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The Ontario Machinery Ring is a cooperative set up to perform a matchmaking service for farmers who want to have custom work done and farmers who want to do custom work. This concept is widespread in Europe but has not been tried in North America. The general manager of the organization has set up a prototype operation and is looking at expansion opportunities. Expansion will take more funds than are available and the general manager has sought financial assistance from the provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Before committing funds to this project, the ministry requires marketing research to measure demand for the machinery ring concept. Supplemental cases, Ontario Machinery Ring (B) and (C), product 9B04A022 and 9B04A023 look at questionnaire development and data analysis.

The general manager of Ontario Machinery Ring - a cooperative developed to match farmers with someone to do custom work - must develop a marketing research proposal and design a questionnaire to determine the demand of machinery ring concept. This is a supplement to Ontario Machinery Ring (A) - Problem Definition, product 9B04A021.

The general manager of Ontario Machinery Ring is looking at expansion opportunities but limited funding requires him to obtain financial assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The ministry requires an assessment of the demand for this marketing concept before they will provide any funding. He had developed a questionnaire and now must analyze the data that has been collected to prepare the marketing research proposal. This is a supplement to Ontario Machinery Ring (A) - Problem Definition, product 9B04A021. Data file is available, product 7B04A023.

The Walt Disney Internet Group Japan has recently launched an entirely new set of interactive mobile character/agents for the NTT DoCoMo iMode platform, called Dimo. Having built Japan's most successful mobile entertainment business using traditional Disney-branded characters and related content, these Dimo characters have been designed to go well beyond entertainment and become valuable guides, assistants and friends for users of the continuously evolving Mobile Internet and the increasingly complex tasks enabled by this platform. Although the Walt Disney Internet Group Japan team feels strongly that these types of character/agents will be the future of human-device interactions, subscription figures six months after Dimo's launch suggest that Japan's mobile consumers may not share this belief.

An undergraduate commerce student has just completed a group strategy project and is wondering what to do. She believed the group had done a good job but was disturbed by many things that had happened between her and her teammates during the project. She was unsure what she and her teammates could have done to stop the situation from escalating as far as it had and what action she should take now to let her teammates know how she felt and to prevent similar instances from occurring in the future.

The administration director at an assembly plant for optical communication products in a US-Chinese joint venture in Shenzhen is wondering what he should do about a recent situation with one of his peers. The director was responsible for all non-production staff and his peer was responsible for production-related staff, both working on a pilot project for the company. Shortly after the project started, the director noticed his peer was becoming more aggressive and making comments about firing staff inside and outside his department. Tension was increasing between them and among other members of the project. He decided to discuss the issue with his peer but was unprepared for the response. He must decide if he should bring this to the attention of senior officers or continue with his approach in resolving the situation.

Two brothers have developed Williams Coffee Pub into a 44-unit, quick service restaurant franchise in Southwestern Ontario. Williams Coffee Pub has a very broad positioning with different segments frequenting it in different parts of the day. The brothers have hired a new chief executive officer and they are about to hand significant operational and strategic control to this new executive and the new board of directors. The broad positioning is an issue and the future communications campaign is also an issue.

The director of marketing for Levi Strauss Canada needs to decide the future fate of the GWG brand, a fallen giant in the Canadian jeans market. For the last three years, GWG had been licensed to a small manufacturer, who has failed to meet the requirements in the license agreement. While the director is keen to use some of the latent brand equity in GWG, she know that Levi's and Dockers brands come first and that she can not divert marketing dollars towards the brand's revival. As well, she must be careful to manage her small but powerful portfolio of brands in the five main channels without cannibalizing the already declining volumes of the Levi's brand.

Two partners have converted an abandoned bingo hall into a 40,000 square foot self-storage unit. It appears to be filling up quickly. The father wants to build four or five similar self-storage units each year in the surrounding cities and towns, by converting former factories and supermarkets into self-storage units. The partners want to build one unit each year in order to retain a larger ownership stake and a smaller debt component. In either situation, there are pricing and feasibility issues that must be considered.

The new chief executive office of a struggling dotcom is faced with high costs and slow revenue generation - sufficient to have burned $Cdn20 million, and profitability was not yet in sight. Fortunately, his venture cap company was still willing to advance funds and he believed that he could nail down some elephant deals to save the enterprise. He had the option of chasing smaller deals for immediate cash. In what priority should he attack his strategic issues, and in particular, what size and type of selling opportunities should he pursue.

Eastern Bank Limited has taken over the Bangladesh operations of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International after its collapse. The new chief executive officer of Eastern Bank must make decisions about which corporate banking clients to target, how to develop and position the Eastern Bank brand, what products to emphasize, in what price structure and whether to centralize or decentralize the bank's operations. The supplement Eastern Bank Limited (B), product 9B04A031 updates the situation. This case provides a good vehicle for discussing relationship management in a complex service analysis of market segments and the present and future profitability, so that the marketing strategy decisions are customer driven.

Biovail was a large international pharmaceutical company with reported revenues of $788 million. Banc of America has issued a research report which indicates that Biovail Corporation's financial statements raised a number of issues that warrant caution for investors, and as a result, Biovail's stock was given a sell rating by Banc of America. A member of Biovail's audit committee is preparing for an upcoming audit meeting and considers the implications of this report for the company and for the audit committee.

An undergraduate business student has finished his first term of study and is pursuing numerous summer job opportunities. He is interested in the field of investment banking and is aware this area requires a strong skill set for financial analysis. A friend, who had worked in investment banking, helps him to prepare for these interviews by providing an exercise where he must match the financial data with its respective industry.

Indian Oil Corporation, a public sector undertaking of the Government of India, is faced with the prospect of the deregulation of the oil industry in India and the need to compete with nimble new market entrants. A major initiative toward this end is the enterprise resource planning system that the company has commissioned. Now, several years into the implementation, several snags arise; the implementation is clearly not going as planned. The company must decide how to bring the implementation back on track and also use the lessons it has learned to re-evaluate whether it is headed in the right direction.

Agnes Insurance calls in KPMG Forensic to conduct a routine fraud and misconduct diagnostic requested by a potential merger partner. The diagnostic reveals a money laundering operation that has gone undetected for several years. The chief financial officer must decide what to do about the money laundering incident as well as how to ensure it does not happen again.

Money laundering is not an activity far removed from the corporate world; in fact, many organizations are unwittingly drawn into the web of money laundering with often damaging results. This note traces the history of money laundering, explores the different stages in the money laundering process, and investigates the growing phenomenon of cyber-laundering. Its intent is to raise awareness of the phenomenon as it relates to the corporate world and to help inform corporate personnel and business students how it might affect their workplace and their work lives.

In teams of four to six people, each team works to develop a structure using building blocks. Various alterations to the terms of the assignment are made as the exercise unfolds, simulating the unpredictability of information systems development. Difference in the technology available to teams (both in terms of amount and type) simulate the challenge of differences in technology resources and later the challenge of integration, even with standard and simple technology.

Jay Nielson has done charity work in India with Akka International for a number of years. After a recent trip, the president of Akka proposed that Nielson enter into a joint venture with Akka to provide information technology outsourcing services to American companies. Akka was willing to provide $100,000 in seed money to fund the venture. Nielson must decide if he wants to undertake this challenge and what it would take to make this work. This also poses an ethical dilemma for him. Should he risk losing the much-needed funds in the hope of bettering a number of lives, or request the seed money be used to provide direct services to the most needy?

Paybox.net AG was the world's first mass-marketable mobile payment system. Launched in 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, it had been steadily losing ground. The company's founder, and architect of the technology underlying Paybox, must decide if his product has a future, and if so, what the market strategy should be.

After selling their high-tech company, three entrepreneurs decided to form an angel investor group. The process of generating and researching new business ideas narrows their search to two possibilities: a technology for Internet data centres and a new supercomputer. Both projects were discussed with venture capitalists that were willing to fund the project, only if the three partners managed the company. The partners must decide whether to leave their angel investment group to become full-time entrepreneurs and which of the two concepts they should pursue.