter 8, Meeting Societal Needs: Positive Roles for Emotion (14 pages), explores opportunities for developing high-emotion products that address issues of sustainability, health for the aging, social action, and globalization. The authors consider efforts by companies that target an environmental problem, address a specific population group, take social action, or localize a product. They explain the benefits for companies to consider the emotions of societal issues in product and brand strategy.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. In Chapter 9, Emotion's Role in Technology Products (10 pages), the authors consider how the value of emotion extends into markets typically regarded as non-emotional. They consider the potential for high-emotion products in the fields of nanotechnology, medical products and healthcare, space systems, and robotics. They explain why most technology and healthcare companies have not yet explored emotion in their product development and why it is increasingly important for this pattern to change. They also explore the power of aesthetically-pleasing designs and the emerging field of socially assistive robotics.
Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. Chapter 10, Taking Action: Transform Your Products and Brands to Captivate Customers (5 pages), provides a brief practical review of the authors model for creating high-emotion products. The authors outline two strategic approaches for product emotions and outline the risks and benefits of each approach. In the first, they advise managers to "take the plunge" and move quickly in assessing a product portfolio and provide guidance on crafting a product emotion strategy. The second approach-"slow and steady"-allows managers to focus on a single product with a more conservative product development effort. They also consider the tradeoffs between the two approaches.
The case highlights issues arising from changes in accounting policies followed by Jet Airways during the accounting year ended March 31, 2009. During the first quarter ended June 30, 2008, Jet Airways changed its accounting policy of charging depreciation from written down value method to straight line method on certain aircraft, which resulted in a writeback of excess depreciation of Rs. 9159 million. The company adopted an accounting policy that capitalized and deferred the losses arising out of certain foreign currency exchange difference instead of charging it to the income statement. They had also revalued some of their assets in the previous year. Airline companies have significant fixed assets, and therefore the accounting for depreciation is important. The accounting policy choice that the company makes impacts not only profits and asset values for the current year but those of future years.
The case describes the opportunities and challenges in the cigarette industry in India. The description suggests that there are tremendous opportunities for growth in the cigarette industry. However, there are challenges due to the health hazards associated with cigarette smoking, distortion in the tax system as applied to the cigarette industry, and restrictions on smoking placed by new legislation. Further, there are challenges in the market due to smuggling, contraband products, and other issues. The case presents ITC Limited as a dominant player in the industry with a significant dependence on tobacco and tobacco products promising to pursue the triple bottom line approach by focusing on economic, environmental and social value. There is a need for the company to decide on some directions for the future to live up to the promise of a triple bottom line approach. The case, based on the real issues faced by ITC Limited, will allow students to understand the dilemmas the firm faced in trying to meet the social demands to ban or restrict smoking. Any decision to stop producing and selling cigarettes has negative implications for the business. How does ITC Limited arrive at the right balance?