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Spencer’s Retail, a fast-moving consumer goods retail chain in India, had been perceived as an expensive retailer exclusively for high-end consumers. A new sector head took over in 2013 and shifted the store from a positioning statement of “Taste the World” to “Make Fine Living Affordable.” Within five years, Spencer’s was making a profit. However, traditional grocery stores continued to dominate the Indian retail scene and were more heavily frequented by Indian shoppers. To maintain a sustainable profit, Spencer’s had to expand the business by opening more retail outlets and increasing same-store sales growth by increasing footfalls and basket size. What store format and combination of private label and national label products would help Spencer’s reach this goal?

Supplement to 9B20M174.

In August 2019, Fair Trade Jewellery Co., a mid-size jewellery retailer based in Toronto, Canada, was wondering how to ensure that its customers received responsibly sourced gold and diamond jewellery. The company had already devoted considerable amounts of time, energy, and expense to develop a responsible supply chain. Its activities toward that goal had included various initiatives beyond jewellery retail, such as providing inventory financing for artisanal miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After discovering that a key US partner along the supply chain may have not been following a clear chain-of-custody system in its refinery, the company was unsure how to proceed. Responsibly sourced gold was potentially being contaminated by other gold at the refinery, which led Fair Trade Jewellery Co. to consider opening its own local small-scale refinery. However, that initiative could mean considerable strategic risk and financial burden for the company. It could also have potential effects on its employees, who relied on the company for their livelihood. Did the company’s ethical mission require vertically integrating to such a considerable extent?

By the second quarter of 2018, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the online video technology company Bitmovin Inc. (Bitmovin) had propelled the start-up along an aggressive growth path. After founding the company in Austria, he had relocated Bitmovin’s headquarters to California’s Silicon Valley, raised more than US$40 million in investments in two funding rounds, and was now in the process of building a global sales organization for the company’s innovative online video infrastructure solutions. Within the next few years, the CEO wanted Bitmovin to achieve $100 million in revenues and initiate an initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York. However, Bitmovin’s rapid international growth had resulted in a globally dispersed organization in which effective communication and alignment were difficult to achieve. The sales team was able to close deals with big-name customers in the media industry, but marketing and demand generation had been neglected and there were not enough potential customers in the sales pipeline. The company had recently failed to reach its growth goals for the first time, and the CEO wondered whether the company still had the right sales strategy and the right person as its sales leader.

Ola Auto India (Ola) was the pioneer in cab aggregation services in India. In 2019, Ola needed to ensure that it remained the customer’s first choice for autorickshaw (auto) booking. Ola had so far faced moderate competition from small players, but competition was increasing from Uber Technologies Inc. With a service that was traditionally chosen for its low cost and easy availability, customer loyalty remained a challenge for all players in the market. How could Ola ensure customer loyalty and maintain its leadership position when Uber was garnering a higher net promoter score than Ola?

In January 2020, the proprietor of Basmati House Supermart (BHS), a large grocery retail outlet in India, terminated a partner retailer contract with Springers, an online retail platform. The proprietor had an ancestral property, located in a high-footfall area of the wholesale market, that could be developed into a retail outlet. In the new outlet, the broad options were to replicate the current retail business, focus selectively on staples and do more wholesale, or only focus on rice and develop it as a brand for larger distribution. Alternatively, the proprietor could rent the new property, wind down the grocery business, and invest the money in a fitness centre. Each option required its own particular investments, competence, and marketing strategy, and all options entailed considerable uncertainty and risk. BHS was steadily losing money; therefore, the decision had to be made quickly.

In 2019, the director of strategy at US-based First Financial Group (FFG) needed to decide which alternative incentive program the mid-sized bank should use to replace its current short-term incentive plan (STIP) for branch employees. The scorecard-driven STIP was found to have motivated branch sales staff to set up unauthorized accounts in order to obtain bonuses. These actions could potentially bring negative publicity and regulatory penalties to the bank in an industry fraught with such problems. Further, the current STIP had led to conflicts between the branch managers, who were compensated based on dollar sales, and the employees, who were compensated based on units of accounts sold. However, the path forward was not clear. The strategy director could revise the current scorecard or introduce a team-based incentive based on a new scorecard. Regardless of which option was chosen, the bank would have to implement additional management controls to motivate its employees while reducing the risk of fraud.

In August 2018, many regions in the state of Kerala, India, were experiencing rising flood waters, and people were being evacuated from flood-prone areas to relief camps. Various relief camp supplies in the state were being distributed through the distribution centre at Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Kochi. XSEED, a student community-driven organization of the Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship, was being coordinated by faculty member Dr. Mercia Justin. Justin, entrusted with the responsibility of managing the operations at the distribution centre, was carefully considering how to manage the throughput of the relief camp supplies and streamline operations at the distribution centre as the volume of shipments rapidly expanded and the rain and flooding situation worsened.

In late August 2018, the chief operating officer of Success HR Solutions, a Vietnamese software start-up, was contemplating the strategy for relaunching her product, a cloud-based human resources software product that handled various payroll and human resources functions. She needed to decide how to sell and price her product for the target market in the Vietnamese economy. As she evaluated her options, she had to consider the overall Vietnamese business landscape, the future of the industry, her company’s current capabilities, and her organization’s overall vision.

In September 2018, Marisol Labrecque, president of Technologies Ecofixe Inc. (Technologies Ecofixe), was heading to Ain Taoujdate, Morocco, in order to supervise the installation of the company’s second ECOFIXE system in Africa. Technologies Ecofixe was a small, socially responsible Québécois company that had developed and commercialized a cost-effective system for the treatment of wastewaters in aerated ponds. With her eye on Africa’s ever-expanding market, Labrecque considered entering the French-speaking countries of Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso. However, given her limited resources, Labrecque knew that she would have to choose. Which country should Technologies Ecofixe enter next?

In 2001, Apple, Inc. (Apple), known mainly as the maker of a niche personal computer and related operating system and software, became a disruptor in the music industry with the launch of the iPod music player; it followed up two years later with the launch of the iTunes Music Store (iTunes). Over the next several years, the company struck deals with major music recording labels to distribute downloadable music legally through iTunes, challenging an industry-wide decline in a climate of widespread digital file-sharing and piracy. In 2007, it brought about increased sales of digital music downloads after launching the iPhone. However, by 2019, consumers were mainly consuming music via streaming services such as Spotify, Google LLC’s YouTube, Amazon.com Inc., and Pandora. What would Apple need to do to continue as a leader in the music industry?

In 2019, Walmart Inc. (Walmart) was the largest retailer in the world, with over $500 billion in revenues and thousands of stores in the United States and international markets. It was in the midst of a transformation to compete in the online shopping and home delivery space, an industry that was dominated by relative newcomer Amazon.com Inc. (Amazon). While Walmart had continued to expand its physical stores and discount centres over several decades, its online presence had needed attention; its investment in online sales between 2013 and 2018 had brought about a significant reduction in the operating income margin in its largest and most profitable segment, Walmart US. However, by February 2019, the company had achieved growth in online sales of 43 per cent. Would the strategic changes that had brought about this growth enable the company to maintain its position in the United States?

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20A041

In March 2019, Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft were grounded worldwide. This was a consequence of two deadly plane crashes within five months in late 2018 and early 2019. In both the crashes, the flawed design of the aircraft led to an erroneous reading of the onboard sensors. This, in turn, activated the stall prevention software of the aircraft, which kept pushing the nose of the aircraft down. Boeing was alleged to have hastily developed the 737 MAX aircraft in response to the Airbus A320neo.<br><br>In August 2019, Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, was hopeful that services of 737 MAX could resume within a couple of months. How should Muilenburg deal with the crisis? To what extent should he worry about the increasing competitive rivalry with Airbus?

On October 25, 2018, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dr. Jonathan Broomberg (CEO Discovery Health) and Dr. Craig Nossel (Head of Vitality Wellness) consider their dilemma of how to make Vitality Move more attractive to the lower-income market and increase the programme’s uptake. Vitality Move is a wellness programme for the lower-income market, launched in 2017. It has a low membership uptake by the KeyCare benefit scheme members. The two leaders are faced with a challenge to devise ways to strategically target the lower-income group to improve employee productivity, decrease the burden of non-communicable diseases and influence positive lifestyle decisions. The case features the initiatives undertaken towards creating shared value.

In July 2018, the owner and president of Yates Control Systems was contemplating her company’s future. The company was an engineering firm located in Hamilton, Ontario and catering to the region of Southwestern Ontario. The company’s net income had declined over the past year and the owner was considering several strategic options: maintaining company operations (status quo), hiring a second salesperson, expanding into parking system controls, purchasing an existing company that specialized in parking system controls, or selling her company. The owner had to evaluate which option would be the best path forward for her and for her business.

Bird Electric Vehicle Sharing (Bird)’s value proposition seems to be to offer inexpensive, on-demand transportation that can deliver riders directly to their destination in metropolitan areas. Electric scooters can be unlocked with a smartphone and left anywhere after use, minimizing the burden on consumersbut also causing tremendous traffic problems for city administrators. The disruption created by Bird not only drew the attention of urban commuters but also resulted in its product being banned in cities like San Francisco and Denver.<br><br>This case explores these issues in depth and sets up the challenge that Bird faces in extending its initial success. Bird must contemplate not only the individual components of its value chain but possibly also the business model itself, in evaluating the best course of action to ensure its future success.

Mumbai-based Entropy Innovations Private Limited (Entropy) was incorporated by three friends who hoped to revolutionize the motorcycle and scooter washing industry in India through their technological solution, an automatic bike washing machine. Starting with one city in 2014, Entropy expanded gradually and aimed to become a ₹500 million company by 2020. But as 2019 drew to an end, the company was not gaining the traction the founders had expected. Although many options were available, the choices and their implications were unclear. What was the appropriate business model for the growth phase of their firm? How should they stabilize the company in the Indian market? Should they focus on the two-wheeler washing industry, or should they diversify into the four-wheeler all-terrain vehicle (ATV) market?

In addition to Google, LLC (Google) facing multiple litigations around the globe, India’s antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), had recently launched its own investigation into the company. This was not the first occasion of an antitrust probe being initiated against Google in international markets. The company had already paid an astonishing US$ 9 billion in fines for abusing Android’s dominant position in the smartphone market to boost its dominance in other areas, such as web searching, browsing, and mobile apps. In 2019, Google was in trouble in India, again, for similar reasons. The CCI alleged that Google forced smartphone manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and the Google Chrome browser on their devices, thus misusing its dominant position by stopping smartphone manufacturers from opting for alternative versions of its mobile operating system (OS). However, Google strongly denied these allegations, arguing that it had not indulged in anti-competitive practices; rather, it claimed it had promoted relevant market competition.<br><br> Which marketing practices of Google invited the antitrust probe and allegations of abuse of their dominant position in India? Why were competition watchdogs concerned about the growing dominance of Google in the Indian mobile operating software (OS) market? In an oligopolistic market comprising multiple players, why did the CCI consider Google to be a dominant player in the Indian mobile OS market? Could Google do something to avoid antitrust lawsuits and allegations of abuse of dominance in the future?

Beyond Meat Inc. (Beyond Meat), a manufacturer of plant-based protein products founded in 2009 and based in Los Angeles, California, had become a success, despite supply chain and manufacturing issues. However, as competition flooded the market, the firm’s founder and chief executive officer (CEO) faced a number of challenges: Beyond Meat was investing more and more in differentiation and innovation, and even refining the recipe of its bestselling Beyond Burger—something the CEO himself considered risky. Beyond Meat filed for an initial public offering in May 2019, and by the end of July 2019, the company’s share price had increased by over 800 per cent, but analysts considered Beyond Meat stocks to be overvalued given that the company’s increasing revenues and high-priced products had not prevented increasing losses. Still, Beyond Meat was expected to disrupt the animal-based protein industry. What should the CEO do to justify the valuation of Beyond Meat? How should he handle competitive forces? Did his venture hold any potential to disrupt the animal protein industry?