In the past decade, marketing gurus have called for customer care, customer focus, even--shudder--customer centricity. But according to marketing professor Stephen Brown, the customer craze has gone too far. In this article, he makes the case for "retromarketing"--a return to the days when marketing succeeded by tormenting customers rather than pandering to them. Using vivid examples, Brown shows that many recent consumer marketing coups have decidedly not been customer driven. They've relied instead on five basic retromarketing principles: First, exclusivity. Retromarketing eschews the modern marketing proposition of "Here it is, there's plenty for everyone" by holding back supplies and delaying gratification. You want it? Can't have it. Try again later, pal. Second, secrecy. Whereas modern marketing is up-front and transparent, retromarketing revels in mystery, intrigue, and covert operations. (Consider the classic "secret" recipes that have helped to purvey all sorts of comestibles.) The key is to make sure the existence of a secret is never kept secret. Third, amplification. In a world of incessant commercial chatter, amplification is vital, and it can be induced in many ways, from mystery to affront to surprise. Fourth, entertainment. Marketing must divert, engage, and amuse. The lack of entertainment is modern marketing's greatest failure. Fifth, tricksterism. Customers love to be teased. The tricks don't have to be elaborate to be effective; they can come cheap. But the rewards can be great if the brand is embraced, even briefly, by the in crowd. Managers may be dismayed by the thought of deliberately thwarting consumers. But if marketers were really customer oriented, they'd give their customers what they want: old-style, gratuitously provocative marketing.

At some point, many managers yearn to confront assumptions, practices, or values in their organizations that they feel are counterproductive or even downright wrong. Yet, they can face an uncomfortable dilemma: If they speak out too loudly, resentment may build toward them; if they remain silent, resentment will build inside them. Is there any way, then, to rock the boat without falling out of it? In 15 years of research, professor Debra Meyerson has observed hundreds of professionals who have dealt with this problem by working behind the scenes, engaging in a subtle form of grassroots leadership. She calls them "tempered radicals" because they effect significant changes in moderate ways. Meyerson has identified four incremental approaches that managers can quietly use to create lasting cultural change. Most subtle is "disruptive self-expression" in dress, office decor, or behavior, which can slowly change an unproductive atmosphere as people increasingly notice and emulate it. By using "verbal jujitsu," an individual can redirect the force of an insensitive statement or action to improve the situation. "Variable-term opportunists" spot, create, and capitalize on short- and long-term chances for change. And through "strategic alliance building," an individual can join with others to promote change with more force. By adjusting these approaches to time and circumstance, tempered radicals work subtly but effectively to alter the status quo. In so doing, they exercise a form of leadership that is more modest and less visible than traditional forms--yet no less significant. Top managers who want to create cultural or organizational change--perhaps they're moving tradition-bound businesses down new roads--should seek out these tempered radicals, for they are masters at transforming organizations from the grass roots.

Companies have traditionally viewed their information systems as proprietary. They buy or lease their own hardware, write or license their own applications, and hire big staffs to keep everything running. This approach has many flaws--it's cumbersome and expensive and hinders collaboration. But there's been no alternative. Until now. Today, we're seeing the emergence of an entirely new approach to corporate information systems: web services. Rather than own and maintain all of their own hardware and software, companies will soon buy their information technologies as services provided over the Internet. The authors guide executives through this new IT strategy, explaining what the web services architecture is, how it differs from traditional IT architecture, and why it will provide significant cost savings to businesses while creating new opportunities for growth. They lay out a step-by-step approach for adopting the new architecture. The experiences of companies such as Merrill Lynch, General Motors, and Dell Computer, which are already transitioning to the new architecture, offer three guidelines. First, build on your existing systems, connecting them to the web services architecture to gain immediate benefits. Second, start at the edges of your company, focusing on those applications that connect your organization to customers or other companies. Third, work with your partners to develop a shared terminology for your shared applications, coming to agreement, for example, on the precise meanings of XML terms. As the new architecture matures, the distinction between users and suppliers of web services will fade. The location of particular capabilities and applications will become less important than executives' ability to discover and orchestrate these capabilities to deliver greater value to customers.

Few companies can boast a collection of star brands like LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French powerhouse that owns the likes of Dior, Dom Perignon, and TAG Heuer. What accounts for the company's spectacular success? In a rare interview, the chairman of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, opens the window on that question with HBR editor Suzy Wetlaufer. Arnault identifies how companies build star brands and describes the process LVMH uses to create its wildly innovative products. First, the luxury goods giant begins with radical innovation--an unpredictable, messy, highly emotional activity that the company wholly endorses. Unlike many companies, LVMH does not believe in managerial limit setting. Artists must be completely unfettered by financial and commercial concerns, Arnault insists, to do their best work. When it comes to getting that creativity onto the shelves, however, LVMH banishes such chaos. The company imposes strict discipline on its manufacturing processes, meticulously planning, for instance, all 1,000 tasks in the construction of one purse. Through near-draconian manufacturing disciplines, the company is able to achieve exceptionally high productivity, rivaling even some of today's most technologically advanced factories. The bottom line is that LVMH has one goal: star brands. According to Arnault, star brands are born only when a company manages to make products that "speak to the ages" but feel intensely modern. Such products sell fast and furiously, all the while raking in profits. As Arnault notes dryly, "Mastering the paradox of star brands is very difficult and rare--fortunately."

Cardiac surgery is one of medicine's modern miracles. In an operating room no larger than many household kitchens, a patient is rendered functionally dead while a surgical team repairs or replaces damaged arteries or valves. Each operation requires incredible teamwork--a single error can have disastrous consequences. In other words, surgical teams are not all that different from the cross-functional teams that have become crucial to business success. The challenge of team management these days is not simply to execute existing processes efficiently. It's to implement new processes as quickly as possible. But adopting new technologies or new business processes is highly disruptive, regardless of the industry. The authors studied how surgical teams at 16 major medical centers implemented a difficult new procedure for performing cardiac surgery. The setting was ideal for rigorously focusing on how teams learn and why some learn faster than others. The authors found that the most successful teams had leaders who actively managed the groups' learning efforts. Teams that most successfully implemented the new technology shared three essential characteristics. They were designed for learning; their leaders framed the challenge so that team members were highly motivated to learn; and an environment of psychological safety fostered communication and innovation. The finding that teams learn more quickly if they are explicitly managed for learning poses a challenge in many areas of business. Team leaders in business tend to be chosen more for their technical expertise than for their management skills. Team leaders need to become adept at creating learning environments, and senior managers need to look beyond technical competence and identify leaders who can motivate and manage teams of disparate specialists.

Consumers are regularly blitzed with thousands of marketing messages--television commercials, telephone solicitations, supermarket circulars, and Internet banner ads. Still, a lot of these messages fail to hit their targets or elicit the desired response: the purchase of a product or service. It has been very difficult for companies to isolate what drives consumer behavior, largely because there are so many possible combinations of stimuli. In this article, consultants Eric Almquist and Gordon Wyner explain that although marketing has always been a creative endeavor, adopting a scientific approach to it may actually make it easier--and more cost effective--for companies to target the right customers. "Experimental design" techniques, which have long been applied in other fields, let people project the impact of many stimuli by testing just a few of them. By using mathematical formulas to select and test a subset of combinations of variables, marketers can model hundreds or even thousands of marketing messages accurately and efficiently--and they can adjust their messages accordingly. The authors use a fictional company, Biz Ware, to describe how companies can map out on a grid a combination of the attributes (or variables) of a marketing message and the levels (or variations) of those attributes. Marketers can test a few combinations of those attributes and levels and can apply logistic regression analysis to extrapolate the probable customer responses to all of the possible combinations. The company can then analyze the experiment's implications for its resources, revenues, and profitability. The authors also present the results of their work with Crayola, in which they used experimental design techniques to test that company's e-mail marketing campaign.

During his first three years as CEO, Lloyd Byrne transformed Bretplex from an uninspired family-controlled company in the machine tool business into a midsize industrial conglomerate. Sales doubled, market value tripled, the company's management team grew stronger, and the board's makeup was enhanced by the appointment of several glamorous nonexecutive directors. After that strong beginning, however, Bretplex's previously unstoppable growth ground to a halt. The turning point was the company's acquisition of Hazlemere Measures, a British equipment manufacturer. The price of the acquisition had been bid up by an aggressive competitor, and the market believed Bretplex paid too much. Soon, other acquisitions were being examined. Worse, the company began missing its revenue estimates and revised them downward only as reporting dates drew near. More uncertainty emerged when Laura Barrington, the manager of an activist shareholder fund, began asking whether Lloyd had what it would take to lead the company to recovery. Board members Harriet Poole, a CEO herself, and Jefferson Souza, a strategy guru, debate solutions for Bretplex. If the company fires Lloyd, Jefferson says, the market will think the company is serious about getting its house in order, and Barrington and the fund will probably back off. Harriet, distracted by events at her own company, fears that it will be highly disruptive for Bretplex to lose its much-admired leader and, possibly, some of its senior managers. She is inclined to stick with a restructuring plan just approved by the board. In R0109A and R0109Z, commentators Norm Augustine, Charles Elson, Richard H. Koppes, and Nell Minow offer advice on this fictional case study.

During his first three years as CEO, Lloyd Byrne transformed Bretplex from an uninspired family-controlled company in the machine tool business into a midsize industrial conglomerate. Sales doubled, market value tripled, the company's management team grew stronger, and the board's makeup was enhanced by the appointment of several glamorous nonexecutive directors. After that strong beginning, however, Bretplex's previously unstoppable growth ground to a halt. The turning point was the company's acquisition of Hazlemere Measures, a British equipment manufacturer. The price of the acquisition had been bid up by an aggressive competitor, and the market believed Bretplex paid too much. Soon, other acquisitions were being examined. Worse, the company began missing its revenue estimates and revised them downward only as reporting dates drew near. More uncertainty emerged when Laura Barrington, the manager of an activist shareholder fund, began asking whether Lloyd had what it would take to lead the company to recovery. Board members Harriet Poole, a CEO herself, and Jefferson Souza, a strategy guru, debate solutions for Bretplex. If the company fires Lloyd, Jefferson says, the market will think the company is serious about getting its house in order, and Barrington and the fund will probably back off. Harriet, distracted by events at her own company, fears that it will be highly disruptive for Bretplex to lose its much-admired leader and, possibly, some of its senior managers. She is inclined to stick with a restructuring plan just approved by the board. In R0109A and R0109Z, commentators Norm Augustine, Charles Elson, Richard H. Koppes, and Nell Minow offer advice on this fictional case study.

eLance.com had just opened its online services to the public. The site was designed as a platform allowing buyers to post projects that freelancers (sellers) could bid on. After three days of operation, three requests for temporary positions appeared. Recruitment was not the intended purpose of the site and the co-founders disagreed on whether these requests should be allowed to stay on the site. Both founders knew that the choices they made now would directly affect future Web site development as features to support a projects-only site would be somewhat different from a combined projects and personnel site. They had to look ahead and consider the strategic and IT implications, and determine the objectives of the site and what products they would launch.

Provides a detailed description of the processes and tasks associated with creating a new venture in an emerging industry (subscription car-sharing for urban dwellers). Chronicles the entrepreneur's concept development, industry analysis, market research, identity definition, and brand building. Also provides background on writing the business plan, creating a budget and building financials, developing a management team, creating business partnerships, and financing the businesses.

An entrepreneurial, publicly traded biotech company has begun production and sales of its core product--cartridges that permit DNA samples to be analyzed on a microchip. In the early quarters, sales are difficult to forecast and the company has experienced fluctuating production volumes and unpredictable gross margins, which has upset the board of directors. The finance staff investigates whether to adopt a new costing approach based on capacity. With large amounts of unused capacity, the decision of how to apply capacity costs is critical to the company's management and its reporting strategy with analysts.

Discusses sustaining brand equity after a highly successful commodity-product branding ad campaign.

Henkel has to decide whether to replace its strong local detergent brands in Italy and Spain with its leading international brand, Persil. It faces pressure from retailers for international brand standardization. Its competitors, including P&G and Unilever, are consolidating their portfolios around a few global "power brands."

This case is a condensed version of "Philip Morris U.S.A. and Marlboro Friday (A)". In July 1993, Philip Morris executives met to consider second-quarter data on U.S. tobacco sales. Three months earlier, the company had announced a 40-cent-per-pack promotion for Marlboro cigarettes, the number-one-selling cigarette in the world. On the day of the announcement, April 4, Philip Morris stock fell $14.75, to $49.375, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 68.63 points. On June 4, the company announced an extension of the promotion through August 8. After eight months of consecutive share declines, Marlboro's share had rebounded by three points. Philip Morris executives now faced several important decisions: Should the Marlboro promotion be extended beyond August 8? Should the promotion be replaced with a permanent cut in wholesale prices? Should the prices of other Philip Morris premium brands be lowered? Finally, should the prices of the company's discount brands be altered in any way?

The case describes Procter & Gamble's adoption of value pricing, Wal-Mart's introduction of premium store brands, and the evolution of Wal-Mart's relations with its major vendors. In early 1994, Kimberly-Clark agreed to manufacture private-label training pants for Wal-Mart. Students must decide how Procter & Gamble should respond to Wal-Mart's decision to sell private-label diapers manufactured by Kimberly-Clark.

In 1999, Procter & Gamble (P&G) witnessed its first share increase against rival Kimberly-Clark (K-C) in the U.S. disposable diaper sector in five years. However, Sam's Club de-listed P&G's Pampers from most of its stores that August, limiting its diaper offerings to K-C's Huggies and its own private label brand White Cloud, introduced that same year. By mid-2000, P&G's stock had lost more than half its value, and the nature of the company's "special relationship" with Wal-Mart was being called into question.This case is a supplement to UV4013.

Chronicles the successes and failures of the Virgin Group. By examining these examples, students discover attributes of Virgin's overall service concept, which, at its core, competes on quality rather than on price. Students are challenged to consider how Virgin might extend its operations into the U.S. market.

Chauvco quickly became one of the top 30 oil companies in Canada. Rising costs and diminishing oil and gas reserves led Chauvco to consider investing in other countries. In 1992, Chauvco purchased an interest in an Argentine oil and gas block that was being privatized. Chauvco's success in Argentina depended on the country's future political stability and the continuance of government policies. Prior to the 1989 election of Carlos Menem, Argentina experienced decades of political and economic instability, the government nationalized many businesses and imposed detailed regulations throughout the economy - a set of policies that led to low growth, budget and trade deficits, hyperinflation, and currency devaluation. Whether Menem's reforms could achieve long-term success remained to be seen. Chauvco encountered a number of difficulties, as well as some positive aspects of the environment of business. The company initially entered a joint venture partnership and then developed an independent set of operations. By 1995, Chauvco had to decide in what proportions it should divide its future investments between Canada, Argentina and other countries, and what criteria it should use in evaluating investment opportunities. This is an abridged version of 9A95H003.

A Thai import of automobiles benefits from appreciation of the baht against the deutsche mark, and will want to maintain the currency peg for two reasons - to maintain import competitiveness and to benefit from the interest differential. This role play is a supplement to Thailand, 1997, product 9B01M024.

A Thai shoe manufacturer notices that the prices of his exported products have become uncompetitive because of the baht's appreciation against the yen. This is a role play supplement to Thailand, 1997, product 9B01M024.