Deals with performance assessment and improvement of a service operation in the insurance industry, a market that is highly sensitive to response time. Two branch offices in direct competition are described, and the impact of response time on performance is suggested. Management choices that impact response time are explored and the poorer performer of the two branches must decide how to respond.
A Wall Street Journal article states, "At PepsiCo, Inc., cola was king, but it is quietly being dethroned." PepsiCo is composed of three lines of business: soft drinks, restaurants, and snack foods. Using data from comparable pure-play companies, the student is asked to compute divisional costs of capital and see if they can be reconciled with the company's reported cost of capital, 11%.
A road construction company needs a new asphalt plant and must decide between two options: a drum plant with a 10-year life or a batch plant with a 5-year life. In addition, the company must decide which of two offers to accept from local dealerships for heavy equipment to support the new plant. The case provides comparison of net present value, internal rate of return, payback, and profitability index as criteria for making investment decisions.
One of the nation's foremost mini-mills' core competence is the rapid realization of technology into products. This case describes the development of a highly innovative casting technique and features the role of the company's culture in achieving its goals. The company exemplifies a learning organization.
Paul Olsen, a doctoral management student, is considering forming a limited partnership to open a restaurant in a renovated downtown mall in Pittsburgh. He must assess the opportunity, find investors for the anticipated $250,000 start-up costs, and create a workable business plan for the restaurant. He has no prior industry experience.
In June 1991, Heileman announced plans to introduce a high-alcohol malt liquor under the name PowerMaster (PM). Although the company claimed PM would be positioned as an upscale product and marketed on the basis of its superior taste, minority advocates and alcohol foes quickly assailed the company for targeting lower-income, inner-city black consumers. In the wake of protests, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), which had previously approved the PM product, initiated a review of PM and several other high-alcohol malt liquor products that BATF considered to be in violation of federal law prohibiting brewers from stating or even implying the alcohol content of their products. Shortly after, BATF requested that Heileman remove the word "power" from PM's label. Heileman cancelled plans to launch the product. The case encompasses both target marketing and ethical issues. Illustrates a problem faced by many American brewers: How can these companies increase beer sales in a slow-growing, increasingly saturated market, which is completely dominated by the Anheuser-Busch companies?
Poverty is a business issue because the American poor are part of the American work force. Most poor adults and 90% of poor children live in families where work is the norm, not the exception. Companies cannot create the work force of the future with the poverty policies of the past. There are some simple policy mechanisms, however, that can help the working poor without putting an undue burden on business. Enacting them requires managers to see poverty policy as part of a national human-resource strategy that links corporate strategy to a broad social agenda.
A new term--networks--has entered the vocabulary of corporate renewal. Ten companies (among them, Conrail, Dun & Bradstreet, Du Pont, and Royal Bank of Canada) provide good examples of networks and how they operate. The process of building a network starts at the top, where senior managers work to build a new social architecture. Networks change the frequency, intensity, and honesty of the dialogue among managers on priority tasks.
Blake Memorial Hospital was in poor financial health, due to rising costs and stagnating revenues. The hospital's quality of care was also a major problem, and its clinics were losing over $250,000 a year. As the new CEO worked on the 1992 budget, he saw he would have to cut some services in order to fund others. One service he was considering cutting was the clinic program. Experts from public service and health care comment on the issues.
In this interview, Robert McDermott tells how he has built customer service into the very fiber of the insurance company he heads--USAA. His successful service recipe has three principal ingredients: 1) A niche market (active and former military officers and their families); 2) Progressive employment practices and commitment to continuous development of its work force; and 3) Innovative use of technology, including imaging and expert systems.
For more than 40 years, service companies like McDonald's prospered with organizations designed according to the principles of traditional mass-production manufacturing. Today that model is obsolete, and companies like Taco Bell, Dayton Hudson, and ServiceMaster have chosen to reverse the cycle of failure by putting workers with customer contact first and designing the business around them. They are developing a model that replaces the logic of industrialization with a new service-driven logic.
Momenta is a one-month-old high-tech company founded by Kamran Elahian who has already helped found two other successful firms. Having faced problems of teamwork and communication before, Kamran is determined to establish the right corporate culture early on. Teaching Objective: To discuss when and how corporate cultures might be established in a rapidly growing industry. May be used with Momenta Corp. (B).
Summarizes and synthesizes materials in the following notes: Marketing Situation Assessment, Marketing Research: An Overview of Research Methods, and Research Methods in Marketing: Survey Research.
Champion's forest products division owns timberlands, sawmills, and plywood mills in the Pacific Northwest. The listing of the northern spotted owl as an endangered species, and restrictions on exports of logs from state-owned lands, have disrupted the stumpage, log and product markets in which Champion competes. Tag Edwards, executive V.P. for forest products, needs to decide how to respond to these regulatory changes, using economic data and political information.
Discusses the key distinguishing aspects of industrial as compared to consumer marketing. These differences are highlighted for organizational as well as marketing mix aspects.