The case intends to introduce the reader to a disruption in the Indian FMCG industry. A single new entrant, Patanjali entered the FMCG industry in 2006, combating incumbents and attacking them on all fronts. Within a short span of time, it was able to produce results and exceed industry expectations. The case starts with the evolution story of Dabur, the world's largest Ayurvedic and natural healthcare company. It indicates the major milestones of the company and how it has been able to combat all sorts of threats but retain the top spot in many of the segments it operates in, over the years. The case then discusses a potential threat to Dabur from the new entrant, Patanjali. Building on its Ayurveda brand, Patanjali launched a foray of FMCG products and, drastically reduced prices. Using the power of a Yoga guru that made the product so widely accepted among the Indian masses, Patanjali is threatening every FMCG giant in the country. The case then goes on to depict how Patanjali seems to have gone on a direct frontal attack against all existing big players. The case is written from the perspective of Dabur to understand the nature of competition it faces from Patanjali.
"What are the nuances that link brand positioning, brand associations and brand equity related aspects of a brand performing successfully in the market?" especially in an emerging market such as India is a question that triggers many approaches among academics and practitioners. Head &Shoulders brand from Procter and Gamble is a multinational brand that had grown rapidly in the Indian context after displacing a well-entrenched brand of shampoo. The brand's effective positioning had struck a chord with consumers and had sustained its success over a period of time. With several competitive brands entering the well-advertised category of shampoos, the brand manager for Head &Shoulders felt that its positioning though effective cannot last forever and wanted to find out if the brand's positioning could be strengthened. Besides the analysis of thr regular brand positioning strategies, the company felt that a study on consumer behavior could provide useful pointers to the alternatives of brand positioning with respect to Head &Shoulders when studied with its competitive brands. The results of the study provided interesting but challenging results that made brand repositioning more complex than what the brand manager had assessed. The case study highlights the importance of consumer behavior when brands decide to reposition themselves in a dynamic environment. Furthermore, the case also draws on the implications of brand positioning and consumer behavior on the qualitative dimensions of brand equity.
Parvesh Dabuka, Head of Marketing, Paper Boat brand of soft drink was thinking about the success of the niche brand that was positioned on nostalgia and ethnic taste. This thought had two aspects, one that was not uncommon and the other a different manner of looking at brand positioning. As a brand manager of a successful brand, like any other brand manager, he was concerned about sustaining the success of the brand: he had also thought that he should look at the brand positioning of Paper Boat through the lens of consumer behavior aspects. There were a number of questions in his mind: Was the success of Paper Boat because of its ethnic and nostalgic positioning or was it because of the novelty of picking up a different proposition. Both were different aspects. The novelty of brand positioning may wean off after sometime if consumers are not committed to the brand for what it stands for. Given the rapid strides made by the competitors of Paper Boat, would consumers be more interested in the functional benefits of the brand? Do consumers experience the brand (Paper Boat) based on its ingredients? Was Paper Boat associated with consumers at the level of their self-concept? Parvesh knew that he was getting at the positioning of Paper Boat through several aspects of how consumers expressed their behavior and at the same time wondered if a category such as soft drinks generally associated with fun and frolic may appeal to the consumers on anything other than nutritive benefits or fun? Further, if consumers wanted a new association with Paper Boat, how can the brand steer away from its existing associations toward a new set of associations? He seemed to have an endless array of thoughts linked to brand positioning and repositioning. The case study explores several contemporary aspects of consumer behavior in the backdrop of the usual brand positioning efforts.
Manipal Hospitals, which was started in 1953, had the advantage of being the "oldest" healthcare group in India. In six decades, the group could establish the reputation for being ethical and patient friendly. In 2017, Manipal Hospitals catered to around 2 million customers from India and overseas every year through their tertiary and secondary care facilities. In 2017, MHE managed an aggregate of 5,200 plus beds among 16 hospitals, over 13 locations across 6 states in India and one hospital in Klang, Malaysia. The Group's acute care flagship quaternary care facility located in the heart of Bangalore, India's IT capital was set up in 1991. The 680-bed Manipal Hospital at HAL Airport Road provided care in over 60 specialties under one roof. Ajay Bakshi, MD and CEO of Manipal Hospitals strongly believed that the word-of-mouth (WOM) is much stronger than any other type of promotion and thus it is important for MHE to keep customers informed about the improvements. With the improved system for feedback collection, he was confident of moving towards a more tangible outcome from feedback collection. Collecting Net Promoters Score (NPS) and tracking the trend of NPS was an integral part of patient care at MHE. He also believed that closing the loop is a central theme of the Net Promoter Score and thus NPS should be pivotal to understanding the deficiencies in the system and improving it. Ajay believed that NPS score itself is just the tip of the iceberg. The real value was provided by understanding what leads to the NPS score, especially the causes of detractors and promoters and asking follow-up questions on the reason for the score. It provided a gold mine of information which can be used to improve patient care.
An angry customer with a laundry list of complaints has just stormed into a local home staging company. The owner is unavailable, so her assistant must try to salvage the customer's service experience. Using the gaps model of service quality, the assistant (and students) must recognize service quality issues, explore the imbalance between what was promised and delivered, and attempt to manage a disgruntled customer. Complicating matters, the assistant has been given limited authority and must appease the customer without making her boss look unprofessional.
John Christ is an entrepreneur in his early 20's and the owner of Wil's Grill, a small street food business in Flagstaff, AZ, serving customers throughout Northern Arizona. The critical decision he must make is whether to expand in the street food business, add catering to his existing business, or do something else entirely different to make a livelihood. Wil's Grill was founded in January 2014. $129,000 in revenue had been recognized from January 2014 through December 2016. Wil's Grill was highly portable, and targeted two main markets: 1) college students who were tired of chain-based fast food and wanted good, reasonably priced, late night food, and 2) community events, where organizers and customers wanted reasonably priced, "clean", high quality street food. "Clean" food was characterized by locally produced, organic foods and sustainable practices. In January 2017, John had to decide how he was going to grow revenue if Wil's Grill was to provide him with a livelihood. He was determined to make a strategic decision to either expand his focus on the street food business upon which Wil's Grill was founded, add a catering business, or do something else. The Instructor's Manual offers suggestions for leading a class discussion of these alternatives using both a VRIO (Valuable, Rare, Costly to Imitate and Organized to Capture Value) framework and a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Analysis framework to evaluate the current resources, capabilities, core competencies, and distinct competitive advantages for this small business. A Venn diagram is used to illustrate the differences between and transferability of resources and capabilities between the street food and catering segments. The Instructor's Manual provides Net Present Value and Breakeven analyses to quantify future revenue growth opportunities. This case provides an opportunity for identifying and defending the "best" strategic decision for this small business.
It was Saturday, March 29, 2014, and Mary Barra, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of General Motors (GM), was reading a letter of invitation from the families of Chevy Cobalt crash victims to meet with her the following week. The timing could not have been worse. Barra was scheduled to testify before the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, April 1st regarding the recalls of 2005-2007 model year Chevrolet Cobalts. Just the day before, on Friday, March 28th, GM had announced a third Chevy Cobalt recall. In total, 4.8 million vehicles worldwide had been recalled in connection with an ignition switch defect. There had been fatalities. It was Barra's 10th week on the job as GM's CEO. On February 7, 2014, just days before Barra had become CEO, GM had informed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that a problem existed with the 2005-2007 model year Chevy Cobalt. GM stated in its report to the NHTSA that the problem appeared to be centered on the vehicles' ignition switch. The ignition switch's "torque performance" on these vehicles had not met GM's engineering specifications. The switches were easily jostled, and when jostled, the switches would sometimes move out of the "Run" position, causing the vehicle to stall. GM further explained that, depending on the timing of the switch moving out of the "Run" position, the airbags would not deploy. A vehicle stall, combined with the vehicle's airbags not deploying, had been a lethal combination. Following the first Cobalt recall in January 2014 and the NHTSA report in February, events had escalated rapidly. Lawyers across the U.S. had organized a class action lawsuit against GM. The U.S. Justice Department and the NHTSA had launched investigations. The media response had been hostile.
Captain William Waverly was a member of the US Army's forces in Afghanistan, and was stationed in a post in western Kabul, beginning in late 2011. He was the commander of this post, one of the several bases in that city. US soldiers guarded the power plant located at this post. Waverly and his team also launched the security and stability operations from this location. For this latter function, the US Army always conducted security and stability operations jointly with the Afghan municipal police forces. To conduct these operations, the US government had supplied fuel to the Afghan forces to operate their armored vehicles for city patrols. However, to begin to ensure that the Afghan government was now developing and perfecting its own fuel acquisition, storage, protection, and distribution processes, the two-star US Army general in this region in Afghanistan ordered, in early 2012, all US units to stop providing fuel to the Afghan forces. The objective of this order was to make the Afghan government self-reliant on its own fuel procurement and protection processes. A few days after the order to stop providing fuel to Afghan forces, Afghan police armored trucks pulled into the post for a patrol and expected gas. A tense situation quickly developed. The head of the Afghan forces, Ghotai Sharma, upon learning from one of Waverly's sergeants that he was not getting gasoline that day, became upset. Sharma drew his pistol, started gesticulating and raised his voice. Sharma's troops swung their gun turrets from their armored vehicles toward the US soldiers and Waverly heard the familiar metallic click associated with Sharma's troops chambering an ammunition round in an AK-47 weapon. At the same time, he heard in his earpiece the chattering from his own US troops as they coordinated who was covering what target among the Afghan police should a firefight break out.
In the fall of 2015, Turing Pharmaceuticals increased the price of its recently acquired drug, Daraprim, by several thousand percent. While the short-term effect on profits would be substantial, the long-term effects were less clear. The CEO, Martin Shkreli, was constantly in the media flaunting his pricing strategy as a way to maximize Turing's profits. The subsequent attention from media and government officials was forcing the CEO to defend his positions. After announcing to the media on September 23, 2015, that the price of Daraprim would be lowered, Martin Shkreli needed to decide if he would follow through on lowering the price of Daraprim.
In January 2010, the head of the Colombian Red Cross approached Oilcorp, owner of the largest regional chain of service stations in the country, requesting its participation in its 100th anniversary celebration with a brand awareness campaign for its social programs. Given that the annual budget had already been approved without this campaign in mind, Oilcorp's CEO assigned the task of raising money to the marketing department. Nevertheless, the campaign backfired when Oilcorp tried to link the social message with selling more gasoline and asking customers to provide their details through its corporate website, to be added to Oilcorp's database. Carlos Cardona-a member of the marketing team at Oilcorp-was worried about the mixed reactions he was receiving. The team merely wanted to be practical, and this seemed the easiest way. However, people close to Carlos thought otherwise. For many, it seemed that the company was taking advantage of a social cause for marketing purposes. They disliked the way in which it was hiding selfish intentions behind helping those most in need. Nor did they understand why Oilcorp asked for personal information on a website in exchange for a donation that the company should give on its own initiative. In addition, Oilcorp's CEO told media the company expected to raise US$50,000 from the campaign, but Carlos was worried about achieving the target when he noticed that just 1,200 users had provided their data via the campaign's website. Because of the regular pattern of gas consumption, it was improbable that customers would buy more gasoline from Oilcorp's service stations through the influence of a social initiative. Consequently, the results of the campaign could be as much as 30% below the Colombian Red Cross's expectations and the promises made by Oilcorp's CEO in the media. Carlos and the marketing team needed to decide what actions to take given that the campaign was not on track to meet expectations.
The Uakari Lodge is an internationally recognized pioneering example of community-based ecotourism. It was developed in the late 1990's to provide visitors to Brazil's Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve with an ecotourism experience demonstrating the value of the local population's involvement in rainforest conservation. The Institute for Sustainable Development Mamirauá (ISDM), supported by Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, owns the Uakari Lodge. The Institute, in collaboration with eleven local communities, jointly operated the lodge. In the face of serious external challenges, while delivering social and environmental benefits in the region, the management of the Lodge has struggled to achieve profitability. After 15 years of operation, the management of the ISDM is planning the transferal of ownership and responsibility for operation of the Uakari Lodge to the local communities involved in the program. The management of the Institute sought to increase the role of the communities in the co-management efforts, both in terms of benefits received and responsibilities. In order to set the stage for smoothly turning over complete ownership and operations of the Lodge, management is seeking to achieve steady, predictable profitability for the Lodge. Achieving that goal will require increasing visitation to the lodge or increasing the profit margin generated per visitor or some combination of both.
In September 2015, with the peak of the holiday season only three months away, Karin Nebot, CEO and part owner of the House of Kaviari, is questioning how to sustain the growth of the company. Kaviari, with €26m in annual sales, is a French family business trading and retailing farmed caviars, which means that they import and brand the product, and sell it to fine food stores, chefs, and wholesalers. The caviar market in France is changing in a new way due to the introduction of inexpensive brands and new retail channels for the precious grains. In recent past, major hypermarkets and supermarkets have introduced caviar with a 'downmarket' product. With the high sales season fast approaching, Nebot needs to decide whether Kaviari should maintain its current position, go mainstream and broaden its consumer base, or increase the brand visibility in its traditional luxury segment.
In 2005, when Souq.com was founded, the Middle East had tremendous potential for e-commerce: Its total population was more than 350 million, half of whom were younger than 25. But the region was highly fragmented in terms of laws and customs, logistics, and payment infrastructure. Mouchawar tells how Souq grew from auction website to B2C-only business by enabling alternative payment methods and managing delivery in a region where basic logistics systems were still evolving. The largest e-commerce provider in the Middle East today, Souq operates in seven countries representing more than 135 million people--and it was recently acquired by Amazon.
By assigning people to multiple teams at once, organizations can make more-efficient use of time and brainpower and do a better job of solving complex problems and sharing knowledge across groups. But competing priorities and other conflicts can make it hard for teams with overlapping membership to stay on track. Group cohesion often suffers, and people serving on several teams concurrently may experience burnout. Through extensive research and consulting, the authors have identified several ways that both team and organizational leaders can reduce the costs of multiteaming and better capitalize on its advantages. Team leaders should launch the team well to establish trust and familiarity, map every member's skills, carefully manage time across teams, and boost motivation by emphasizing opportunities to learn. Organizational leaders should focus on mapping and analyzing patterns of team overlap, promoting knowledge flows among teams, and buffering teams against shocks. All this represents a significant investment of time and effort. But organizations pay a much higher price when they neglect the costs of multiteaming in hot pursuit of its benefits.
Numerous studies show that close to two-thirds of U.S. employees are bored, detached, or jaded and ready to sabotage plans, projects, and other people. Why so much unhappiness among professionals who have the capacity to shape their work lives? The author highlights three of the most common reasons--ambition, doing what's expected of us, and overwork--which seem productive on the surface but are harmful when taken to the extreme. To break free of these "happiness traps," you first have to accept that you deserve happiness at work. Then you can use your emotional intelligence--particularly emotional self-awareness, emotional self-control, and organizational awareness--to understand which trap has ensnared you. Finally, you must actively seek meaning and purpose in day-to-day activities, foster hope in yourself and others, and build friendships at work.
In the fast-moving digital world, even experts have a hard time assessing new ideas. Case in point: At Bing a small headline change an employee proposed was deemed a low priority and shelved for months until one engineer decided to do a quick online controlled experiment--an A/B test--to try it out. The test showed that the change increased revenue by an astonishing 12%. It ended up being the best revenue-generating idea Bing ever had, worth $100 million. That experience illustrates why it's critical to adopt an "experiment with everything" approach, say Kohavi, the head of the Analysis & Experimentation team at Microsoft, and Thomke, an HBS professor. In this article they describe how to properly design and execute A/B and other controlled tests, ensure their integrity, interpret results, and avoid pitfalls. They argue that if a company sets up the right infrastructure and software, it will be able to evaluate ideas not only for improving websites but also for new business models, products, strategies, and marketing campaigns--all relatively inexpensively. This will help it find the right path forward, especially when answers aren't obvious or people have conflicting opinions.
A small number of digital superpowers--Alibaba, Amazon, Microsoft, and others--have become "hub firms" because they control access to billions of mobile customers coveted by all kinds of product and service providers. These hubs drive increasing returns to scale and claim a disproportionate share of the value being created in the global economy. The authors argue that the hub economy will continue to spread across more industries, concentrating more power in the hands of a few. As an example, they take an in-depth look at the auto industry and how Apple and Alphabet/Google are poised to become the main beneficiaries as cars turn into digitally connected spaces for work, entertainment, and shopping. As hubs proliferate and expand their reach, the danger is that they will exacerbate economic inequality and threaten social stability. It is thus incumbent on all stakeholders--traditional companies, start-ups, institutions, and communities--to make certain changes in the ways they do business. Moreover, hub firms themselves must lead responsibly for the good of all, not just creating and capturing value but doing more to sustain other players in the ecosystem.
Consumers increasingly expect brands to have a social purpose beyond mere functional benefits. As a result, companies are taking social stands in very visible ways. For example, TOMS's one-for-one program donates shoes and other goods for every product the company sells. Such programs can benefit society and the brand, but they may fizzle or actually harm the company if they're not carefully managed. (Recall Starbucks's widely mocked Race Together campaign.) Marketing professors Vila and Bharadwaj have developed an approach they call "competing on social purpose," which ties a brand's most ambitious social aspirations to its most pressing growth needs. An effective strategy creates value by strengthening a brand's key attributes or building new adjacencies. At the same time, it mitigates the risk of negative associations and threats to stakeholder acceptance. In order to create value for all stakeholders--customers, the company, shareholders, and society at large--managers must integrate considered acts of generosity with the strategic pursuit of brand goals.