In October 2008, WM Wrigley Jr. Company ("Wrigley"), the world's largest gum-maker, completed a US$23 billion friendly takeover by Mars, a US-based, family-owned company and a global leader in confectionery products. The takeover made Mars the world's largest confectionery company, and Wrigley became a standalone subsidiary of Mars. Wrigley had been outperforming the rest of the confectionery industry in the 10 years leading up to the merger. The merger allowed both Wrigley and Mars to leverage each other's strengths to continue their paths of growth. Mars was attracted by Wrigley's success in China and its product innovation. How has Wrigley succeeded in China's chewing-gum market through product innovation? Bolstered by Mars's financial strength and product portfolio, what product-innovation strategy can it adopt to seize the opportunities for sustained success?

Luen Thai is considering adopting a "design-to-store" supply chain strategy to compete in the apparel market as he faces increasing margin pressure, new market entrants, and China's WTO entry. The decision to implement "design-to-store" will depend on the success of partner process integration (between fabric mill, manufacturer, and brand) and mechanisms to enhance "collaborative behavior" between partners. Luen Thai endeavors to fundamentally improve information flow which could lead to change in processes and create multi-company efficiencies.

Although Wal-Mart, the world's largest company by revenue, was into its 9th year of operations in China, its stores were still losing money. It had created a miracle in the U.S. retail industry by revolutionizing the sector's business model and successfully implementing its model through innovative practices that enabled it to sell national brands at "Every Day Low Prices". The challenge Wal-Mart faced was whether it could transport its successful model to win in a market with many differing characteristics which threatened its low-cost structure and which could nullify its competitive advantage. Concerned with the application of established domestic business models in international expansion. Also sheds light on other globalization issues such as market entry strategy, localization vs. standardization, the effect of regulation changes on the competitive landscape, and firm performance.

In mid-February 2006, Christopher Smith, a U.S. Republican Congressman, proposed the Global Online Freedom Act, draft legislation that would prohibit U.S.-listed Internet companies from complying with the demands of Internet censorship and the requirement to disclose the personal information of Internet users imposed by the People's Republic of China. These U.S.-listed Internet companies include hardware and/or software vendors and search services providers that enable millions of businesses and individuals to operate on the Internet. The bill was introduced following a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. called in February 2006, after a number of American Internet companies were found to be participating in the repression of human rights in China. Looks at the dilemma facing multinational firms: how to comply with local laws while at the same time trying to be socially responsible.

Provides an overview of business corruption in China, placing it in a context that takes into account various political, economic, legal, and cultural elements. More specifically, it examines corporate ownership and structure in China, identifies sources of corruption, and analyses the impact of corruption on the country's social and economic stability. Closes with a set of recommendations for countering business corruption in China.

In face of globalization, outsourcing, changing regulations, and rapid technological innovations, companies in the 2000s were increasingly challenged to devise and implement adaptable business models. This entailed putting in place enterprise applications that were open-source, simple to implement, and easy to integrate within and without the organizational bounds. Because traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems were generally complex, proprietary, and difficult to install, ERP systems providers had to reposition themselves strategically. SAP, the leading company in this space, faced this challenge by transforming itself from a closed-source software developer to an open-source software integrator. By opening up its proprietary software products as an open development and integration platform, SAP allowed its customers to modify their ERPs to suit their specific needs. This new strategy, however, would fundamentally affect the company's business architecture. In other words, SAP had to rethink how it would define its value proposition, identify and target its customers, deploy its resources, configure its business processes, manage its alliances, and develop and maintain its profit and growth engines. How could the company pull off this repositioning initiative? Would it be able to attract the global army of independent developers in supporting its new software platform strategy? How would the ongoing consolidation in the software industry affect the Company's new strategy? How would the main competitors such as Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and a host of companies emerging in India react?

Examines how the "old economy" of the traditional postal service has changed over time and how Australia Post is adapting to the many pressures that threaten its existence. With increasing adoption of e-mail as a means of communication, increased competition as a result of deregulation, and the strain of servicing a country with huge distances between inhabited locations and low population density, Australia Post needed to find a solution that would ensure the long-term viability of its business. The retail sector, with its 4,000-plus post office outlets, processed many different types of across-the-counter financial transactions, including banking transactions and utility payments. A project team was established to address the fundamental issue of how to structure the IT infrastructure to enable retail outlets to generate future revenue flows for Post. However, having established the Internet-based infrastructure to connect the extensive chain of retail outlets, the question was whether this new infrastructure would successfully entice third parties to buy into the model.

In October 2001, NTT DoCoMo, Japan's leading mobile telecommunications company, launched the world's first commercial third-generation (3G) mobile service. However, the new service faced technological obstacles. Many observers were skeptical about its future success. But 3G in Japan was only DoCoMo's first step in a grand plan to have its standards of 3G technology and service established worldwide. By late 2001, DoCoMo had formed alliances with major telecommunications players in Asia, Europe, and the United States to develop 3G networks. Despite technological setbacks and astronomical fees for obtaining a license to operate 3G in some European countries, DoCoMo and its partners continued to build the infrastructure for the new-generation service. Analysts saw these moves as a gamble.

Describes three different approaches to electronic purchasing taken by a state government: 1) ERP-to-ERP by State Health (the state government's largest spender); 2) a central catalogue (the state government Buyers' Catalogue) maintained by government purchasing officers; and 3) an outsourced gateway hub known as JEBI (the government's Joint eBusiness Initiative project), intended for use initially by government agencies and eventually by small and medium-size businesses (SMEs) across the state. The gateway hub approach needs to incorporate the other systems' transaction volumes for it to be viable and to realize the longer term goal of creating an e-business marketplace for the state's SMEs. How will the JEBI project manager co-opt the other electronic purchasing projects to its cause?

Craig Knight, Asia Pacific digital business and customer services manager of Eastman Chemical Co., was given a mandate to sell Eastman's philosophy for an integrated electronic supply chain, otherwise known as the Integrated System Solution (ISS), to its business partners in the region and to encourage adoption. Having invested in a state-of-the-art technical architecture that would support interconnectivity with all parties along the supply chain, Eastman was keen to realize the full benefits to be gained from an integrated e-supply chain on a global scale. Following numerous rounds of discussion with key business partners in the Asia Pacific region, some progress had been made. Nagase & Co. Ltd. of Japan had agreed to adopt ISS connections with Eastman, but had some reservations regarding the extent of integration. Although the benefits of integration were proven, suppliers, customers, distributors, and other interested parties were faced with numerous limitations and considerations that would have significant implications on their established business processes and even the shaping of their corporate strategy. Adoption was not a simple choice. Knight understood these shortcomings and was making every effort to ease the adoption process by identifying to Nagase and other business partners the longer term benefits of applying XML technology to their businesses.

At the end of 2001, Cathay Pacific's CXeBuy electronic procurement system was fully operational for its headquarters in Hong Kong. The 14-month implementation project aimed at applying Internet-based technology to build the most efficient purchasing process and capability in the industry. Although the project was far from complete, a member of the Project Steering Committee (PSC) queried the actual benefits realized so far as a result of e-procurement implementation. Robert Lamoureux, manager in charge of the e-procurement initiative, proposed to the PSC to formulate a methodology that user departments could apply at will to assess the impact of CXeBuy on their operations. However, some members of the committee raised concerns that such a voluntary approach would serve only a limited purpose and would fall short of providing department heads with an overview of the impact of CXeBuy on the overall corporate mission. Other PSC members were unsure of the need for such a valuation exercise at this early stage. Something had to be done to reinstate the need for accountability and support the premise that any Cathay Pacific e-business initiative had to prove its value.

In December 2000, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) launched the Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) scheme, a flagship e-government project. The overall e-government strategy was to use a portal for the provision of electronic public services and commercial services, making the ESD portal (www.esd.gov.hk) a key element. The government contracted a single private operator to implement and provide ESD services for five years. The contract was awarded in November 1999 to ESD Services Ltd. (ESDSL). This case discusses how the HKSAR developed ESD's business model, which is a combination of government-to-citizen and business-to-citizen models, and how ESDSL is implementing it. Also focuses on the major challenges and issues that the private operator, ESDSL, faced in building, implementing, and managing an e-government project. ESD is in its second year of implementation and an immediate issue is the slow adoption of online transactions by the public, which is important in relation to the viability of the ESD's business model.

One of the most frustrating parts of trading bonds in Asia today is that prior to placing a trade, buyers and sellers must spend hours phoning dealers to get quotes and aggregating market research. In July 2000, HSBC, Deustche Bank, and Citigroup joined forces with Bridge e-Markets to form BondsinAsia (BIA), which aimed at facilitating the trading of Asian fixed-income securities. Officially launched in January 2002, BIA rolled out an electronic trading system in Hong Kong and Singapore. The system replaced paper and telephone information gathering by giving access to online price and research information to market participants on an instantaneous, 24/7 basis. As BIA was preparing to expand its portal to other markets, a number of questions remained on many industry players' minds. How would the legal, regulatory, and technical issues affect BIA's cross-market franchise model?

The "eInstant Bonus" was an interactive advertising concept designed internally by the Mass Transit Railway Corp. Ltd. (MTR) in Hong Kong. Under this scheme, special discount offers from merchants/advertisers were displayed on a 42-inch Plasma TV in the form of a 10-second static slide or a 30-second TV commercial. Passengers could select items on the touch-screen monitor and a discount coupon would be issued. The discount coupon could then be redeemed for products or services purchased at the merchant's premises. For each coupon issued, a transaction fee of $1.00 would be deducted from the passenger's Octopus Card. This case illustrates the use of information technology by a large corporation for strategic alignment and value creation. Multimedia kiosks are a new phenomenon of the 1990s to provide personalized and interactive customer service on-site. Discussion is provided on the concepts and applications of kiosks for a customer service organization. The MTR eInstant Bonus project is considered a successful innovation by various measures. Also provides an understanding of innovation adoption and diffusion, specifically, how the attributes of the innovation relate to its rate of adoption and diffusion.

On March 22, 2001, Microsoft Corp. warned computer users that an individual posing electronically as a company representative had fooled VeriSign, Inc., the leading digital certificate authority, into issuing two fraudulent digital certificates in Microsoft's name. The certificates could be used by malicious attackers to trick computer users into running unsafe software programs. Despite the discovery of the fraud and the follow-up investigation by the FBI, the person who registered the certificates could not be found. The Microsoft case was the world's first reported case of digital certificate fraud. It raised serious questions about the sophistication of digital certificates and signatures and the rules governing the conduct of issuers and users in the electronic marketplace. The accident also revealed that a simple identity certificate/signature comes with complex and nonstandard policies and procedures that are vulnerable to regulatory and security flaws.

The Electronic Tendering System (ETS) was a flagship project under the Hong Kong Special Administration Region's (HKSAR's) e-government strategy to lead by example in the adoption of electronic means for government transactions with the public and businesses. With the success of the initial launch in April 2000, HKSAR planned to extend the ETS to all other government procurements, with a goal of transferring 80% of all procurement tenders online by the end of 2003. Also under consideration was an electronic marketplace system (EMS) for the small value purchases and to integrate the two systems for a total procurement solution.

In 2001, Citibank's Cash and Trade Group division transformed itself into an e-business, with the strategic intent of converting traditional money management business into an e-business framework. This case discusses how Citibank is using its traditional assets and integrating Internet initiatives into its e-business strategy to create sustainable competitive advantages. Competition in the cash and trade business is becoming intense and a new breed of competent and aggressive competitors is vying for the market, including technology companies interested in B2B e-payment. Citibank is responding to the competition by continually evolving its e-business strategy--connect, transform, extend. Also looks into the challenges that Citibank e-Business Group is facing in developing a single global web platform for the corporate market. The focus is on how Citibank is developing an e-business product that would serve the highly segmented market and how to encourage these markets to use a global single platform online. At one end of the spectrum are multinationals and top-level domestic corporates that operate sophisticated treasuries, and at the other end are companies and small- and medium-size businesses that are not yet ready to upgrade and transform their systems.

Japan Net Bank (JNB), Japan's first Internet bank without physical branches, began operation in October 2000. It attracted mainly young customers looking for convenient, round-the-clock bank services with much more competitive interest rates and transaction charges than traditional Japanese banks. Its access channels included the mobile Internet service i-mode and fixed-line Internet. JNB relied on flexible, open computer systems and a small, young workforce to minimize operation cost. Its shareholders, including parent company Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. as well as NTT DoCoMo (provider of i-mode), were all big companies from different industry sectors. By April 2001, JNB had 130,000 customers. But it needed to resolve a number of issues before being able to achieve long-term success in the face of strong competition from bricks-and-mortar banks and new Internet-only banks. One of those issues was about how to meet with wide fluctuations in usage without overinvesting; the other was alliance management, i.e., how to cooperate with alliance partners to achieve competitive advantage.

Discusses how Grey Worldwide Hong Kong and China (Grey WW-HK/China) is repositioning itself through defined e-marketing and CRM strategies for the Asian market. Examines how integral its customer relationship group is in building a CRM strategy to deliver client value proposition. Grey WW-HK/China has very strong umbrella brand equity, but the brand capital has to be invigorated through a renewed e-marketing focus. Constrained by changing market conditions, particularly industry pressure on commission margins, Grey WW-HK/China needs to differentiate itself and is assessing CRM's value in developing loyal and lifetime customers. However, in a growing Asian market, Grey WW-HK/China is in heated competition with other players, including management consultants, traditional agencies, and pure on-line players who are actively pursuing a CRM business focus. Grey WW-HK/China's CRM team is in the process of developing an Asia-specific CRM blueprint for its internal management, something that is transferable to Grey's clients. Grey WW-HK/China is considering merging technology with traditional marketing philosophy, and the team is expected to deliver a proposal that outlines the CRM tools that Grey WW-HK/China should use to reposition its brand and build customer loyalty.

Discusses the plans of the Hong Kong government to seek approval of its proposal to replace the current Hong Kong ID card with a smart ID card. The approval in question is sought from the Hong Kong legislature. Supplies material for an in-class debate on the government's proposal to replace the current ID card with a smart ID card. The government's proposal calls for a multiapplication smart ID card. This is one of three options recommended in a consultant report. Students are invited to play the role of legislators and defend their preferred option.