The use of intense emotions in marketing campaigns is not unusual. This case illustrates the use of negative emotions in advertising in order to decrease competition and enable prices to increase. It examines examples in two common emotional contexts-embarrassment and fear-reviewing ads promoting funerals, public service campaigns, mouthwash, diapers, and infant formula. Substantial issues about emotional marketing concern whether it is moral and whether it is deceptive. The case includes discussion of social taboos and, as such, may upset the sensibilities of some students, although this is not the author's intention. Please note that the phenomenon of social taboos creating such sensibility is precisely the basis of higher prices and the learning value of this case.
This case about Economic Value to the Customer (EVC) enables students to deeply analyze the positive and negative differentiation value of a product or service, and how distinct demographic segments can have disparate EVC. Additionally, it makes students aware that consumers can feel differently about various types of (equivalent) payment, e.g., $1 spent on service fees, tips, or on monthly fees for a food delivery service. Finally, the case encourages students to think about how to communicate the various aspects of value that a product/service provides.
This case provides many different examples of pricing with ethical concerns that are spread across two common pricing contexts-value pricing and dynamic pricing. The examples include pharmaceutical pricing, ridesharing, dynamically priced vending machines, and more. These brief examples raise substantial issues about pricing for class discussion. Students should think about why ethical dilemmas arise in each of the examples, and if there is any underlying essence that ties together these ethical dilemmas.
This case looks at the product shortages of N95 and N99 masks, hand sanitizers and wipes as a result of a new coronavirus, COVID-19. Students have to respond to the question: What are some alternate strategies to control product shortages and how do they impact consumers and disease control?
How do our senses affect which products we like and don't like? How can products be made more sensorially engaging? What should managers consider when devising sensory marketing strategies? As companies are becoming more aware of consumers' subconscious responses to products and services, they are relying less on traditional advertising and marketing and more on the products, themselves, to influence customers by stimulating an emotional response. This conceptual note defines sensory marketing, its theoretical foundations, and how it can best be used to shape consumer perception and behavior. It explores how deliberate sensory inputs can impact customers on a subconscious level by triggering positive emotional responses to products and brands through sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. The note also discusses advances in neuroscience and neuro-imaging techniques that have enabled more effective use of sensory marketing.
Skudge Foods Inc. is a consulting firm specializing in food pricing with an emphasis on bundling. Students will follow Skudge founder Sid Kris Jorgenson as his firm determines what prices to charge to maximize profits for his clients. The exercises explain the difference between pure components, pure bundling, and mixed bundling models and how they can be applied to unique consumer segments with various reservation prices. The exercise series is presented in four parts. Students should prepare Exercise A before class, and can complete Exercises B-D during the instruction period. Through this series of increasingly sophisticated exercises, students will gain a deep understanding of optimizing pricing and increasing profits through strategic bundling. Each consecutive exercise adds constraints to the bundling challenge, requiring students to construct increasingly complex algorithms.
This is a three-part, disguised case series. In June 2009, Diana Zanzi was hired by Ventoso Ship Supply, an Italian sailboat manufacturer, to help them understand their boats' puzzling selling patterns. Zanzi was informed that sales rates for two higher-end boat models were especially odd. Despite one's superior technical specifications, speed, amenities, and overall value-for-money, their higher end models were hard to sell. However, a lower-quality boat was sold at an astonishing rate. Existing survey work conducted by the company only served to confirm the rational assumption that customers generally preferred more technically advanced sailboats; as such, the survey would not solve the mystery. Tasked with solving this mystery, Zanzi was given the contact information for Ventoso's roster of potential customers and asked to conduct her own interviews to discover what could possibly explain customers' preferences when acquiring sailboats. Zanzi was told that consumers may not be consciously aware of how they choose sailboats, and so she needed to figure out a good method to understand these unconscious preferences. In part A of the series, the reader is faced with the task of designing a test that might reveal buyers' sailing-related thoughts. For instance, what should Zanzi ask consumers to understand their implicit and unconscious perceptions of the ideal sailboat? More importantly, the reader is invited to consider when and why such a tool is needed. In other words, what marketing technique should we use when consumers don't seem to be fully aware of their decision process?
This is a three-part, disguised case series. In June 2009, Diana Zanzi was hired by Ventoso Ship Supply, an Italian sailboat manufacturer, to help them understand their boats' puzzling selling patterns. Zanzi was informed that sales rates for two higher-end boat models were especially odd. Despite one's superior technical specifications, speed, amenities, and overall value-for-money, their higher end models were hard to sell. However, a lower-quality boat was sold at an astonishing rate. Existing survey work conducted by the company only served to confirm the rational assumption that customers generally preferred more technically advanced sailboats; as such, the survey would not solve the mystery. Tasked with solving this mystery, Zanzi was given the contact information for Ventoso's roster of potential customers and asked to conduct her own interviews to discover what could possibly explain customers' preferences when acquiring sailboats. Zanzi was told that consumers may not be consciously aware of how they choose sailboats, and so she needed to figure out a good method to understand these unconscious preferences. In part C of the series, the reader is tasked with interpreting multiple levels of data (including selected stimuli covering multiple senses, consumer-generated adjectives linked to those stimuli, and word clusters of shared meaning composed of those adjectives) that resulted from Zanzi's interviews. What does this data indicate about consumers' preferred sailboat qualities and, more expansively, how Ventoso can effectively market its sailboats across different cultures? This discussion again allows the professor to talk about various market research techniques.
This is a three-part, disguised case series. In June 2009, Diana Zanzi was hired by Ventoso Ship Supply, an Italian sailboat manufacturer, to help them understand their boats' puzzling selling patterns. Zanzi was informed that sales rates for two higher-end boat models were especially odd. Despite one's superior technical specifications, speed, amenities, and overall value-for-money, their higher end models were hard to sell. However, a lower-quality boat was sold at an astonishing rate. Existing survey work conducted by the company only served to confirm the rational assumption that customers generally preferred more technically advanced sailboats; as such, the survey would not solve the mystery. Tasked with solving this mystery, Zanzi was given the contact information for Ventoso's roster of potential customers and asked to conduct her own interviews to discover what could possibly explain customers' preferences when acquiring sailboats. Zanzi was told that consumers may not be consciously aware of how they choose sailboats, and so she needed to figure out a good method to understand these unconscious preferences. In part C of the series, the reader is tasked with interpreting multiple levels of data (including selected stimuli covering multiple senses, consumer-generated adjectives linked to those stimuli, and word clusters of shared meaning composed of those adjectives) that resulted from Zanzi's interviews. What does this data indicate about consumers' preferred sailboat qualities and, more expansively, how Ventoso can effectively market its sailboats across different cultures? This discussion again allows the professor to talk about various market research techniques.
This three-part case provides the opportunity to engage students in an examination of how cross-cultural considerations can affect managerial, legal, operational, and corporate social responsibility decision-making. The cases present two, non-profit organizations -- one in the U.S. and one in India. Both organizations are focused on food redistribution but each faces different challenges based on cultural, legal, and logistical issues. Cases A, B, and C are rolled out in a single class session. Students are given Cases A and B to read before class (including watching the video that accompanies Case B). Case C is handed out in class.
This three-part case provides the opportunity to engage students in an examination of how cross-cultural considerations can affect managerial, legal, operational, and corporate social responsibility decision-making. The cases present two, non-profit organizations -- one in the U.S. and one in India. Both organizations are focused on food redistribution but each faces different challenges based on cultural, legal, and logistical issues. Cases A, B, and C are rolled out in a single class session. Students are given Cases A and B to read before class (including watching the video that accompanies Case B). Case C is handed out in class.
This three-part case provides the opportunity to engage students in an examination of how cross-cultural considerations can affect managerial, legal, operational, and corporate social responsibility decision-making. The cases present two, non-profit organizations -- one in the U.S. and one in India. Both organizations are focused on food redistribution but each faces different challenges based on cultural, legal, and logistical issues. Cases A, B, and C are rolled out in a single class session. Students are given Cases A and B to read before class (including watching the video that accompanies Case B). Case C is handed out in class.
Through this series of increasingly more sophisticated exercises authored by Aradhna Krishna, students gain a deep understanding of the strong connection between price, demand, variable cost, and capacity. In their efforts to help Katja maximize profit in her bread-making venture, students will learn the concepts of sunk fixed cost, incremental fixed cost, and variable cost. They will discover how a profit-maximizing price depends on all three factors of demand, variable cost and capacity, and how they all interrelate. For example, students learn that fixed cost is important because it affects capacity decisions and hence also entry/exit decisions. However, given a pre-existing capacity, fixed cost does not affect the pricing decision. Students also learn how price can be used strategically to avoid increasing capacity. This exercise series is presented in five short parts (Katja's Danish Bread Exercises A-E). Exercise A is given to students to prepare before class, and Exercises B-E are read in class and done sequentially during class.
These exercises complement the WDI Publishing Case "Pink Tax: Gender and other Price Discrimination Factors". Diana Kelly is the brand manager for a company that has a new cream that gives consumers brighter, shinier nails. It will be sold in major retail outlets like Target, Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens. Kelly is given various segmentation schemes produced by consultancy teams to evaluate. Students are asked to evaluate the segmentation schemes and determine how the product should be versioned and priced.
Diana Kelly is the brand manager for a company that has a new cream that gives consumers brighter, shinier nails. It will be sold in major retail outlets like Target, Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens. As Kelly conducts research to develop a pricing strategy, she discovers examples of price discrimination for products sold to women. In fact, women's products were priced higher than men's 42% of the time. Kelly considers having separate packaging for men and women and price the firm's product higher for women. Will this help the company maximize profits? Is price discrimination ethical? Students are asked to explore mechanisms for price discrimination and gender-based pricing.