In February 2004, the general manager of the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank failed to show up for work several days in a row. His absence followed a meeting of the full staff of the bank with the chair of the board, Chetna Sinha, in which tensions between the male and female staff were aired. The general manager was not the only male staff member to show his dissatisfaction. In January, another long-time male employee had quit, warning that all the male staff were planning to quit as well. Chetna Sinha had to decide whether to call back the general manager, or simply let him go. If she let him go, who would replace him? Chetna Sinha and other women in the village received a cooperative banking license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in February 1997, and six months later founded the Mann Deshi Bank. The bank grew steadily, though not without problems, especially in filling the general manager position. In 2002, Chetna was invited to be a fellow at Yale's Global Fellows program, where she spent a year. In her absence, the bank passed an RBI exam, and operated with few problems. But on her return Chetna found many tensions that soon became unbearable. In December 2003, she called the full staff meeting that precipitated the departure of the two male employees. HKS Case Number 1806.0
American businessman, Greg Casagrande, founder and president of the South Pacific Business Development Foundation (SPBD) in Samoa has a decision to make: who should he hire to be the next general manager of SPBD, when the contract of his current general manager ends in January 2005. Should he hire a local Samoan or a palegi, a foreigner? Casagrande founded the SPBD, a microfinance institution (MFI) providing financial services to poor people, in January 2000. He hired a Samoan with an MBA from the US to be his general manager. Nine months later Casagrande discovered that the general manager was engaging in a variety of fraudulent activities, as were some of his staff. Casagrande was forced to leave his home in New Zealand to fly to Samoa to step in directly. He instituted a number of reforms, including the decision to lend to women only. Casagrande's reforms put the SPBD back on track and, in 2002, he hired Minh Lai, a Vietnamese-Canadian investment banker, to become the general manager. Lai built on Casagrande's reforms, expanded the client base, and introduced new products, including a savings product. But questions still remained. Was SPBD having its intended impact on the lives of its women clients? Would SPBD reach its goal of financial self-sufficiency by 2006? HKS Case Number 1804.0
In 2003, Minh Lai, manager of the South Pacific Business Development Foundation (SPBD), a nonprofit microfinance institution providing financial services to women in Samoa, made a decision to lend to fa'afafines after several asked whether SPBD would lend to them. Fa'afafines are biologically men, but dress and behave like women. How boys become fa'afafines varies. It may be a matter of choice by a boy to take on a female role or it may be a role that they are raised to play by a family that has no or few daughters and needs someone to carry out female tasks within the household: cooking, cleaning, and washing. HKS Case Number 1805.0
In February, 2004, the general manager of the Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank failed to show up for work several days in a row. His absence followed a meeting of the full staff of the bank with the chair of the board, Chetna Sinha, in which tensions between the male and female staff were aired. The general manager was not the only male staff member to show his dissatisfaction. In January, another long-time male employee had quit, warning that all the male staff were planning to quit as well. Chetna Sinha had to decide whether to call back the general manager, or simply let him go. If she let him go, who would replace him? Chetna Sinha and other women in the village received a cooperative banking license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in February 1997, and six months later founded the Mann Deshi Bank. The bank grew steadily, though not without problems, especially in filling the general manager position. In 2002, Chetna was invited to be a fellow at Yale's Global Fellows program, where she spent a year. In her absence, the bank passed an RBI exam, and operated with few problems. But on her return Chetna found many tensions that soon became unbearable. In December, 2003, she called the full staff meeting that precipitated the departure of the two male employees. HKS Case Number 1806.1
Since the 1980s, Kingsford had continued to enjoy steady, moderate growth of 1% to 3% in revenues each year. During most of this time, the charcoal category as a whole grew as well. However, the summer of 2000 represented the first softening in the category in several years. Forces students to step into the brand manager's shoes, analyze the reasons for the current situation, and come up with recommendations related to pricing, branding and advertising, and merchandising and promotion of the Kingsford brand.
Examines how Lifefont (pseudonym), a multidivisional consumer packages goods company, develops a system to manage and measure the impact of promotional events in retail outlets.
Uses Ford's and Toyota's financial statements to familiarize students with the information provided in pension footnotes. Allows students to combine that information with other financial statement information to create a greater understanding of the costs of each company's business. Includes directive questions.
Teradyne, a leading manufacturer of semiconductor test equipment, embarked on a multiyear effort to improve its product development capabilities and to implement more formalized project management approaches. Examines the development of a new-generation tester that involved significant hardware and software design. For this, the company decided to implement new approaches to project management and project teams. Invites discussion of the effectiveness of these approaches and the general lessons for the management of product development.
Scharffen Berger, a premium brand chocolate, is growing rapidly and must decide where and when to add capacity in the production line and with what technology. The company must consider the demands of marketing, the impact on quality and reputation, and the economics of alternative approaches to increasing output in both the short term and long term. Provides an opportunity for students to examine the existing process technology and flow, to understand the determinants of product quality, and to make recommendations about changes that will expand the capabilities of the firm in supplying its premium products to a rapidly growing market segment.
What should you do when your brand becomes "hot" overnight among influential endorsers? Do you exploit this sudden rise in popularity and mainstream the brand, or do you attempt to slow the diffusion process and seek to understand how to market to these consumers? Drawing on the case of Dunlop Volley in Australia, the authors argue that mainstreaming the brand by targeting later adopters results in a short-term fashion cycle rather than creating long-term brand value. Because these brands are "discovered" by consumers, marketers must first understand the value system underlying this adoption and then fit the marketing program to these values. In the case of Dunlop Volley, slowing diffusion rates was achieved through four tactics: rejecting hard-sell marketing, appearing authentic, targeting alternative distribution channels, and delaying launch to the mainstream audience. These activities ensured the ongoing credibility of the brand with endorsers and helped revitalize a brand long thought dead.
Organization design is becoming more and more a cornerstone of competitive advantage in today's increasingly complex companies. The authors' research on firms that have achieved significant advantage suggests that many did so by creating powerful synergies among their capabilities, among market opportunities, and between the two. But the way they recognized and realized these synergies was through their multidimensional organizational designs. Such designs not only reify and empower the dimensions within or across which synergies can occur (function, product, market segment, customer, etc.), they also define and manage the collaborative interfaces needed to discover, exploit, and renew those synergies.
Since its conception, the marketing mix has been the marketer's toolkit for success. A firm's marketing plan is basically comprised of the "four Ps" of the marketing mix toolkit, with practitioners and academicians segregating a marketer's tasks into product, place, price, and promotion. A decade of company-based research suggests, however, that it is time to rebuild the marketing machine by focusing on the key strategic issues that companies, and marketers, face in today's rapidly evolving, digitized marketplace. If marketing is to become a way of doing business rather than merely one of several organizational functions, marketers must recognize that the marketing mix toolkit is truly an implement for success. Only after we, as marketers, recognize and conceptualize marketing as a bigger machine than just the four Ps will we be able to bring a market orientation to the forefront of strategic thought.
In a bid to combine the two major perspectives (strategic communications and strategic brand management) of integrated marketing communications (IMC), this article proposes a holistic consumer experience management framework. According to the framework, the key mission of IMC is to manage effectively the mediated impression of and direct encounter with the brand so that synergism ensues among all the interrelated elements of IMC, including research and development, manufacturing, price formulation, channel arrangement, consumer service management, marketing message construction, and communication program execution. As such, IMC is capable of enhancing the holistic consumer experience and creating a holistic brand value structure, which can unite the consumer's sensory, emotional, social, and intellectual experiences in a new and positive way.
Starbucks, Target, and Nike are just a few of the businesses partnering today with not-for-profit organizations in cause-related marketing campaigns. On the one hand, these campaigns raise awareness, support, and donations for social causes such as global hunger relief. On the other hand, they enhance corporate reputations, customer loyalty, and financial gains for companies. An example of cause-related marketing is an effort organized by Macy's, Pfizer, and other businesses on behalf of the American Heart Association. The program has raised over $32 million in donations for the charity, while generating over 1 billion media impressions for corporate sponsors. Discusses the concept and practice of cause-related marketing, as well as some of its social-ethical complexities. Suggests ways to increase the effectiveness of this popular marketing tool and form of corporate philanthropy.