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Dismissing all the hype around the metaverse would be a mistake. Metaverse marketing strategies do not need Mark Zuckerberg to be on track to become the future norm, perhaps a lot sooner than some brand managers might think. After all, when it comes to interacting with consumers, the metaverse experience has already taken things up a notch. This article provides six mistakes to avoid when planning a metaverse strategy. Mistake 1: Assuming the metaverse is far away. Mistake 2: Trying to dominate. Mistake 3: Assuming the metaverse will reflect real-world structure. Mistake 4: Focusing on transactions (in fact, the metaverse is also about creating new consumer connections, cultural relevance, and community clout). Mistake 5: Failing to seize the opportunity to drive stakeholder capitalism. Mistake 6: Equating the metaverse to NFTs. Ultimately, the evolution of the metaverse will bring together today’s disparate and fragmented ecosystems, allowing businesses to connect with consumers and solve problems in revolutionary new ways. We’ll soon see how far things go in 2022. But whatever happen this year, the writing is on the virtual wall—and it says the winning brand strategies for the metaverse will not take a business-as-usual approach.

Steak ’n Shake, one of America’s oldest and most iconic fast-food chains, was founded in Normal, Illinois, in 1934. When Biglari Holdings assumed control of Steak ’n Shake in August 2008, the company was struggling and incurring losses of approximately US$100,000 per day. To turn the company around, the new owner implemented an aggressive pricing-discount strategy marketed as “4 under $4” that offered any of four different meals for under $4. The strategy worked. Steak ’n Shake went on to post seven consecutive years of same-store sales increases. However, in 2016, sales began to drop, and the company posted five consecutive years of declining store sales. The price-discounting strategy may have been critical in reversing the company’s fortunes, but had it also led to Steak ’n Shake’s current issues? Should Biglari Holdings consider raising prices of menu items? Would customers accept paying higher prices after being accustomed to Steak ’n Shake’s traditionally low pricing strategy?

In July 2019, J.Crew Group Inc., a multi-brand, multichannel specialty US clothing retailer, was investigating a launch within a new apparel category. The company’s marketing research manager had been tasked with interpreting trends and market potential within the industry as well as primary customer research, to recommend a new product line that would increase revenues. She saw three main potentially viable options in the rental, resale, and athleisure markets. Using a mixed methods approach, the research manager would need to provide the chief marketing officer with her recommendation regarding a new product line for J. Crew Group Inc..

Spreadsheet to accompany product W27129.

The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by volume, faced a unique challenge in the manufacture and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to its major stakeholders. SII had COVID-19 vaccine manufacture and supply commitments to COVAX, a joint initiative ensuring equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries and a transfer technology (licensing) agreement with AstraZeneca PLC to supply its COVID-19 vaccine. However, a sudden surge of COVID-19 cases in India during the second wave of the pandemic sharply increased demand for COVID-19 vaccines in the country, forcing the government of India to temporarily ban the export of vaccines from India. At the same time, a ban imposed by the United States on the export of critical raw materials and components used for vaccine manufacturing threatened to bring the vaccine production process at SII to a halt. SII’s chief executive officer had to now juggle meeting domestic demand within India and fulfilling SII’s international supply commitments. Failing to deliver on the commitments would not only spell legal trouble but also pose long-term reputational and business risks for his company. He had few options to navigate the situation.

Blu-Smart Mobility Pvt. Ltd. (BluSmart) was India’s first company to foray into the electric mobility space. Launched in 2019, BluSmart offered ride sharing, car sharing, and shared charging services, and aimed to make India a pollution-free country by providing customers with a complete urban mobility solution. Within a year, BluSmart had garnered investors’ attention and received millions in funding to grow its fleet. It also planned to expand its three services to other Indian cities. However, BluSmart’s future in India was not without challenges. How would these constraints affect BluSmart’s growth, and how could it expand in the Indian market?

In April 2020, the head of the corporate social investments (CSI) division of Investec South Africa (Investec SA), was working to ensure that Investec SA CSI could continue to create opportunities for young people to become active economic participants in society while it also salvaged the school year for students already enrolled in its flagship education program, Promaths. To save the school year, he would have to shift the entire curriculum online, and this presented both an opportunity and a dilemma: How could he harness the crisis of the pandemic to scale up the Promaths program and reach more learners by using quality and affordable program delivery? How could he adapt quickly to make a greater impact with the online Promaths program? He knew that this had to happen fast, but he also saw this as an opportunity to amplify the reach and impact of the Promaths program.

The chief financial officer (CFO) of AngloGold Ashanti Limited (AngloGold Ashanti), one of the world’s largest gold mining companies, had for one year served as the company’s interim chief executive officer (CEO). In the summer of 2021, she accepted an invitation to speak at a luncheon for young female business leaders in the mining industry prior to learning of the unsuccessful outcome of her attempt to secure the permanent CEO position. The company had just announced that a man and seasoned CEO from Colombia would be assuming the role. She now found herself struggling with how to best position her message of inspiration to the young leaders, given the personal impact of the outcome of the CEO search. As a values-based leader, she acknowledged the importance of delivering a message of hope to the aspiring leaders, as well as the importance of honouring her own values. The outcome of her application for the permanent CEO position had also left her with the decision of whether to stay with or leave the organization.

Student spreadsheet for Ivey product no. 9B18N018.

Located in southwest China, Bosai Minerals Group Co., Ltd. (Bosai) has been engaged mainly in the bauxite and manganese business since 1997, and by 2010, it had successfully completed acquisitions of three large overseas mining companies. By incorporating the traditionally mild and inclusive neo-Confucianism into its management philosophy, Bosai’s overseas branches had successfully integrated themselves into local communities and cultures. In March 2016, shortly before the acquisition of Guyana Manganese Inc., the board of directors was debating how to deal with employees of the acquired company. Newer directors proposed laying off inefficient local employees and granting incentives through an improved performance appraisal mechanism. This proposal was fiercely opposed by directors who had been on the board longer. Bosai’s chair and managing director had to decide how to proceed, ensuring a smooth transition and sustainable development of the subsidiary.

In November 2020, Paul Dietrich was wrapping up his busy harvest season for the 1,100 acres of farmland he currently operated. Although the fall harvest season demanded much of Dietrich’s time and attention, he simply could not ignore an investment opportunity that had been presented to him. A local farmland owner was selling a 150-acre parcel of farmland that adjoined some land parcels already owned by Dietrich. Dietrich estimated that a competitive bid would need to be at least CA$20,000 per acre and the bid would need to be made immediately. He sat down to consider both short-term and long-term impacts on his cash flows.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W27012.

Ebidding, Shanghai Huizhao Information Technology Co., Ltd.’s key product, was China’s only “Internet+” integrated bidding and procurement service provider, integrating supply chain management consulting, project implementation, and electronic bidding platform operation. Its main business was to provide enterprises with a full-process electronic bidding and procurement solution. The Ebidding team had developed a full-process electronic bidding platform in 2012, and it had been upgraded and developed regularly since then. A business expansion opportunity emerged for Ebidding as a result of shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of precautions to combat COVID-19, offline bidding and procurement across China were severely curtailed. Electronic bidding procurement projects were also stalled due to the inability of experts to evaluate online bids. To seize this market opportunity, gain competitive advantage, and grow its business in the face of significant uncertainty, Ebidding would have to determine how to quickly develop a remote decentralized bid evaluation system, gain acceptance for it, and lead customers to accept the new system.

Swedish technology start-up Primateria AB (Primateria) was founded in November of 2004 with the main idea to provide science-backed consulting services for cutting-tool producers and end-users. What had started as a consulting service without the need for assets turned quickly into a production-driven service to support the cutting tool supply chain. The company had managed to consistently grow without external capital, had automated processes, opened a second physical location, and added physical vapour deposition coating capabilities. For the road ahead, the owners had to now decide how to protect Primateria’s intellectual property and how to meet the need for localized services for their large international clients quickly.

The owner of a tennis ball manufacturer was reviewing the company's financial performance for its third fiscal year. The bookkeeper had already recorded the fiscal 2020 cash transactions, but may have done so incorrectly. The owner recorded the opening balances, cash receipts, and cash disbursements to calculate the unadjusted trial balances for fiscal 2020. She started with the bookkeeper’s unadjusted trial balances and planned to use the balance sheet and the list of cash receipts and disbursements, if necessary. She would have to figure out where the bookkeeper posted each entry, determine whether it required an adjustment, and adjust accordingly.

Data preparation is a necessary pre-processing step in analytics. It aims to clean the data from various resources and improve its quality for better productivity. This process includes many tasks such as fusion, cleaning, and augmentation of data. This teaching note will focus on illustrating data cleaning using the programming language Python, with all codes completed in Google Laboratory. Different solutions using the programming languages R and Microsoft Excel are also provided. To effectively illustrate the data preparation process, the relatively simple dataset Bengaluru House Prices is used. This is a relatively messy dataset with a few variables and many records, making it ideal for explaining data preparation steps.

In January 2021, Entomo Farms (Entomo), a family-owned Ontario-based Canadian cricket producer, received additional funding to support its growth and prepare for the entry into Canada of what would be its biggest competitor. As Canada’s largest and only organic cricket supplier, Entomo generated most of its revenue as a supplier of crickets as raw material to food manufacturers; however, due to anticipated industry changes, Entomo was increasing its consumer-level presence by producing and selling more of its own brands as consumer packaged goods (CPGs). To support this decision, Entomo’s chief operating officer needed to develop a strategic marketing road map for growing the revenues from the company’s CPG segment.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W26997.

Axis Bank was the fifth-largest bank in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. In 2006, the bank set up a trust, Axis Bank Foundation, to manage its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. In Phase 1 of its CSR journey, it had followed three of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations and achieved the mission of “generating one million livelihoods in a sustainable manner,” ahead of schedule. Encouraged by the success of Phase 1, Axis Bank planned to include three additional Sustainable Development Goals to guide Phase 2 with the mission of “generating livelihoods in a sustainable manner for two million households.” Rajesh Dahiya, who oversaw Axis Bank’s CSR initiatives, was faced with several key decisions for framing the CSR strategy for Phase 2 based on an evaluation of the performance in Phase 1 and the lessons learned in that phase.

Herend Porcelain Manufactory Ltd. (Herend) was an almost 200-year-old porcelain manufactory located in western Hungary. The company had weathered multiple social and political changes, world wars, and hardships and had variably experienced prosperity, international recognition, and, on one occasion, bankruptcy. However, under the current chief executive officer, Herend had become a stable and profitable organization. Then, in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges. Government-mandated lockdowns—an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19—restricted consumers from shopping in person at Herend’s shops and diminished the use of porcelain in hospitality and gastronomy where the porcelain sets would be used. The health safety of employees, production disruptions, and decline in orders were other concerns. How could Herend prepare for and survive this extraordinary challenge?