In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online purchases through four interest-free installments. Customer advocacy and the brand's ability to improve customer acquisition for its retail partners had contributed to strong network effects, leading to rapid growth. In the United States, however, competitors were abundant, the regulatory environment was unfamiliar, brand awareness was lacking and retailers were seeking to partner with service providers capable of supporting an omnichannel experience. This new set of challenges required Afterpay to reevaluate its strategy: should the company fast-track the rollout of its offline offering in the United States or was it prudent to wait to acquire a larger customer base to justify the capital expenditure and operational changes this would require?

The case opens in 2017 as Onur Erbay, CEO of HOPI, a multi-vendor loyalty platform, is contemplating a critical decision. The case chronicles the origins of Boyner Group, the parent company of HOPI and a major retailer in Turkey, and development of retail and customer relationship management (CRM) in Turkey over the years. Before HOPI, Boyner Group retailers were unable to trace customers across the Group's brands form insights about customers' preferences and habits beyond what brand-specific CRM and loyalty programs provided data for. HOPI was born as the management team at Boyner Group realized the need to serve the customer holistically; the program was designed as a coalition loyalty program including non-Boyner retailer partners. The case provides a detailed overview of the design choices for HOPI-a mobile only app with its own currency, paracik, its revenue model, user experience, and how the company planned to leverage big data to segment the customers for retailers and increase purchasing power for customers. Since its launch in 2015, HOPI had 5.5 million downloads and 300 thousand daily active users browsing campaigns offered by over 116 coalition retailers that ranged from gas stations and cinemas to supermarkets and department stores. In 2017, Erbay, who had ambitions to grow HOPI beyond a loyalty program, was faced with harsh realities: the Turkish market was very price sensitive, several competitors had emerged since HOPI's launch, and several retailers and consumers preferred discounts at the time of purchase instead of earning loyalty points for future purchases. Erbay was also facing pressure from the parent company to make HOPI profitable. Was it time for HOPI to pivot to the discount model and abandon its original concept?

In May 2015 Paulo Campos, Co-Founder and CEO of Zalora Philippines, found himself at a crucial turning point in his young company's development. In just three years, Zalora had come from entering the Philippine fashion retail industry as an unknown quantity to becoming a household name across the Southeast Asian archipelago. Campos and his team had achieved much in this time: launching one of the first online retailers in the country, building a logistics network from scratch, acquiring customers at an astonishing pace, and signing up major brands to offer on Zalora.com.ph. But now his investors were ready for him to shift gears and focus on turning a profit within the next two years. Zalora Philippines was part of Zalora Group, a Singapore-headquartered online fashion retailer that operated across Southeast Asia. Zalora Group, in turn, was part of a global entity called Global Fashion Group (GFG), which owned online fashion retailers and brands in emerging markets across the world. In addition to Zalora in Southeast Asia, GFG owned Dafiti in South America, Namshi in the Middle East, Jabong in South Asia, Lamoda in Eastern Europe, and The Iconic in Australia. GFG's principal investors were Kinnevik, a Swedish investment company, and Rocket Internet.

This case picks up from the events in Planters Nuts and describes how the new management team for Planters turned the brand around in 2013 by implementing a new brand positioning accompanied by a multimillion dollar marketing campaign.

In 2012 Planters had about $1 billion in U.S. annual revenues, but had experienced declining unit sales and household penetration over the past six years. The snack nuts category was growing overall, but household spending was shifting away from peanuts, cashews, and mixed nuts-Planters' core business-to almonds and pistachios. A new brand management team for Planters had to develop a plan to reinvigorate the still largest brand in the category, and specifically to decide whether to focus on rebuilding its traditional product categories or on attempting to capitalize on the newer nut categories. Central to this process were questions of segmentation, targeting, and positioning.