On July 19, 2013, the documentary Blackfish was released. The movie claimed to have uncovered a series of animal abuses at SeaWorld and alluded to the negative impact of captivity on orcas, known as killer whales, which had resulted in the harm and even death of whale trainers. Whether real or alleged, such negative publicity threatened to affect the company’s image, stock prices, profits, and many of the company’s corporate relations. SeaWorld now faced several options in terms of responding to the movie release: ignore it, respond to it, or use it as an opportunity to completely rebrand. Which option would be the best for the company in the long run?
In September 2015, the marketing manager of the Advanced Surgical Solutions Division at Medtronic plc (Medtronic), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), weighs his options as to how best to respond to yet another instance of “grey marketing,” that is, the unauthorized distribution of genuine branded products. The rampant parallel importation of one of Medtronics’ best-selling products—LigaSure Vessel Sealing instruments—has resulted in a much smaller-than-usual order from one of Medtronics’ most important customers, the King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center. Medtronics' marketing manager must find a way to respond appropriately to the customer without risking the ire of his sole authorized distributor in KSA.
With Brazil's crisis as the backdrop, the 2016 ALI Fellows, Partners, and guests, traveled throughout São Paulo in June of 2016 and were exposed to social innovations in Heliopolis (the largest favela), the transformation of Vila Madalena (neighborhood), cultural inclusion efforts in Sala São Paulo and Pinacoteca (downtown), and highly respected social change leaders and thinkers throughout the trip. The participants were able to engage with a wide array of projects and understand the challenges on the ground more clearly.
For nearly 75 years, the Johnson Publishing Company has been the most successful African American magazine publisher. Its flagship Ebony magazine was an iconic coffee table fixture for decades in black households of all classes, making founder John H. Johnson the first African American to make the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. But the privately held company was now in the hands of his daughter, and it faced the bracing, debilitating winds besetting the entire magazine and newspaper industry. Linda Johnson Rice now had to decide what to do with the company's publications and brands.
Rajat Gupta, former managing director of McKinsey & Company, a director of Goldman Sachs, Proctor & Gamble, and AMR, and a well-known philanthropist, was convicted of engaging in insider trading. The case explores Gupta's rise and the later legal problems he faced.
DesiFirangi.com was an online women’s apparel retailer in India. Started in November 2014, DesiFirangi catered to the fashion needs of modern Indian women with international style. Within the short span of its operations, the company had established itself as a niche electronic retailer of lingerie, nightwear, and clubwear. However, the online apparel market in India was highly crowded, and the fledging company faced stiff competition from a number of established and upcoming players. Given this intense competition in the market, DesiFirangi was incurring high marketing and customer acquisition costs, which were hurting the company’s bottom line. In order to increase revenues, DesiFirangi's founders needed to find ways to increase the number of unique visitors to the site, and convert more visitors to buyers.
In 2014, Alibaba Group (Alibaba), the largest e-commerce platform operator in China, boasted in its New York Stock Exchange prospectus about its e-commerce ecosystem, which was being built over time. Alibaba’s chairman and chief executive officer declared that the company’s mission was to “make it easy to do business anywhere.” However, the ecosystem, which was well suited for people’s Internet habits of the past, would not likely be up-to-date in the mobile age, when browsing for information no longer posed a problem and people became fascinated by mobile apps that provided practical and entertaining services. Internet traffic, representing people’s attention, started to take on a new pattern. Having thrived on pooling Internet traffic by displaying a huge variety of merchandise on its platform, Alibaba could not afford to now lose Internet traffic to countless customized small apps.
In May 2010, Forbes Technosys Limited (FTL) was not doing well. After more than a year, the company’s bill payment kiosk business was losing money and no longer seemed viable. The time had come to re-evaluate all aspects of this business line and make decisions regarding FTL’s future course of action. Accordingly, FTL’s chief executive officer proposed an idea regarding prepaid mobile recharges using the existing bill payment kiosks, along with a new technology platform for this purpose. He hoped that handheld terminals could be used by retail-level franchisees to sell recharges to prepaid mobile users. Essentially, FTL had three options: should the company persist with or pivot the service provider business model, or “perish” the complete solution provider idea entirely and revert to being a product manufacturer? Whichever strategy FTL chose, it would have to limit and balance both operating and capital expenses.
In May 2010, Forbes Technosys Limited (FTL) was not doing well. After more than a year, the company’s bill payment kiosk business was losing money and no longer seemed viable. The time had come to re-evaluate all aspects of this business line and make decisions regarding FTL’s future course of action. Accordingly, FTL’s chief executive officer proposed an idea regarding prepaid mobile recharges using the existing bill payment kiosks, along with a new technology platform for this purpose. He hoped that handheld terminals could be used by retail-level franchisees to sell recharges to prepaid mobile users. Essentially, FTL had three options: should the company persist with or pivot the service provider business model, or “perish” the complete solution provider idea entirely and revert to being a product manufacturer? Whichever strategy FTL chose, it would have to limit and balance both operating and capital expenses. Use with 9B16M221
This industry note details the state of the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries in China in 2012. It has details on the size of the respective industries, their growth, their regulation and key political actors, as well as information and analysis on other important stakeholders in the pharmaceutical and health care sectors in China in the 2010s. The level of detail is high, as is the complexity of information presented. The note can be used independently, however, it was written primarily to serve as a companion to 9B16M225.
In April 2014, the founder of SecureNow met with one of his classmates who was now an angel investor. The two had recently met socially and the founder had briefed his classmate on SecureNow’s online business-to-business insurance marketplace. The classmate was now expressing interest in investing in SecureNow but his valuation was much lower than the founder’s expectation. The founder was confident of SecureNow’s future growth, but he wanted funds to expand. His classmate would provide him with the kind of relationship he was seeking with an investor, but the founder wondered how he and his classmate arrived at such different valuations. He also wondered whether he should accept the funds at a low valuation, consider other options, or just postpone his expansion plans.
In January of 2016, Singapore International Airlines Group (SIA) announced that it had secured more than 90 per cent stake in Tiger Airways Holdings Limited (Tigerair), and would take Tigerair private. Once the buyout offer closed on February 19, trading in Tigerair's shares would be suspended because the free float had fallen below the minimum 10 per cent threshold. Tigerair had been suffering losses amounting to more than SG$600 million from 2012 to 2015. When SIA initiated the buyout offer, Tigerair's shareholders wanted to use the discounted cash flow model, the discounted dividend model, and relative valuation to determine whether the buyout was a fair deal.
In May 2010, Forbes Technosys Limited (FTL) was not doing well. After more than a year, the company's bill payment kiosk business was losing money and no longer seemed viable. The time had come to re-evaluate all aspects of this business line and make decisions regarding FTL's future course of action. Accordingly, FTL's chief executive officer proposed an idea regarding prepaid mobile recharges using the existing bill payment kiosks, along with a new technology platform for this purpose. He hoped that handheld terminals could be used by retail-level franchisees to sell recharges to prepaid mobile users. Essentially, FTL had three options: should the company persist with or pivot the service provider business model, or "perish" the complete solution provider idea entirely and revert to being a product manufacturer? Whichever strategy FTL chose, it would have to limit and balance both operating and capital expenses.
In 2014, Alibaba Group (Alibaba), the largest e-commerce platform operator in China, boasted in its New York Stock Exchange prospectus about its e-commerce ecosystem, which was being built over time. Alibaba's chairman and chief executive officer declared that the company's mission was to "make it easy to do business anywhere." However, the ecosystem, which was well suited for people's Internet habits of the past, would not likely be up-to-date in the mobile age, when browsing for information no longer posed a problem and people became fascinated by mobile apps that provided practical and entertaining services. Internet traffic, representing people's attention, started to take on a new pattern. Having thrived on pooling Internet traffic by displaying a huge variety of merchandise on its platform, Alibaba could not afford to now lose Internet traffic to countless customized small apps.
Converting myriad data into a simple, visual conceptual model is the basis for developing the ability to communicate consumer marketing insights up, down, and across the organization. This enables the marketer to persuade others of his or her analysis and helps with alignment of the broader organization. And while throughout the MBA program, students have been exposed to various models, once students graduate and enter the workforce, they will be expected to convert complex data into usable insight, typically through visual models of their own design. This exercise, then, is designed to help the students transition from users of conceptual models to creators or developers of models. The ability to create a conceptual model sharpens the abstract thinking required to convert insight about the market, consumers, competitors, or other entities into an understandable model. The detailed teaching note accompanying this exercise guides instructors through the process of eliciting and evaluating students' visual models, and then proposes a simple, complete model that frames many consumer categories surprisingly well. Additionally, there are videos that can be used to help explain the development of a new-to-the-world conceptual model. This exercise is intended for use in either an undergraduate capstone class or at any point during an MBA, executive MBA, global MBA, or executive education program.