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Sidar Åžahin, founder and CEO of Peak Games, a Turkey-based global mobile gaming company, must decide on the final list of candidates for the critical global marketing director position the company has been trying to fill for over a year. Since its founding in 2010, Peak Games has grown to become Europe's 3rd biggest grossing online gaming company and its mobile games have made a name for themselves internationally. Åžahin's team has grown to 100 people, almost all of whom reside in the same office in Istanbul, Turkey. As Peak's games reached an audience of over 350 million users worldwide, the recruitment needs and criteria also changed. Åžahin needed more internationally experienced talent in the company. Yet, this was not an easy background to acquire in Turkey, and Åžahin valued that team members shared the office to meld into the company culture. Throughout the year, the company's HR director has used multiple search channels and interviewed various candidates. In April 2017, having received a short list of candidates, none of whom looked like the "perfect fit" at an initial glance, Åžahin is set on reaching a decision on the position.

On November 7th, 2017, Sidar Åžahin, founder and CEO of Peak Games, a Turkey-based global mobile gaming company, had just closed the sale of Peak Games' card games studio. This sale included three of the company's top grossing games and half of its team. Sidar was happy about the $100 million sale to the global gaming giant Zynga. He felt that the spin out would sharpen Peak Games' focus on the casual game genre, which was a faster growing genre with cyclical trends. Having attained the desired focus for the company, Sidar was already thinking about what he needed to do to make Peak Games into 10x what it is today.

This case examines the strategic choices and business model with regards to branding at Mavi, a leading Turkish apparel retailer. The case is presented from the perspective of the company CEO and its global brand director who is also part owner. In 2015, Mavi had sales of $419 million, up 20% from the previous year. Growth rates like these were becoming routine at Mavi. But, the path to growth was getting more challenging, and Turkven, Mavi's private equity partner, was planning its options after seven years of investment. There were four growth levers Mavi could pull, but each involved selecting one growth path while neglecting another. Should the company invest in growth domestically or internationally? Should they change the price positioning of the brand to move upmarket or down market? Which value proposition offered the most future promise: functional differentiation, lifestyle differentiation, or celebrity endorsement? Should the company continue to serve both men and women of all ages, or were there specific consumer targets that offered the most promise? Managers realized that these choices would not only determine the company's short-term growth trajectory, but also shape the longer-term value of the Mavi brand.

In October 2016, Nevzat Aydin, co-founder and CEO of Yemeksepeti, the Turkish online food-ordering company, was looking over the company's quarterly results and projections for the upcoming year with his management team. It had been almost a year and a half since Aydin had agreed to sell the company's shares to Delivery Hero, the Berlin-based global leader in online and mobile food ordering, for $589 million. In 2016, the company had had grown to include more than 13,000 member restaurants servicing six million users and achieved a 41% year-on-year growth. Yemeksepeti operated with an EBITDA margin of over 50%. Although the company had introduced other revenue streams over the years, commissions remained as the main source of income. Aydin believed that, while there was plenty of room to grow by taking market share from phone orders, much could be done by revenue diversification; the company simply had too much valuable data to be ignored. What should the company do to take advantage of its data analysis capabilities and the new technologies on the market? What kind of outside-the-box solutions could create additional revenue streams and vertical growth capabilities? What about the cohort analysis and data generated from order histories? He motivated his the management team to come up with new ideas to put the vast amount of transaction data to use. The case describes potential avenues for a company to monetize its data, illustrates the pros and cons of each option. The case will help students think about how to prioritize growth over diversification, and forward think with regards to new technologies and customer trends.

The case opens in November 2015, after the Turkish military's shooting down of a Russian military airplane over the Turkish-Syrian border. The incident threatened to undermine the countries' political and economic ties, and starting from late 2015, the dialogue between Ankara and Moscow was suspended for several months. The case explores the initial steps toward rapprochement in June 2016. The central dilemma is this: whether in light of the existing uncertainties companies operating in both countries can resume their investments and commercial activities, or should decisions be put on hold? What is the best strategy during such turbulent times? Can companies bet that a reunion would last?

BIM, Turkey's giant retailer with a hard-discount model for the popular segments, must decide whether to launch a brand-new format challenging the modern supermarkets. Since its founding in 1995, BIM has adhered to a business model based on a relentless focus on costs and operational efficiency, built on private labels and an unswerving limit on SKUs. Unprecedented in Turkey, the success of this retail concept propelled BIM to an IPO in the Istanbul Stock Exchange and to being the country's largest retail company by market capitalization. Seeing an opportunity to pioneer the format internationally, the company was now also in Morocco and Egypt. While the hard-discount format was still growing, in 2014 Haluk Dortluoglu, the company's CFO, began to develop an entirely new retail model for Turkey- FILE, a discount supermarket. FILE would carry many more SKUs in larger stores and compete head-to-head with national and local supermarkets. Throughout the year, in their various executive committee meetings, the senior executives of the company have debated the many issues posed by a totally different retail format and the advisability of launching it. Finally, in its first meeting of 2015, the company's board of directors are set on reaching a decision on FILE.

In September 2013, two years after its $2.1 billion acquisition of Mey Icki Sanayi ve Ticaret AS (Mey Icki), the principal spirits company in Turkey specializing in the local beverage raki, Diageo, the world's leading premium drinks company, was concerned about new legislation approved by the Turkish parliament prohibiting marketing and restricting the places and times at which alcoholic beverages could be sold. Diageo's Mey Icki investment in 2011 was the company's biggest acquisition in more than a decade. Having been caught off guard by the 2013 legislative changes, the Diageo management found itself needing to justify its $2.1 billion valuation, given that Diageo had acquired Mey Icki in 2011 from TPG for three times TPG's purchase price in 2006. Investors as well as analysts were questioning the over seven times value increase in Mey Icki since its privatization in 2003. Menezes, The new CEO, found himself increasingly overwhelmed by these issues. Had Diageo underestimated the uncertainties in the Turkish market? Would Diageo, with its broad range of brands, geographical spread, and significant financial resources be able to adapt to the changing environment and recoup its vast investment in Turkey? The case describes the forces that affect investment circumstances in emerging markets, raising the issue of how to best manage and prepare for risks. The case provides the context for the students to identify the potential elements that companies could face when investing in emerging markets where rules, legislation, and taxation can change and thus affect investment outcomes. The case challenges the students to ponder how companies should think about when investing in volatile markets and what it takes for them to succeed under uncertain and shifting circumstances.

In 2015, Edip Ilkbahar, HBC's founder and CEO, was looking over the plans for a new branch in Cyprus. Since the inception of the company by the Alarko Group of companies in 1994, Ilkbahar's company had enjoyed high occupancy, high guest satisfaction, and high return-visitor rates, not to mention increasing profits from HBC's single location in Fethiye, Turkey. Although branching out had been on the agenda for a couple of years, Ilkbahar was feeling the pressure to recreate HBC's culture in a new location to live up to and even surpass its established success. In parallel, Ilkbahar also needed to make sure that employee motivation at HBC's original Fethiye location did not drop and the employees continued to deliver wholehearted service to live up to HBC's reputation. 2015 certainly looked like it would be a tough year. How could Ilkbahar both try to extend HBC's special formula for success to Cyprus while maintaining high motivation at the Fethiye installation? The case describes the forces that shape the hotel industry's structure, raising the issue of how HBC established itself a sustainable niche for competitive advantage. The case provides the context for the students to identify the design elements underlying HBC's success and helps them explore the link between guest satisfaction and employee training, empowerment, feedback culture, continuous product development as well as social media and marketing. The case challenges the students to ponder what it takes for a company to repeatedly increase customer satisfaction rates and profitability with the same product over the years.

At the age of 39, Solmaz Altın took over the helm at Allianz Turkey. Solmaz quickly realized that, although the insurance market was thinly penetrated in Turkey, the company was operating in a very competitive environment with pressure on prices and, hence, cost control. Consequently, customer satisfaction was suffering. Despite the growing Turkish economy and a favorable regulatory environment, Solmaz was struggling to grow the company without further sacrificing customer satisfaction or profitability. Used as part of a course on service excellence, the case provides an insurance context in which to explore the link between customer satisfaction and competitive performance and challenges the students to ponder the extent of the relationship between customer satisfaction and financial performance. In the (A) case, the Allianz Turkey executives focus their initial efforts on the claims process of the automobile insurance business-a lowly rated segment of the insurance industry by their policyholders. They begin by creating a map of the customer experience and then doing extensive consumer research to determine what really matters to the policyholder. The insights gleaned from the detailed consumer analysis are quite different than the original beliefs of the management team. Students must devise a new customer service model for the claims process based upon the customer analysis. The (B) case describes the new customer service model for the claims process and the resulting increase in customer satisfaction as measured by the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric. Students must first decide whether the initial effort is a success and then develop a plan for the future.

At the age of 39, Solmaz Altın took over the helm at Allianz Turkey. Solmaz quickly realized that, although the insurance market was thinly penetrated in Turkey, the company was operating in a very competitive environment with pressure on prices and, hence, cost control. Consequently, customer satisfaction was suffering. Despite the growing Turkish economy and a favorable regulatory environment, Solmaz was struggling to grow the company without further sacrificing customer satisfaction or profitability. Used as part of a course on service excellence, the case provides an insurance context in which to explore the link between customer satisfaction and competitive performance and challenges the students to ponder the extent of the relationship between customer satisfaction and financial performance. In the (A) case, the Allianz Turkey executives focus their initial efforts on the claims process of the automobile insurance business-a lowly rated segment of the insurance industry by their policyholders. They begin by creating a map of the customer experience and then doing extensive consumer research to determine what really matters to the policyholder. The insights gleaned from the detailed consumer analysis are quite different than the original beliefs of the management team. Students must devise a new customer service model for the claims process based upon the customer analysis. The (B) case describes the new customer service model for the claims process and the resulting increase in customer satisfaction as measured by the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric. Students must first decide whether the initial effort is a success and then develop a plan for the future.

This case focuses on Acıbadem Healthcare Group's, Turkey's only premium nationwide hospital network, potential expansion strategies after it was acquired by International Healthcare Holdings Berhad (IHH) in 2011, the world's second-largest publicly listed health care group and a private hospital leader in Singapore and Malaysia. By providing perspectives on both Acıbadem and IHH-Parkway-Pantai's operational models, growth aspirations, collaboration and synergies, as well as cultural and operational differences, the case allows students to discuss which expansion strategies would be best suited for Acıbadem's operations--which geographic regions should initially be targeted, what business model is best suited for Acıbadem's growth (specialized chain, public-partnership etc.) Also, students are encouraged to discuss how Acıbadem should leverage its relationship with IHH and collaborate with Parkway-Pantai.