After a period of turbulence, the fourth generation of Nordstroms are in control of the $7.1 billion apparel retailer. They have instituted a number of changes in buying and IT that have turned the business around. What can they do to ensure future growth?
Describes the story of one of the first geographically focused foundations in Mexico, which was created by a group of international foundations (Rockefeller Foundation, International Youth Foundation, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and Kellogg Foundation), and later joined by renowned businessmen and social leaders from Oaxaca, to respond to the social conflicts in the southern region of the country (i.e., Chiapas). FCO's experience offers an interesting view of cross-sector interactions between the business and social communities and of the strategic change from supporting rather isolated projects with limited interactions among actors to focusing on specific locations, explicitly promoting collaboration networks and social capital creation.
In 2005 Logitech launched a new and improved cordless presenter which was the next generation product of its presentation device line. The entire process to launch was unusual for Logitech as the following factors took place: a Director of Engineering played a key marketing role, a new method of customer feedback and research was used to decide on product features and the entire project was outsourced to a firm in Taiwan - which was a first for this product unit. The case goes over the issues and challenges that were faced along the way and how marketing and engineering had to work together in an unusual pairing in order to get to a successful product launch.
Intelliseek harvests, filters, and mines the content of messages posted by consumers online and on discussion boards and blogs. For any specified consumer product brand, Intelliseek measures the volume of work-of-mouth and its valence (proportion of positive and negative comments) and produces organized sets of quotes in the manner of a focus group report. This "marketing intelligence" company has been successful selling its reports to the car industry, but finds it difficult to achieve client retention in other areas. New initiatives are suggested: (1) to arrange data in problem-specific templates so that it is more "actionable" and (2) to develop industry benchmark metrics against which the metrics can be compared in a more informative manner. The CEO of the company believes that the key to success is a streamlined, standardized approach to the metrics developed for client brands. The CMO believes that Intelliseek should go much further to capitalize on the opportunity to understand customers emerging from what he calls "consumer-generated media."
Provides tools and methodologies that allow forecasting demand for innovative new products. Highlights the Bass model--the theory behind it and ways to determine its parameters. Provides a detailed example of how to use the Bass model to forecast demand for satellite radio. Also covers ways to incorporate marketing mix variables and competition and explores the impact of these factors on the adoption and diffusion of an innovation. Finally, illustrates how to construct forecasts when early sales data are available via data-driven forecasting models.
Celulosa Arauco is a major Chilean producer of market pulp and wood products. Owning over 1.2 million hectares of forest in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, the company's key advantage is the ideal growing conditions in which the company's forests are located. As of early 2004, Arauco is the third largest producer of market pulp (pulp sold on the open market) and is considering increasing its capacity, tying it with Brazilian competitor Aracruz as the world's largest producer. The first phase of the project has been approved by the board of directors and includes a sawmill, plywood mill, and energy complex valued at $120 million. Now, Alejandro Perez, Arauco's president and CEO, is seeking approval for the second phase of the project, which would include the company's sixth market pulp plant at a cost of $1.2 billion. Perez's concerns about the volatility of market prices for the past three years led the company to diversify into wood products like panels, medium-density fiberboard, and other remanufactured wood products. These divisions are highly successful and currently account for approximately 50% of Arauco's revenues. Perez is debating whether the company and its shareholders would be better served by a forward integration into the paper business instead of increasing the company's capacity in market pulp.
Haier, the first Chinese consumer durable brand in the United States, succeeded in the compact refrigerator, freezer, and air conditioner markets and then built a U.S. factory to enter the full-size market. Issues include the value of a local entrepreneur to the Asian manufacturer entering the United States; brand building and price positioning; the sourcing location decision trade-off between production costs and logistics costs; the role of change in the U.S. appliance distribution channels; global and regional competitive analysis; the response of U.S. competitors to the global sourcing evolution; and the time horizons of Chinese company management.
InfoVision illustrates university technology transfer through the choices of a graduating doctoral student. Also explores the challenges of working across the scientific, business, and legal disciplines in the Georgia Tech transfer program.
Raises issues about the role of boards of directors in compensating CEOs and, specifically, the rewards granted to CEOs for arranging a change-of-control for their companies.
Members of the Public Co. Accounting Oversight Board--a private-sector, nonprofit body created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002--must determine the form and content of a new auditing standard on internal control that will fulfill the requirements of Section 404 of the act. After receiving comments from issuers, investors, and accounting firms, board members contemplate the necessary scope of an audit engagement to evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls and restore investors' confidence in financial reporting. Gives students an opportunity to consider the role of external regulation and self-regulation and such issues as the difficulties of cost-benefit analysis for proposed regulations, the relation between rules and discretion, the differences between investor and executive perspectives, and the apportionment of responsibilities among management, internal auditors, and external auditors.
This case is a good fit for courses in operations management and business communications. It examines the procurement strategy of a global energy company by describing the overall change program led by the new chief procurement officer as well as specific information regarding the commodity for electric meters. See also the B case (UV3548).
Describes how JCDecaux, the second largest global outdoor advertising company, became the world leader in street furniture advertising in a fast consolidating business environment. Also explains why, in the late 1990s, JCDecaux diversified its activities into billboards and transport outdoor advertising in reaction to competitor attacks. Places students in the position of Jean-Francois Decaux and his brother Jean-Charles Decaux, the sons of the founder and JC Decaux's co-CEOs who, in late 2004, explore ways to continue the success of the 73% family-owned business.
Umpqua Bank is an Oregon-based business that is attempting to revolutionize the banking industry with a creatively nontraditional culture and a radically retail mindset ("stores" not "branches"), supported by an highly innovative environmental design. Umpqua has grown rapidly and faces critical issues, including: (1) How can an organization strengthen and maintain its culture while undergoing rapid growth by merger and acquisition? Specifically, how can this service organization, a quirky bank with a distinctive culture, incorporate and retrain hundreds of new employees from traditional banks? And (2) What role does the design of the total environment ("experience design") play in nurturing and maintaining an organization's culture and its brand expression, and how much should it invest in this form of brand expression? Presents two examples and asks how this bank should deal with the issue of cost vs. value of design in each of them.
The case describes the interactions among pharmaceutical companies, NGOs, and governments in the context of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Oxfam singled out GSK as the target for its new campaign, "Cut the Cost." The goal was to hit where it would hurt the most--GSK's share price. At the same time other NGOs also went after GSK. For GSK the situation in South Africa was extremely delicate. The ultimate issues were patent and price protection globally. The pharmaceutical companies were afraid that cheap generic drugs could flood the West, undermining the entire pricing structure and their ability to fund new research. Defending the patents and prices seemed essential. Yet, fighting the NGOs could bring negative publicity and, ultimately, be self-defeating. Meanwhile, million of people were dying of AIDS in South Africa.
Takes place in Chihuahua, one of Mexico's largest and most industrialized states, located in the northeastern region of the country. Despite its relative prosperity, the state faced severe social drawbacks, both in rural and urban areas. Following a natural disaster in 1990, members of the private sector community came together to ask the government to approve an increase in the payroll tax (ISN) that companies paid, as well as the creation of a trust fund that would collect those resources and allocate them to city reconstruction efforts. Over the years, this initiative created by local businessmen to provide an emergency relief for a natural disaster developed into Fundacion del Empresariado Chihuahuense (FECHAC), a civil society organization (CSO) in charge of managing trust fund resources.
The Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund (SAIF) team has just learned that the price at which its portfolio company, the Chinese gaming firm Shanda, was planning to go public must be reduced. As a result, the partners think through the entire genesis of the deal and the differences between doing venture capital in China and in the United States. Illustrates the intricacies of strategic venture investing.