With a focus on China's biggest internet companies, Alibaba and Tencent, the case study describes their respective histories, fintech subsidiaries and platform-based ecosystems. It illustrates the strategy issues that arise from an institutional void and market uncertainty: how to determine the business model, generate unprecedented value for customers, and ultimately compete with foreign as well as local rivals. It aims to help students understand the opportunities and challenges for firms in emerging markets, the evolutionary nature of strategy-making, the digital transformation, how new business models give rise to new regulatory challenges, and how firms respond to changes in the institutional environment. The case has four parts. The first two describe the growth of Alibaba and its fintech subsidiary Ant Financial, and of Tencent with its superapp WeChat and fintech subsidiary WeChat Pay - noting how each built its own ecosystem and their mutual attempts to squeeze the other's core business. Part 3 describes the pre-existing banking and finance industry in China. Part 4 explores their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives in the face of increasing regulatory and institutional pressures.
In early 2020, during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Google Trends data revealed a surge in the use of the search terms "Corona beer virus" and "beer virus" by users of the Google search engine. A survey conducted around that time also seemed to suggest that consumers were less likely to buy Corona beer, which led various major media outlets to misrepresent the accuracy of the findings regarding consumer beliefs about the association between Corona beer and coronavirus. However, the chief executive officer of Constellation Brands Inc., the Corona brand's distributor, was confident about the brand's performance and did not change the company's plans for a US spring 2020 launch of Corona hard seltzer. Consumers criticized both the poor timing of the planned launch, during the coronavirus pandemic, and various promotions for Corona beer that were considered inappropriate. Constellation Brands Inc. had to consider the effect, if any, on Corona beer sales in the United States. Should the launch of Corona hard seltzer go on as planned during the coronavirus pandemic? How should the company respond to misleading survey reports by some media outlets? Should bar owners in the United States be cautioned against launching promotional campaigns that link the Corona beer brand with the coronavirus?
In early 2020, during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Google Trends data revealed a surge in the use of the search terms “Corona beer virus” and “beer virus” by users of the Google search engine. A survey conducted around that time also seemed to suggest that consumers were less likely to buy Corona beer, which led various major media outlets to misrepresent the accuracy of the findings regarding consumer beliefs about the association between Corona beer and coronavirus. However, the chief executive officer of Constellation Brands Inc., the Corona brand’s distributor, was confident about the brand’s performance and did not change the company’s plans for a US spring 2020 launch of Corona hard seltzer. Consumers criticized both the poor timing of the planned launch, during the coronavirus pandemic, and various promotions for Corona beer that were considered inappropriate. Constellation Brands Inc. had to consider the effect, if any, on Corona beer sales in the United States. Should the launch of Corona hard seltzer go on as planned during the coronavirus pandemic? How should the company respond to misleading survey reports by some media outlets? Should bar owners in the United States be cautioned against launching promotional campaigns that link the Corona beer brand with the coronavirus?
Since its launch in 1998 as "the Amazon.com of DVDs," Netflix had evolved from a DVD rental company to a video streaming platform and producer of original films and television shows. As the company matured, it regularly increased prices and adjusted its product offerings while continuing to add new subscribers. However, between late 2019 and mid-2020, competition within the streaming industry intensified with the launch of new entrants such as Disney+, Apple TV+, and HBO Max, jeopardizing Netflix's position as the industry leader. In spite of the heightened competition in the streaming industry, some analysts and customer willingness-to-pay surveys suggested that Netflix had the opportunity to implement another rate hike in the near future. By May 2020, Netflix must decide whether to increase prices again, or whether it should consider a different pricing model altogether.
The co-founders (Black HBS alumnae) of an e-commerce beauty startup explore the unmet needs within the beauty industry. This case study examines the entrepreneurial opportunities that come from identifying an underserved market, specifically within the Black community and the best startup financing approach to pursue those opportunities. Students learn approaches to product ideation/innovation, marketing strategies for the social media age and launching a startup for a targeted audience. Students learn to analyze macro and micro economic data of an industry, synthesize consumer demographics and purchase behavior data, and create projected unit economics as well as pro forma financial documents to determine the potential economic opportunity that is unmet in a market and the requisite fundraising to launch a new business. At the time of the case, Mented co-founders went on to become the 15th and 16th African-American women to raise over $1 million in startup funding.
In March 2020, direct-to-consumer (DTC) company Pattern Brands needed to decide how to allocate resources across its different brands. Pattern Co-Founders Nick Ling and Emmett Shine hoped to avoid the pitfalls faced by some DTC companies-such as inability to scale and lack of competitive differentiation-by relying on their previous experience running a successful branding and marketing agency. Rather than focusing on a single brand, they conceived Pattern as a "DTC 2.0" model-a portfolio of 5 to 10 brands that shared a common theme of activities related to the home and a common mission of helping millennials enjoy daily life. Since its founding in August 2019, Pattern had launched cookware brand Equal Parts and home organization brand Open Spaces. Although Pattern's team still believed strongly in the benefits of a multi-brand strategy, Open Spaces' sales and unit economics had significantly outperformed Equal Parts' to date. Pattern's leadership wanted to build on Open Spaces' early momentum with new product colors and product lines, but they debated whether to act on the results of a recent customer survey indicating a positive response to an Equal Parts product redesign. Ling and Shine now had several decisions to consider. How should they allocate resources between repositioning Equal Parts and continuing to grow Open Spaces? How and when should they continue building Pattern's portfolio by developing a third brand? How much should they invest in marketing parent brand Pattern? More broadly, did Pattern's model represent the future of DTC brands?
By 2017, the comprehensive multi-brand Chinese clothing manufacturer Bosideng International Holdings Limited (Bosideng), founded in 1976, had become famous for its main business of down jackets. After almost 40 years of rapid development, Bosideng had become the top brand in the Chinese down apparel industry and had established strong brand equity. However, the company's performance had been in decline since 2013. Faced with increasingly fierce competition, Bosideng had gradually lost its appeal to younger customers, who were uninterested in its unfashionable designs. The reduced profit level threatened Bosideng's further development. In 2017, Bosideng's chairperson and president was considering how to overcome this dilemma by revitalizing the brand. He hoped to strengthen the position of the Bosideng brand in the Chinese down jacket market and even in the global market in the future. However, he was not sure which approach would be most effective: should he maintain Bosideng's existing brand values or invest in rebranding?
Eko India Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. started in 2007 as a business correspondent (BC) for banks, providing account-opening and cash-in/cash-out (CICO) services for non/underbanked Indian customers. Brothers Abhishek and Abhinav Sinha co-founded Eko. Over the years, responding to multiple opportunities that presented themselves and changing regulations, Eko developed a domestic money transfer solution through its prepaid payment instrument (PPI) licence (acquired in 2015) and BC partnerships. Eko targeted low- and middle-income (LMI) customers, who entirely operated in the cash economy and offered them its network of small retail outlets to help them remit cash digitally over its mobile platform. In 2016, Eko monetised its technology assets and opened its platform for entrepreneurs in the domestic money transfer business. At the end of the FY18, Eko had 63 employees and a topline of over INR 400 million. This case highlights the journey of a startup operating in a changing Indian business and regulatory environment. The co-founders naturally effectuate to successfully overcome these challenges of an uncertain environment to create a stable and growing organisation. Innovations in technology, people processes, and the ability to adapt and learn are some of the highlights of Eko's journey. The future steps on a growth path for the organisation are chiefly the dilemmas facing the co-founders.
Angaza's story is not a typical solar light story, but the story of a female social entrepreneur with a for-profit Silicon Valley mindset, transforming a social enterprise from a hardware to a software business model. It is about pivots, changing value propositions, new products and business models as Angaza evolves to escalate social impact while still making money. Angaza began as a solar-light company founded in 2010 by Stanford graduate Lesley Silverthorn Marincola to address energy poverty in rural off-grid communities. In her quest to address affordability, Lesley realized that the main problem confronting rural off-grid communities was not the price of solar lights per se, but finding a way to spread payments over time. In 2012, Angaza pivoted from being a solar-light producer to a software provider offering pay-as-you-go (PAYG) metering and monitoring technology to players in the solar-light ecosystem - manufacturers, distributors and mobile network operators. The PAYG technology allowed end consumers to buy solar-light products by paying small amounts over time, eventually owning them outright. At the end of the case, students are confronted with a very real dilemma facing the founder and leadership team of many start-ups, including Angaza - what are the next opportunities for the company? Is it further scaling (if so, scaling up or deep), a pivot (into data), or an exit (sell the business)?
Leaders love to talk about corporate culture and values, yet many companies have a disconnect between what leaders preach and what is practiced throughout the organization. Improving corporate culture requires a sustained effort over time. A first step: Look at how well those values are being communicated to the workforce.
By 2017, the comprehensive multi-brand Chinese clothing manufacturer Bosideng International Holdings Limited (Bosideng), founded in 1976, had become famous for its main business of down jackets. After almost 40 years of rapid development, Bosideng had become the top brand in the Chinese down apparel industry and had established strong brand equity. However, the company’s performance had been in decline since 2013. Faced with increasingly fierce competition, Bosideng had gradually lost its appeal to younger customers, who were uninterested in its unfashionable designs. The reduced profit level threatened Bosideng’s further development. In 2017, Bosideng’s chairperson and president was considering how to overcome this dilemma by revitalizing the brand. He hoped to strengthen the position of the Bosideng brand in the Chinese down jacket market and even in the global market in the future. However, he was not sure which approach would be most effective: should he maintain Bosideng’s existing brand values or invest in rebranding?
In November 2019, Jean Matthews had to decide how to allocate CA$300,000 toward neighbourhood improvement ideas submitted by city residents. Each of the four neighbourhoods in the city could receive up to CA$75,000 in funding, and Matthews had to consider the number of votes for each idea in her analysis. How should she identify which community projects to pursue?
In 2019, Sesame Workshop celebrated its 50th anniversary while on a winning streak of social impact, innovation, and peak media and financial results. Over the past four years, CEO Jeff Dunn and his turnaround team exhibited values-driven leadership, instituted cultural changes, and pursued opportunities to further Sesame's mission, including the inaugural MacArthur 100&Change award to tackle the worldwide refugee crisis in partnership with the International Rescue Committee. The $100 million winning project, Ahlan Simsim, was the largest early childhood program created in a humanitarian setting. By early 2020, Sesame had a mission-aligned culture that laid the groundwork to make kids smarter, kinder, and stronger.
Beginning in March 2020, Sesame Workshop navigated a global pandemic and racial justice crisis, which caused unemployment, business shutdowns, school closures, and remote work. The CEO and team responded with new partnership using its assets and reinforcing its mission, including allying with CNN to produce free informational TV specials for children and their families and redoubling efforts to provide education to children in refugee camps. Sesame's culture of confidence helped it support its constituencies through the crises.
In 2020, The Honor Foundation (THF), a nonprofit dedicated to helping U.S. military special operators to transition into civilian careers, was facing a series of strategic challenges. THF had been founded in 2013 by former Navy SEAL trainee Joe Musselman, who observed a disturbing pattern: once special operators left the military in their mid-30s or 40s, they tended to end up in jobs in which they were overqualified, underpaid, and unfulfilled. Musselman attributed this to fundamental disconnects between the world of special operations, whose members had unique and deep skill sets but little experience articulating them in the civilian world, and the world of business. THF's programs gave transitioning special operators space to reflect on what they wanted out of their transition, and hard skills for interviewing, resume writing, and networking. Over seven years, its three month program had grown to serve over 200 transitioners per year on three campuses plus a virtual campus. But in early 2020, THF was not yet serving America's largest contingent of special operators: the U.S. Army Special Forces. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged, THF CEO Matt Stevens was evaluating how best to incorporate Army special operators and fulfill THF's mission of serving all the U.S. special ops community. Should THF build another physical campus? Should it use its virtual campus to incorporate Army special operators instead? Or should it take on government funding to scale quickly? Students who read this case will evaluate this strategic problem while becoming familiar with the unique skills of the Special Operations Forces community.