Little more than a year had passed since Chrissy Taylor, granddaughter of the company's founder and daughter of its longest-serving CEO, had been promoted, in December 2019, to CEO of Enterprise Holdings, the parent company of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Taylor had spent her entire career in the family-owned business, but like all Enterprise employees, she started as a management trainee at a branch office. "Just like everybody else in our upper management, I started behind a rental counter," Taylor said in an interview at the time of her promotion. "I worked my way up in various roles, learning the job by doing it: washing cars, picking up customers." She was determined to continue the legacy of her family's company, which her father famously described as being committed to three things: "listening to and satisfying our customers, creating opportunities for our employees, and achieving long-term, sustainable growth."

By any measure, Chipotle Mexican Grill was a success story in the restaurant business. It grew from one location in 1993 to over 2,000 locations by 2016 and essentially created the fast casual dining category. Its stock appreciated more than 1,000% in the ten years following its 2006 IPO. However, after more than 20 years without a major reported food safety incident, Chipotle was revealed as the source of multiple outbreaks of illness from norovirus, salmonella, and E. coli that sickened nearly 600 people in 13 states in 2015. The company closed stores, spent several months under investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health organizations, and faced a criminal investigation in connection with the incidents. After a much-publicized closing of all of its stores on February 8, 2016, and numerous changes to its food sourcing and preparation practices, Chipotle tried to win back customers with dramatically increased advertising and free food promotions. However, on April 26, the chain announced its first-ever quarterly loss as a public company. Same-store sales for the first quarter were 29.7% lower than in the previous year. Operating margins fell from 27.5% to 6.8% over the same period, and the company's share price was down 41% from its summer 2015 high.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Boeing and Airbus, the leading manufacturers of large aircraft, were locked in a battle for market share that drove down prices for their new planes. At about the same time, the two industry heavyweights began developing new aircraft families to address the future market needs they each projected. Aircraft take many years to develop, so by the time the new planes made their inaugural flights, significant changes had occurred in the global environment. First, emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere were growing rapidly, spawning immediate and long-term demand for more aircraft. At the same time, changes to the market for air travel had created opportunities for new products. These opportunities had not gone unnoticed by potential new entrants, which were positioning themselves to compete against the market leaders. In October 2007, the Airbus superjumbo A380 made its first flight. The A380 carried more passengers than any other plane in history and had been touted as a solution to increased congestion at global mega-hub airports. Four years later the Boeing 787, a smaller long-range aircraft, was launched to service secondary cities in a point-to-point network. The case provides students with an opportunity to analyze the profit potential of the global aircraft manufacturing industry in 2002 and in 2011. Students can also identify the actions of participants that weakened or intensified the pressure on profits within the industry.

Wrigley launched Eclipse gum in August 1999. In early 2000, Paul Chibe became senior marketing manager for Wrigley's breath freshening portfolio, which included Eclipse. With the disappointing first-year performance of the brand, Chibe needed to take action to turn Eclipse around. His task was to use the opinions from other Wrigley executives and from marketing research data to decide if Eclipse could be turned around or if it should be abandoned.

Four years into a five-year contract with General Motors to be the exclusive website vendor to its U.S. network of more than 4,000 dealers, CDK Digital faced a crucial contract renewal at the end of 2012. The case follows Melissa McCann, director of strategic marketing, and Chris Reed, CMO, as they prepared for a critical meeting in July 2011: a presentation to the customer relationship management (CRM) subcommittee of the Chevrolet dealer council. Although GM dealers, like all auto dealers in the United States, were independent franchisees, GM saw the renewal of CDK Digital's exclusive contract as a collaborative decision between dealers and GM. According to Ed Vogt, GM's executive in charge of the renewal, if the dealer councils said no, the contract would not be renewed. This case challenges students to use CDK's big data and analytics capabilities to address the inherent conflict between dealers and manufacturers: when marketing to potential customers, manufacturers wanted consistency across dealer websites to maximize sales of their targeted brands, while dealers wanted flexibility to sell what they had in inventory.

In December 2011 the Lego Group (TLG) announced the launch of Lego Friends, the company's sixth attempt to market a product to girls. Lego Friends, which was supported by a $40 million global marketing campaign, was designed to introduce the fun of building with Lego bricks to girls, who represented less than 10 percent of Lego's audience. The company's poorly executed brand extensions and move from free-form building sets to story-driven kits had nearly cost it its independence in 2004, so the launch of Lego Friends was strategically important. However, within hours of the product's appearance it was heavily criticized for reinforcing gender stereotypes and damaging the valuable Lego brand. Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO since 2004, had saved TLG and ushered in an era of sales growth with a series of successful strategic initiatives. Would Lego Friends be another addition to TLG's graveyard of failed products for girls, or would it prove popular and finally enable the company to double its sales and profits by reaching this segment?

Founded in 1971 and acquired by CEO Howard Schultz in 1987, Starbucks was an American success story. In forty years it grew from a single-location coffee roaster in Seattle, Washington to a multibillion-dollar global enterprise that operated more than 17,000 retail coffee shops in fifty countries and sold coffee beans, instant coffee, tea, and ready-to-drink beverages in tens of thousands of grocery and mass merchandise stores. However, as Starbucks moved into new market contexts as part of its aggressive growth strategy, the assets and activities central to its competitive advantage in its retail coffee shops were altered or weakened, which made it more vulnerable to competitive threats from both higher and lower quality entrants. The company also had to make decisions on vertical integration related to its expansion into consumer packaged goods.

An industry adage held that "there are two types of rental car companies: those that lose money and Enterprise." The company that would become Enterprise Rent-A-Car was started in 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri, by Jack Taylor. Taylor set up Enterprise offices in neighborhoods rather than at airports because he believed that Americans would welcome a local option for renting cars when their own vehicles were being repaired. In 2010 Enterprise had more than 6,000 rental locations in the United States and a fleet of 850,000 cars in service. Its parent, Enterprise Holdings (comprising Enterprise, National, and Alamo brands) accounted for nearly half of the car rental market and was more than twice the size of Hertz, the number two competitor. Enterprise's competitive advantage was the result of the combination of its practices in hiring, training, compensation, organization, customer service, IT, and fleet management, among others.