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Retailing requires attention to detail and customer and employee loyalty. Wawa is a 50-year old food retailer with almost a cult-like following. With $9 billion in revenues, Wawa is the 50th largest privately-held company in the US. Learn how they have accomplished consistent 15% annual shareholder returns. The Wawa associates (name for employees) have an ESOP which plays a key role in Wawa's culture of ownership. This case explores the role of incentives and levers of control to create a successful retail chain.

Fat Angelos was a well-established and renowned family style Italian restaurant chain in Hong Kong. Its popularity, however, created challenges. One daily example was the queues the restaurants encountered during their peak dinner periods. Long waits resulted in dissatisfied or even lost customers. On the other hand, during non-peak hours the restaurants was at less than full capacity, meaning lost revenue opportunities. To help bring in additional customers during off-peak hours, the company was considering various measures, including early bird discounts and a new promotional opportunity with online voucher company Groupon.

Spreadsheet supplement to case ST23

This case examines the relationship between the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member institutions, with a primary focus on how power evolves and is administered at an organizational level. Through a close look at the history of the NCAA, the case highlights the unique tale of the organization's rise to power and its ability to regulate all collegiate athletics within the United States. In light of the increasing commercialization of collegiate athletics, the perceived cartel-like nature of the NCAA has brought into question the mission and core values of the non-profit organization and whether the NCAA truly has the best interests of its member institutions in mind. Facing antitrust lawsuits, scandals, the looming threat of the formation of super-conferences and a myriad of other issues, the NCAA must choose its path forward very carefully.

VisionSpring follows social entrepreneur Jordan Kassalow from his early career in public health through the founding of VisionSpring, an organization that sells eyeglasses to the rural poor in developing countries. The case describes how Kassalow becomes inspired and motivated by some of his early experiences as an optometry student and in public health. As Kassalow builds VisionSpring, the immense scaling challenges of distributing to "bottom of the pyramid" (BoP) customers are revealed. Initially, VisionSpring has dual goals of selling glasses and employing local workers. After testing for several years in India and El Salvador, VisionSpring makes a decision in 2008 to focus only on selling glasses and makes substantial changes in its business model and organization. The company also decides to conduct a quasi-experimental study to measure its impact on customers. Over the next several years, VisionSpring tests several different distribution models, and finds two that are promising. The case ends with the executive team pondering how best to scale these models to reach the 700 million BoP customers that could benefit from glasses in the world.

Valjibhai Stones, a supplier of quality stone chips in India, has been approached by a multinational company that needs a reliable supplier of quality stone chips for the next eight years. Accepting the order would require a capacity expansion to produce high-quality aggregate solely for the multinational company and at the cost of foregoing all of its existing business. If the offer is accepted, the company would earn substantial revenue for eight years, but would then need to seek fresh business in a highly competitive market.

The CEO of a newly formed corporation had just finalized several outsourcing agreements to manufacture MoxiMed's flagship product, the MoxaLamp. The MoxaLamp was designed to replace the practitioner's role in administering moxibustion, a popular form of traditional Chinese medicine therapy. Now that the MoxaLamp was ready for production, the CEO must select a target market and set the appropriate selling price.

The co-founders of a company that markets brightly coloured, high-quality and boldly designed men's socks had just heard from the producers of a popular Canadian reality television show, Dragons' Den. They had been chosen to pitch their business idea to the show's venture capitalists in hopes of receiving investment funds. Since they were at the cusp of their business development plans, with an innovative business model and product design, the co-founders still had some key marketing decisions to make before their on-air pitch to the "Dragons" in a month. The partners' concept of the company was innovative: for every pair of socks sold, 20 per cent of their sales would be donated to Kiva, an organization that facilitated microfinance lending. The sale of each pair of socks would aid entrepreneurs around the world who were starting their own businesses.

In 2008, Shaheen Mistri, founder of the nonprofit Teach For India (TFI), was grappling with applying and adapting the business and recruitment models of the successful U.S.-based Teach For America and UK-based Teach First to meet the challenges of the education sector in India. The case provides a review of the U.S.- and UK-based models, as well as an analysis of the factors that drove their growth in their respective markets. However, the adaptation of these models to create one that could succeed in the Indian context was not straightforward. The case describes a number of ways the challenges in India differ from those in the United States and United Kingdom-namely, the size and magnitude of educational inequity, the motivations of undergraduate students as potential teacher-volunteers, the part that parents play in making career decisions for their children, and the attitudes of school officials. Students reading the case will discuss the roles of various constituencies involved in these models. After identifying how crucial constituencies are served by the U.S. and UK models, the students will then brainstorm concrete ways that these models could be adjusted for India so Mistri could successfully recruit her program's first cohort of TFI fellows.

stickK.com, a website that uses behavioral economics to help users achieve their goals, must choose between a direct-to-consumer or business-to-business model. The case includes a discussion of how principles of behavioral economics can be used to influence behavior, and how an understanding of behavioral economics can inform managerial decisions about product adoption and diffusion.

In 2014, Dr. Charles D. Fraser Jr., Surgeon-in-Chief of Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, was contemplating the future direction of the congenital heart disease program. The nation's largest pediatric hospital, Texas Children's was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as #4 in the nation in 2012-2013. It was ranked #3 in pediatric heart care and heart surgery, following Boston Children's and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Texas Children's had some of the highest volumes in the nation, seeing more than 20,000 congenital heart disease patients and performing over 800 cardiac surgeries annually. Fraser led the reorganization of Texas Children's care for congenital heart disease conditions beginning in 1995, and had initiated universal outcome measurement. In 2014, the challenge was to continue to improve care in a complicated patient population, and take outcome measurement to a new level. Also, Texas Children's had recently formed partnerships with pediatric hospitals in Temple, San Antonio and Mexico City, and how to structure these partnerships was under active discussion.

In early 2014, business development executives at Google were formulating a distribution strategy for Glass, a wearable computer that projected information on a display viewable with an upward glance. Options, which were not mutually exclusive, included 1) continuing to sell Glass directly through online channels; 2) creating an open platform to allow any eyewear manufacturer to create frames compatible with Glass; and 3) negotiating a partnership with a leading eyewear manufacturer to jointly develop and market Glass.

CEO Jeff Immelt considers whether GE is moving fast enough on its new Industrial Internet initiative. The undertaking includes building out an Industrial Internet, connecting machines and devices, collecting their data and operations, and providing services to clients based on analytics of this data and information. The case considers the implications of such an initiative across all 6 of GE's business units, and how best and how quickly to execute the strategy. The firm has committed $1b in investment, building out a new software center in California, and a commercial sales function at headquarters to deploy the new products and services.

Philips' new venture integration (NVI) department is aware of the fact that many acquisitions turn into "deals from hell" instead of "deals from heaven." Its post-merger integration specialists have learned that cost synergies are far easier to realize than sales (or growth) synergies. Stimulated by the urge to grow, the NVI department has developed a new methodology called the "sales integration approach" to realize sales (or growth) synergies. It tries to implement this approach during the acquisition integration of Indal, a Spanish lighting company.The main challenge is presented by the shift in acquisition-integration capability following Philips' evolved corporate strategy. While historically Philips had a substantive acquisition program, Philip's new CEO has stressed the need for organic growth and set the stage for a series of medium and small acquisitions. Philips needs to become more customer-centric to increase corporate growth. This has required a focus not just on cost synergies (e.g., economies of scale and increased efficiency), but also on capturing sales (or growth) synergies. Philips-Indal must choose to defend regions in which it has a strong position or target regions where it has a weaker position. Furthermore, Philips' post-merger integration leader must choose an organizational structure for Philips-Indal and convince Indal's executive team to adopt the NVI department's sales integration approach. This case can be used with Lighting Up Philips' Asian Entertainment Activities (B) 9B14M019.

In July 2013, the chairman of Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway is facing a public outcry as well as possible bankruptcy and the revocation of his operating licence. When one of the company's trains derailed in the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, several of its cars carrying crude oil exploded. The explosions and subsequent fires destroyed the downtown core and killed several dozen people. The oil spill also contaminated the local lake and river, leading to an environmental disaster for the community. The company was slow in issuing a press release, which pointed the finger of blame on the train's engineer and the fire department that had responded to an earlier engine fire on the train. Someone had powered down the train and that had released the brakes. Since the train was parked on an incline, without brakes it had rolled into town, gathering speed until it hit a crossroads and derailed. Five days after the derailment, the chairman finally visited the town where he spoke off the cuff and without French translation, further angering the grieving citizens. Now he faces the kind of public and professional censure that might end his career.

The case illustrates how Philips' new venture integration team applies a new capability, captured in the "sales integration approach" (SIA), to organically grow its Asian Professional Lighting Entertainment activities. The capability, designed for acquisition integration, has previously helped realize substantial growth (or sales) synergies in a recent acquisition. The main challenge is to understand how to apply the SIA to realize organic (instead of acquisitive) growth (i.e., internal development). This case can be used with Philips-Indal: The Deal from Heaven? (A) 9B14M018.

In September 2012, the general manager of the Montreal Stars, a women's hockey team, faces several challenges. One of six in the Canadian Women's Hockey League, a not-for-profit organization that aspires to be the professional league for women's hockey in North America, the team has won the league championship three times and its players have won a number of awards, including Olympic gold medals. Yet, average attendance per game has been sparse. The first issue is how to increase the awareness and the fan base of the team in Montreal. Secondly, the league allows a team to keep only $25,000 of whatever funds it raises; any amount above that limit must be submitted to the league to support it and other teams less successful at fundraising. Given this, it is difficult to raise funds from and maintain support among donors for the local team. Finally, not only the players but the administrative staff, including the general manager, are volunteers. How can the league be persuaded to relax the constraints on fundraising so that the team can develop the organizational capacity to pay its players and staff? In sum, the general manager faces both external and internal marketing problems.

Uralkali, the giant Russian potash producer, decided to stop export sales through the Belarusian Potash Company - an export cartel it had formed with Belaruskali. Uralkali planned to increase potash production and export it independently through its own trading company. This move threatened to reduce global potash prices by up to 25 per cent. Immediately, the stock prices of major potash producers around the world plummeted. This set of three cases looks at the potential competitive strategies of three key players in the industry: PotashCorp, the firm with the world's largest potash reserves; Agrium, a firm in the midst of a large potash mine expansion; and BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company planning huge potash mine development. See A case 9B14M031A and B case 9B14M031B.

Uralkali, the giant Russian potash producer, decided to stop export sales through the Belarusian Potash Company - an export cartel it had formed with Belaruskali. Uralkali planned to increase potash production and export it independently through its own trading company. This move threatened to reduce global potash prices by up to 25 per cent. Immediately, the stock prices of major potash producers around the world plummeted. This set of three cases looks at the potential competitive strategies of three key players in the industry: PotashCorp, the firm with the world's largest potash reserves; Agrium, a firm in the midst of a large potash mine expansion; and BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company planning huge potash mine development. See A case 9B14M031A and C case 9B14M031C.

Uralkali, the giant Russian potash producer, decided to stop export sales through the Belarusian Potash Company - an export cartel it had formed with Belaruskali. Uralkali planned to increase potash production and export it independently through its own trading company. This move threatened to reduce global potash prices by up to 25 per cent. Immediately, the stock prices of major potash producers around the world plummeted. This set of three cases looks at the potential competitive strategies of three key players in the industry: PotashCorp, the firm with the world's largest potash reserves; Agrium, a firm in the midst of a large potash mine expansion; and BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company planning huge potash mine development. See B case 9B14M031B and C case 9B14M031C.