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In July 2019, the uncertainty that had been surrounding Brexit since the public referendum in June 2016 had led to a crisis for Owen Barry Inc. (Owen Barry), a luxury goods manufacturing enterprise in the United Kingdom. The company’s finance and production manager had voted in favour of Brexit but was hardly prepared for the deadlock that followed. He was now weighing different options for navigating a way out of the company’s predicament. His three main concerns were: How should he deal with the exchange rate fluctuations that had been affecting the company’s revenues and margins? How should he deal with issues around sourcing and importing essential raw materials? How should he deal with problems around the recruitment and retention of the skilled workforce at the company’s manufacturing plant near London?

PVR Limited (PVR), the largest premium film exhibition company in India, with more than 750 screens, launched its Accessible Cinema Program in December 2018. Supported by its top management, PVR developed a culture of social responsibility that went beyond compliance. The program aimed to make PVR’s cinemas accessible to people with disabilities and focused especially on providing content for people with hearing impairment, and visual impairment. PVR rolled out the program to 50 cinemas in the first phase, and the response from patrons was encouraging. However, rolling out the program to the entire chain would involve redesigning existing cinemas to make them accessible and would be operationally and financially challenging. Additionally, the success of the program was dependent upon the willingness of film producers to provide content suitable for visually- and hearing-impaired audiences. Although laws mandated the production of suitable content for people with disabilities, these laws were not consistently enforced. Making movie producers provide suitable content was not going to be easy. In 2019, now that the first phase of the accessibility program was launched, how could the company meet these continuing challenges going forward?

In March 2017, the American fast food giant McDonald’s Corporation (McDonald's) launched an ambitious strategic plan, named the Velocity Growth Plan, with the intention of maintaining its dominance over competitors. As part of this strategy, McDonald’s wanted to retain its current customers, regain lost customers, and convert casual customers into more committed customers. To help accomplish these objectives, McDonald’s introduced delivery and mobile ordering services. The company also announced that it would remodel its stores, as part the Velocity Growth Plan. Two years later, in March 2019, McDonald’s acquired Dynamic Yield, a digital personalization platform that could be integrated into McDonald’s drive-through service, in-store kiosks, and mobile application. By early 2019, McDonald’s was the largest fast food company in the world, with approximately 37,855 restaurants across 120 countries, largely seen as the premiere fast food company in the industry. However, Dynamic Yield’s software provided McDonald’s with the ability to offer customers immediate recommendations, one-to-one messaging, and customer data management. How could McDonald’s best use Dynamic Yield to meet its ambitious growth objectives?

This case explores Ontario's Fair Hydro Plan, a 2017 policy of the Government of Ontario that aimed to reduce consumer electricity rates by borrowing to provide subsidies. This borrowing was to be repaid through increased rates levied on future consumers in the province. This policy was accounted for using the principles of rate-regulated accounting. The impetus for these changes was the rapidly rising electricity rates.

Denitsa Ikonomova is a champion professional dancer on Dancing with the Stars (France) who has become a desired social media influencer. She must now consider the business side of her profession and decide how to leverage her celebrity.

In 2015, Airbnb, Inc. began to explore entry into the Chinese market. In August of that year, it announced a partnership with two of its China-based investors to help it navigate the expansion. By January 2016, the company was facing a number of fundamental questions. First, how should it best position itself in China to ensure a successful expansion? Should it work with a local competitor and, if so, who? If it chose to instead continue expanding alone, should it replicate its established global formula or should it localize? If it pursued a localization strategy, what were the different ways it could localize its operations? And which of these should it prioritize?

The UK daily newspaper the <i>Guardian</i> undertook turnaround initiatives between January 2016 and April 2019 under the leadership of Katherine Viner, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief. Viner leveraged a new reader-funded contribution model to generate revenues, whereas newspapers such as the <i>New York Times</i> and the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> used paywalls and subscription-based models for revenue generation. Viner also undertook several cost-cutting initiatives, such as replacing the Berliner newspaper format with a tabloid format and outsourcing the printing of the <i>Guardian</i>. The impact of the contribution-based revenue model was substantial, leading the newspaper’s digital revenues to surpass revenues from advertising. The newspaper’s reach also increased substantially, with international subscribers, especially those in the United States and Australia, contributing more than <i>Guardian</i> readers in the United Kingdom. Although the <i>Guardian</i> reported its first profit in the past two decades in May 2019, several challenges remained for Viner, such as increasing the number of financial contributors to 2 million by 2022 and making the turnaround sustainable.

At a time when the wellness industry was experiencing a dynamic renaissance, Weight Watchers International Inc. was stuck with an aging demographic. In 2018, in an effort to stay relevant, the company rebranded itself as WW International Inc. (WW). The goal was to make wellness accessible to all, and to transform from a diet brand to a global wellness juggernaut. However, despite the rebrand and support from celebrity spokesperson Oprah Winfrey, WW’s stock price declined sharply. The results led to a number of questions about the soundness of WW’s marketing strategy. What should WW do to prevent a meltdown in brand equity, retain its loyal customers, and realize its ambitious goals in the wellness space?

Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20A065.

Spreadsheet for product 9B20N024.

In 2018, China Merchants Bank, China’s seventh-largest bank and the 30th-largest bank in the world, strategically repositioned itself in “light banking” to address the changing competitive landscape and rapid entry of non-bank financial technology companies. These companies were using information technology to compete in China’s domestic payments market. China Merchants Bank was also actively stimulating innovation. Through its incubation fund, the bank provided funding to its business units for new technology projects. The bank’s president was reviewing one specific project financed by the fund—the cross-border payments blockchain system. He was eager to determine the success of the project and the potential for future development of the blockchain technology, in his efforts to understand the applicability of blockchain to banking in general, and to payments banking in particular.

Thelma Cross-Olden Foundation (TCO), a non-profit organization, had supported the settlement needs of migrant women in Montreal, Quebec, for over three decades. However, in 2011, the foundation's revenue declined sharply. By 2018, the foundation was running into debt and had less than CA$50,000 with which to manage its operations and outreach programs. The decline in TCO's finances raised issues concerning the instability of leadership, the mismanagement of funds, and an overreliance on government agencies as a key source of generating revenue. In an attempt to reinstate the financial position of the foundation in 2019, the newly appointed chief executive officer needed to decide whether to reconsider the merger deal proposed by a reputable large global charity or to search for new avenues to generate funds.

In early 2020, during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Google Trends data revealed a surge in the use of the search terms “Corona beer virus” and “beer virus” by users of the Google search engine. A survey conducted around that time also seemed to suggest that consumers were less likely to buy Corona beer, which led various major media outlets to misrepresent the accuracy of the findings regarding consumer beliefs about the association between Corona beer and coronavirus. However, the chief executive officer of Constellation Brands Inc., the Corona brand’s distributor, was confident about the brand’s performance and did not change the company’s plans for a US spring 2020 launch of Corona hard seltzer. Consumers criticized both the poor timing of the planned launch, during the coronavirus pandemic, and various promotions for Corona beer that were considered inappropriate. Constellation Brands Inc. had to consider the effect, if any, on Corona beer sales in the United States. Should the launch of Corona hard seltzer go on as planned during the coronavirus pandemic? How should the company respond to misleading survey reports by some media outlets? Should bar owners in the United States be cautioned against launching promotional campaigns that link the Corona beer brand with the coronavirus?

By 2017, the comprehensive multi-brand Chinese clothing manufacturer Bosideng International Holdings Limited (Bosideng), founded in 1976, had become famous for its main business of down jackets. After almost 40 years of rapid development, Bosideng had become the top brand in the Chinese down apparel industry and had established strong brand equity. However, the company’s performance had been in decline since 2013. Faced with increasingly fierce competition, Bosideng had gradually lost its appeal to younger customers, who were uninterested in its unfashionable designs. The reduced profit level threatened Bosideng’s further development. In 2017, Bosideng’s chairperson and president was considering how to overcome this dilemma by revitalizing the brand. He hoped to strengthen the position of the Bosideng brand in the Chinese down jacket market and even in the global market in the future. However, he was not sure which approach would be most effective: should he maintain Bosideng’s existing brand values or invest in rebranding?

In November 2019, Jean Matthews had to decide how to allocate CA$300,000 toward neighbourhood improvement ideas submitted by city residents. Each of the four neighbourhoods in the city could receive up to CA$75,000 in funding, and Matthews had to consider the number of votes for each idea in her analysis. How should she identify which community projects to pursue?

Instructor spreadsheet for product 8B20E011.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20E011.

In September 2015, the owner of Jayman BUILT, a homebuilder and developer in Alberta, was fine-tuning his vision for a resort-style residential community in the outer suburbs of Calgary, Alberta. The development, Westman Village, would be a legacy project and the first of its kind in Calgary—a high-density, walkable, and amenity-rich community. Work on the development was planned for September 2016, and the owner was eager to showcase the innovative community; however, the economy was in a recession and a tough housing market was likely. How could the company develop a unique marketing strategy to convince prospective customers to buy into the one-of-a-kind project?

Metro Cash and Carry India Private Limited (Metro C&C) was a chain of wholesale stores owned by the German retailer Metro Group, which opened its first store in India in the southern city of Bangalore in 2003. By 2018, the company led the cash-and-carry segment of the Indian wholesale market, but was still not profitable. It faced challenges related to high real estate costs, competition from domestic and international wholesale firms, and competition from a strengthening e-commerce sector. Its most important customer segment—small, unorganized retailers, or kiranas—faced similar challenges. With considerable investments in the country, Metro C&C needed to develop a strategy to become profitable in the country after 15 years of operations. How could it build active engagements with different customer segments to improve its performance and turn a profit?

Bikanervala was a fourth-generation Indian family business in the domestic fast-food and packaged-snacks industries. In its 65 years of existence, it had grown from a small outlet selling traditional Indian sweets and snacks to the industry’s second-largest player. This case traces the evolution of Bikanervala’s business model, which uniquely leveraged professional management practices along with strengths rooted in its family values. As the business expanded, Bikanervala faced further pressures to professionalize on several fronts, and the family was forced to consider whether its family-oriented management style could scale up indefinitely or whether family ownership and management had to be diluted to grow the business.