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The co-manager and partner at Escape Outdoors (EO), North Sydney, Nova Scotia had to decide if the adoption of Herschel Supply Co. (Herschel) products-as part of her outdoor store's product mix-was a good decision for her company. Herschel had never been included in the traditional outdoor mix of brands, and EO's market was an older clientele than Herschel's. Marketing factors affecting her decision to adopt a new brand included buyer behaviour, marketing informatics, segmentation, differentiation, and positioning. However, Herschel was a post-millennial-focused brand, and the company's representative believed the younger demographic was becoming more interested in outdoor recreation. EO's co-manager and partner had concerns. Did Herschel fit EO's values, current brand mix, and customer base? Should EO adopt the brand? Which specific lines or products would be the best fit? How much inventory should EO begin with?

The case discusses the opportunities and challenges faced by Lladró SA (Lladró), a Spanish luxury porcelain brand, when marketing itself in India in 2019. Lladró was known for its high quality, artistic, and handcrafted porcelain pieces created in its workshop in Valencia, Spain. In India, Lladró had gained popularity among high net-worth individuals and corporate executives through its "Spirit of India" series of sculptures featuring Hindu gods and goddesses in porcelain. However, with the changes in the luxury paradigm the company was striving to reorient the brand as a lifestyle luxury brand with a focus on functionality in its product offerings. The case raises questions about the future direction the brand should take in India without risking its prestige status. What strategies should Lladró adopt to target specific buyers in India? Would the company benefit from its expanding product portfolio or run the risk of diluting its exclusive luxury image with this growing product portfolio?

On January 13, 2019, the Gillette Company aired the advertisement "We Believe: The Best Men Can Be." After the airing, both the company and its chief executive officer were subjected to backlash. The advertisement, launched amid the Gillette brand's declining market share, addressed the #MeToo movement, sexism in the boardroom, and bullying, and asked viewers, "Is this the best a man can get?" Although the advertisement was intended to challenge men to end toxic masculinity and abuse, it became both the most liked and the most disliked advertisement in YouTube's history. Six months after the airing, The Procter & Gamble Company, reported a US$8.3 million writedown in its Shave Care business, represented by the Gillette brand, leading some observers to wonder whether the polarizing reactions to the advertisement had led to the writedown. What was The Gillette Company's fiduciary responsibility in the era of the #MeTooMovement? Should its chief executive officer and visionary of the controversial advertisement be fired? Should he be promoted for confronting such a serious societal issue? Or should no change be made in the corporate structure?

In January 2015, an investor bought 1,000 shares of Bank of India stock when the banking sector was expected to perform better over the medium to long term. On October 11, 2019, after holding the shares for nearly five years, the investor was surprised to see that the stock price had instead dropped by almost 80 per cent. He was disappointed in his investment's performance to date, but the stock's current low price seemed a bargain, so he was contemplating buying more shares for overall cost averaging of his investment. Before making any investment decisions, however, he carefully analyzed the bank's annual reports for the previous five years and discovered an unusual change in the bank's accounting policy for the provisioning of non-performing assets. After his review of the bank's financial statements, the investor was unsure whether he should sell his shares, buy more shares to achieve overall cost averaging, or hold the number of shares he currently owned.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding (Panda Base), located in Chengdu, China, was the world's most popular scenic spot for giant panda tourism. Panda Base was founded in 1987 with a mission that included the protection and breeding of the endangered giant panda, scientific research, public education, and cultural tourism. In 2002, the director of Panda Base began to build panda culture and the panda brand in an effort to resolve low brand awareness and to better protect the giant panda. In 2020, Panda Base promoted the giant panda on various digital media platforms. Based on the concept of Web 3.0, Panda Base integrated the theories of social media marketing, content marketing, and viral marketing to promote panda culture and brand value, and successfully developed its core cultural brand value: "Tell the most touching story of the giant panda." Looking to the future, Panda Base's director wanted to develop a smart tourism project to continue protecting giant pandas and increasing their population with the help of 5G (fifth-generation) technology, while providing tourists with an immersive experience. How can the director best use technology to support and promote Panda Base?

This case contains two briefs, one for each person in a two-party negotiation. They are relatively short in length and can be read in class just prior to a mock negotiation. This learning activity is appropriate for teaching negotiations skills to a broad audience, including undergraduate and graduate business school students, adult learners in a variety of settings, and in a corporate university.

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV8076 and UV8080.

This case contains two briefs, one for each person in a two-party negotiation. They are relatively short in length and can be read in class just prior to a mock negotiation. This learning activity is appropriate for teaching negotiations skills to a broad audience, including undergraduate and graduate business school students, adult learners in a variety of settings, and in a corporate university.

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV8080.

This case explores the marketing challenges that a robotics and automation technology start-up faces in the construction industry. A recommended framework for analysis is Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (see suggested complimentary reading by John T. Gourville). By applying the analysis of the adoption curve, students can work through the process of diagnosing what might be impeding sales of the SAM100 and then identify which market segments, targets and positioning strategies will help accelerate the adoption of this new innovation in order for it to progress through to a robust product lifecycle.

The rapid growth of digital technologies and the extraordinary amount of data that devices and applications collect each day are increasingly driving companies to radically transform the business architecture through which they create and appropriate value. However, companies may fail to extract value from digital transformation due to the disconnection between strategy formulation and strategy implementation. Through the analysis of three case studies of firms that digitally transformed their business-namely ABB, CNH Industrial, and Vodafone-this article presents a framework than can help companies implement their digital transformation strategy and thereby renovate their business model.

The Apple in China and India case explores the competitive challenges faced by a global company in two large emerging markets - China and India. Specifically, in these two large emerging markets, Apple's sales of its flagship iPhone are falling significantly short of its market share in many developed country markets, and well below its own professed and announced revenue and volume targets. The company has to make key strategic decisions regarding its product offerings and the competitive positioning of its products, taking into account the offerings of its key global and local competitors and the unique needs of customers in the two emerging markets in terms of desired product features, and their ability and willingness to pay. In making these choices, Apple has to consider how the decisions made with respect to these two markets align with the broader global strategy for iPhone.

Companies need to focus on how people feel about them, even in a recession. PLUS the unanticipated effect of price promotions, building trust during the pandemic, hiding emotions at the office, and more.

Professor Henry Cronqvist of the University of Miami explores the connection between executives' socioeconomic backgrounds and their firms' personnel practices and policies.

Understanding the drivers of value is key to a technological transformation initiative. In the context of 'Durian Widgets' there is need for detailed analysis of business processes -contrary to initial intuition. On closer examination of the processes involved in manufacturing the widgets, students discover that the robotics technology which (on the surface) seemed cheaper and faster than the current manual operations, will actually result in inferior performance if implemented.

Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) is a lifestyle conglomerate present in 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, with annual revenues of $9.6 billion. The case focuses on its data-led, customer-centred transformation that unlocked new sources of growth and mitigated the effects of the covid19 pandemic on business thanks to the group's digital resilience. Students step into the shoes of key MAF business and analytics leaders who established three pillars as the basis of the transformation designed to develop a customer mindset, analytical skill sets, and a test-and-learn approach. They then set about aggregating data across a wide range of businesses and setting up analytics capabilities within the company. A 'deep dive' into an early transformation pilot at Carrefour - one of the operating companies of MAF - used case methology to craft digital and governance strategies that autonomized the use of data, empowered staff to better serve its 560 million annual customers, and ultimately secured new sources of growth.

This case explores InsurTech start-up Lemonade's disruptive new business model aimed at creating and delivering a 'shockingly great user experience' around a 'lovable brand' - in an industry plagued by low customer satisfaction. The digital disruptor leverages principles of behavioural economics to address conflicts of interest and mistrust which prevail in the existing industry. It uses digital technologies to automate, accelerate and manage an impressive amount of work - with few employees - thereby reducings customer effort and , increasing customer satisfaction to achieve cost-effective service excellence. The effortless experience is aggressively priced and relies on a flexible subscription-based pricing model. Artificial intelligence (AI), data and machine learning are key in the race to achieving data parity with incumbents. The case culminates in Lemonade's filing for an initial public offering (IPO) and asks where growth should come from next: incremental improvements, further expansion across the United States, global expansion beyond Germany and the Netherlands, or from new types of property.

Slack was launched in 2014, went public in 2019, and is now a global operation with more than 2,000 employees and 100,000-plus customers. But it hasn't lost its start-up mentality. And never did it move with more speed and clarity of focus than in March 2020, when the Covid-19 crisis brought on two challenges: dramatically increasing customer demand and an extremely abrupt transition to working remotely.The company's customer success and experience teams delivered nearly round-the-clock support free, both to existing customers and to newcomers who needed help getting set up with the product. Interviews with job candidates and the employee onboarding process were moved online. Marketing developed a public service ad for television, committing to help any groups that were working on a Covid-19 response. Slack's engineers ensured that its systems were operational 99.9% of the time in a period of soaring demand. Customers with 1,000 or 10,000 Slack users suddenly wanted to expand to 50,000. New customers wanted comprehensive proposals immediately. Organizations of all kinds had to transform the way they worked, all at once. This crisis, Butterfield writes, "has created an opportunity for us and others to become more agile, to take on changes that once seemed daunting, to reimagine organizational culture...and to reposition for future growth."

In a 2018 Workforce Institute survey of 3,000 managers across eight industrialized nations, the majority of respondents described artificial intelligence as a valuable productivity tool. But respondents to that survey also expressed fears that AI would take their jobs. They are not alone. The Guardian recently reported that in the UK "more than 6 million workers fear being replaced by machines." AI's advantages can be cast in a dark light: Why would humans be needed when machines can do a better job? To allay such fears, employers must set AI up to succeed rather than to fail. The authors draw on their own and others' research and consulting on AI and information systems implementation, along with organizational studies of innovation and work practices, to present a four-phase approach to implementing AI. It allows organizations to cultivate people's trust--a key condition for adoption--and to work toward a distributed cognitive system in which humans and artificial intelligence both continually improve.