Afzal Imram, co-founder of State Property, a fine jewellery retailer rooted in Singapore, had achieved a lot. Numerous celebrities, including Michelle Obama, Lady Gaga, Nicole Kidman, and Emilia Clarke, had worn State Property's products. A second brick-and-mortar store had been opened in Singapore, and the company was successful in overseas sales using Net-a-Porter. Despite these successes, State Property's website traffic remained relatively low. Afzal felt that sales would greatly benefit from an increase in the company's reach online. If consumers encountered his company's website earlier in their journey, they could be directed to an online sales platform or a physical store. How could he improve the company's organic ranking in search engine results?
This social network data analysis case presents the scenario of the launch of a new version of a popular video game called 'Thrive in Space' by a gaming company. The company's Chief Marketing Officer Tina Lohn wants to run an influencer marketing campaign on social platform Twitch to reach its live streaming audience and promote the game. However, before running the campaign, Lohn and her team must select the right influencers for the campaign. Lohn has asked her team to conduct a social network analysis (SNA) to better understand the network of Twitch users and shortlist potential influencers based on various social network metrics. The case is accompanied by two datasets that contain a sample of real data of Twitch users, and allows students to conduct a social network analysis on this data to select the appropriate influencers. The case revolves around Lohn's dilemma of how to choose the right influencers. How can she use SNA to select the influencers? What social network metrics can help her identify the right influencers? What other strategies can she use for selecting influencers that can complement SNA? And, finally, how can she calculate the ROIs of working with the selected influencers?
Set in January 2020, the case describes Singapore-based retailer Iuiga's omni-channel journey. Launched in May 2017 as an e-commerce only venture, Iuiga offers a curated range of high- quality products in the 'home and living' category at affordable prices. It sources these products from China-based original design manufacturers (ODMs), which produce for large global brands (known for their superior design, quality and hence high prices), and retails them under its own brand name at much lower and transparent prices. In May 2018, Iuiga launched a pop-up store to drive greater brand presence and customer engagement. Buoyed by the store's runaway sales, the firm decided to adopt a longer-term brick-and-mortar retail strategy, and by December 2019, it had established nine retail stores that contributed 80% of its total sales and employed more than 40 sales people (full time and part time). It had been almost 20 months since Iuiga adopted omni-channel retailing. Looking at the latest sales and customer data, Jaslyn Chan - Head of marketing at Iuiga, wondered if going physical had been worth it, or whether the sales in the offline channel had grown at the cost of sales in the online channel. Moreover, what types of customers did the different channels attract? Should the company increase the physical footprint further? Would opening additional pop-up or brick-and-mortar stores enable more customer acquisitions and tapping of new market segments?