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Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a high-involvement/ego-expressive product or service in depth about his/her buying decision. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumer choice domain (e.g., stages in the buying process, decision-making roles, habit versus deliberation).

Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a low-involvement product or service in depth about his/her ownership and usage experiences. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumption domain (e.g., customer satisfaction, product meaning, brand loyalty).

Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a high-involvement product or service in depth about his/her ownership and usage experiences. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumption domain (e.g., customer satisfaction, product meaning, brand loyalty).

Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a high-involvement/ego-expressive product or service in depth about his/her ownership and usage experiences. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumption domain (e.g., customer satisfaction, product meaning, brand loyalty).

This case presents the issues faced by the BA-USAir coordination team as it struggles with creating a management structure to facilitate the development of a newly announced alliance. The team has six weeks to design a blueprint and present it to senior management. Students and executives find that this case opens up significant issues related to implementing alliances. The B case is OB-0585.

Highlights the decision that must be made on balancing customer acquisition and retention and de-emphasizing the structural issues involved in administering the independent contractor sales force.

Describes a conflict between the values and norms of a segment of an internal social system and those of management and the wider culture. Includes decision opportunity. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

In May 1995, Jonathan Schneider, the president of the Schneider Co., is faced with several related problems. First, he needs to find a new facility that can accommodate his expanding business. Second, he needs to decide whether to lease or purchase this new facility. And third, he needs to decide what to do about the existing facility, which he leases from his father.

Presents the outcome of Air Products ICON decentralization projects. New issues are explored, including the challenges of having a decentralized MIS staff, global network, client/server architecture, new data center issues, outsourcing, a new highly strategic customer interface, object-oriented programming (OOPS), and the future of the MIS organization. A rewritten version of two earlier cases.

Describes the industry context that has resulted in the development of efficient consumer response (ECR) within the grocery industry and its adoption by H.E. Butt Grocery Co.

Describes the history of the competition policy in the European Union, and focuses on the evolution of pan-European and member-state statutes. The tension between policy and enforcement at various levels draws attention to issues of market definition, especially in merger policy.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 496018.

Describes the challenges confronting a recent HBS graduate who has started a direct-mail toy company. The entrepreneur must evaluate industry conditions in both toys and direct mail, and determine whether he has developed a viable business concept. Presents detailed financial projections associated with each of three major repositioning options.

Updates the (A) case.

Managers and management theorists spent the majority of this century building and perfecting the hierarchy; however, if we believe the press, they now appear to be engaged in destroying it. While many proclaim the dawning of the "Information Age" organization and the fading of the hierarchical organization as a trend of the 1990s, the roots of these changes can be traced to the 1950s. This note provides organization design frameworks and concepts for the design of the Information Age organization.

The co-evolution of technology, work, and the workforce over the past 30 years has dramatically influenced our concept of organizations and the industries within which they compete. No longer simply a tool to support "back-office" transactions, IT has become a strategic part of most businesses, enabling the redefinition of markets and industries and the strategies and designs of firms competing within them. But to achieve these information age benefits, companies must adopt information age technology architectures. Organizations must radically transform outdated IT architectures and the IT organizations required to support them. This technological transformation is every bit as daunting as the organizational transformation. This note describes general frameworks and concepts that managers can use to analyze their existing IT architecture and to define and manage the IT architecture required to support the information processing requirements of the Information Age organization.

The head of a bank's asset and liability committee has to approve an unexpectedly large overnight currency exposure or require at great cost that the exposure be reduced.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 296011

Describes the long waiting time experienced by customers in Health Stops and asks students to specify the changes in its business model which could help solve the problem.

Set in July 1995, this case invites students to assess the financial performance of Federal Express and United Parcel Service, two close competitors in the U.S. overnight express package-delivery industry. Although the case requires no numerical computations, it does ask students to interpret results and reflect on the implications. The contrasting financial records of the two firms afford a platform for exploring several important issues, including (1) the definition and use of "economic value added" (EVA) as a measure of corporate performance; (2) a comparison of EVA with other classic approaches of historical performance analysis; (3) the exercise of skills in business-segment analysis; (4) the exploration of the financial implications of intense competition and corporate transformation; and (5) the definition of "excellence" from a corporate-finance point of view.