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Until recently, most manufacturing processes have been 'subtractive' in that matter is removed (e.g., scraped, dissolved, turned, machined) from a substance in order to produce the desired product. 3-D printing turns traditional manufacturing on its head in that it uses an 'additive' process. Similar to laser and inkjet printers, 3-D (three-dimensional) printers produce pieces by depositing, or adding, layers of material--plastic, polymer filaments, metals, and even foodstuffs--until the desired product is realized. This means that the creation and production of 'one-offs' is not only easy, it is also economically viable. 3-D printers are becoming ever more affordable, and it is not hard to envision them being as common in most homes in the near future as their two-dimensional counterparts are today. This article presents a 3-D printing primer for non-technical managers. It then considers the profound impact that 3-D printing will have on firms of all kinds as well as on individual consumers. In addition, it raises the substantial questions that 3-D printing will pose to policy makers from both intellectual property and ethical standpoints.

At the beginning of 2012, Nespresso, a manufacturer and distributor of home-brewed, single-serve coffee machines and capsules, is considering how best to increase its share of the U.S. market. It had always relied on organic growth through its own retail stores and a few premium department store chains. However, between 2005 and 2011, the demand for capsule coffee boomed, and this attracted a number of new competitors, including Starbucks, while existing competitors increased their marketing expenditures. At the same time, Nespresso's patents were expiring, and some supermarkets started selling generic capsules for Nespresso machines. How should Nespresso change its strategy to ensure future growth? Should it relinquish its tightly controlled distribution system in order to offer increased convenience to consumers? Should it alter its product to better match the U.S. taste for milk-based coffee? Or might an increase in advertising spur demand?

At the beginning of 2012, Nespresso, a manufacturer and distributor of home-brewed, single-serve coffee machines and capsules, is considering how best to increase its share of the U.S. market. It had always relied on organic growth through its own retail stores and a few premium department store chains. However, between 2005 and 2011, the demand for capsule coffee boomed, and this attracted a number of new competitors, including Starbucks, while existing competitors increased their marketing expenditures. At the same time, Nespresso’s patents were expiring, and some supermarkets started selling generic capsules for Nespresso machines. How should Nespresso change its strategy to ensure future growth? Should it relinquish its tightly controlled distribution system in order to offer increased convenience to consumers? Should it alter its product to better match the U.S. taste for milk-based coffee? Or might an increase in advertising spur demand?

The 21st century has brought both opportunities and challenges in our global, boundary-less world. Importantly, managers face a dynamic and interconnected international environment. As such, 21st century managers need to consider the many opportunities and threats that Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers present and the resulting respective shifts in loci of activity, power, and value. To help managers understand this new dispensation, we propose five axioms: (1) social media are always a function of the technology, culture, and government of a particular country or context; (2) local events rarely remain local; (3) global events are likely to be (re)interpreted locally; (4) creative consumers' actions and creations are also dependent on technology, culture, and government; and (5) technology is historically dependent. At the heart of these axioms is the managerial recommendation to continually stay up to date on technology, customers, and social media. To implement this managerial recommendation, marketers must truly engage customers, embrace technology, limit the power of bureaucracy, train and invest in their employees, and inform senior management about the opportunities of social media.

Recent economic, social-political, and natural disasters have all served to highlight the fragility of the global marketplace. As such, it is no longer questioned as to whether or not companies should be good corporate citizens; that is a given. Rather, concern in the 21st century centers on how businesses can become better global corporate citizens. Unfortunately, without clear guidance regarding how this may be accomplished, global corporate citizenship will remain a fringe activity and not become a critical component of an organization's core business strategy. The integrated framework presented herein identifies key elements and tips for implementing a business-based approach to global corporate citizenship.

Sponsorship of large sporting and cultural events has become a major marketing communication tool, particularly when firms obtain exclusive rights and garner the hype associated with this honor. Concomitantly, ambush marketing-defined as attempts by competitors to exploit the event-has also increased in prominence. This article outlines what is known as the Li Ning affair, whereby major Olympic sponsor Adidas was ambushed by lesser-known Chinese sportswear company Li Ning, whose namesake founder was the most decorated Chinese Olympian and who lit the Olympic flame at the 2008 Beijing Olympiad. Data collected immediately following the closing of the Beijing Games isolates what we call the Li Ning effect-or, being incorrectly identified as an official sponsor-and the positive effects this has on measures of brand attitude and recommendation likelihood. As presented herein, seven lessons about ambush marketing can be derived from the Li Ning affair, which sponsors and those considering sponsorship opportunity might wish to learn.

An Irish Air Lines pilot has re-created his home city of Dublin on Second Life. His Second Life alter ego, Ham Rambler, is busy running the site, and selling office space and advertisement on the property. The property includes a popular bar, a venue for live music performances, as well as a realistic rendering of Dublin's core. Second Life "residents" flock to the site for its entertainment and to experience Dublin. Mahon/Rambler needs to decide if the innovative business model he has developed is sustainable, or whether he should sell the business to other developers. The case is useful to introduce the concept of immersive Internet-based environments, and Internet advertising and selling.

While luxury brands are one of the most profitable and fastest growing segments of the brand pantheon, they are the least understood. There is no established definition as to what a luxury brand is; no clear understanding of the value dimensionality of luxury brands; and no rigorous conceptualization of the different types of luxury brands. They are generally treated as homogeneous. Little wonder that the management of these brands is shrouded in mystery. This article explores the value dimensionality of luxury brands, differentiates among luxury brands, and proposes a typology to help firms understand the managerial implications and challenges of each type. All luxury brands are not the same-they can mean different things to different people or even different things to the same people, which makes target marketing of luxury brands both difficult and important. This also means that they react differently to each other both in times of economic prosperity and in downturns. This article also explores strategies for migrating mass-market brands into luxury brand markets.

An Irish Air Lines pilot has re-created his home city of Dublin on Second Life. His Second Life alter ego, Ham Rambler, is busy running the site, and selling office space and advertisement on the property. The property includes a popular bar, a venue for live music performances, as well as a realistic rendering of Dublin's core. Second Life residents flock to the site for its entertainment and to experience Dublin. Mahon/Rambler needs to decide if the innovative business model he has developed is sustainable, or whether he should sell the business to other developers. The case is useful to introduce the concept of immersive Internet-based environments, and Internet advertising and selling.

Brand extensions are always tempting to marketers, and in the case of luxury brands the allure is particularly strong. While the path to luxury brand success may be partly paved with extensions, there are even more examples of brand extension disasters that litter the way. Brand extensions continue to be among the most researched and studied phenomena in marketing. When it comes to luxury brands, however, the factors that lead to successful extension have received far less attention. In this article, we consider the notion of perceived premium degree of the brand as a function of its category, and what we term the degree of adjacency between its product categories. Building on our research, which found that a luxury brand's perceived premium degree has a different impact on profitability depending on whether or not the brand is spread across adjacent product categories, we demonstrate when luxury brand extensions work-and when they fail. Perhaps most importantly, we herein introduce the premium adjacency matrix as a tool for luxury brand managers to consider in formulating extension strategies.      

Do subliminal cues have an effect on behaviour? This question is at the heart of many debates in advertising. In this exercise, students can determine, through their own experience, the impact of subconscious cues on their decisions. In this simulation, the instructor places a number of specific cues throughout the building. Students, in turn, are tasked with creating an advertising poster for a chain of children's play centres. Inevitably, their posters incorporate some, and sometimes all, of the cues. The exercise can lead to a deep and constructive discussion on the effect of subconscious cues on consumers.

Do subliminal cues have an effect on behavior? This question is at the heart of many debates in advertising. In this exercise, students can determine, through their own experience, the impact of subconscious cues on their decisions. In this simulation, the instructor places a number of specific cues throughout the building. Students, in turn, are tasked with creating an advertising poster for a chain of children's play centers. Inevitably, their posters incorporate some, and sometimes all, of the cues. The exercise can lead to a deep and constructive discussion on the effect of subconscious cues on consumers.

Consumers are now generating, rather than merely consuming advertising. The consequences for brands, marketers, and senior executives are significant. Advertising was traditionally generated by, or on behalf of, the firm and broadcast to relatively passive consumers. With the rise of digital media, the Internet, and inexpensive media software, considerable creative and distributive power has been handed to the consumer. Liberated from the exclusive control of the firm, ads now express a myriad of different voices. Some ads are subversive, others laudatory, but the fact remains that the firm is no longer in exclusive control of the message. Using a number of high profile cases, this article explores the motivations that drive consumers to create their own ads and develops a typology of the ads created. It develops a model for the various strategic stances that a firm can adopt in response to this phenomenon so that managers can anticipate and thus deal more effectively with some of the extreme consequences of liberated advertising.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Contrary to the beliefs of many managers, their companies' products and corporate brands cannot truly be managed, much less owned. That much has become clear in recent years as many well known brands have seemed to take on lives of their own, changing in the minds of many even though management may think of them as immutable. In this article, the authors introduce the concept of a "brand manifold" in order to bring out two overlooked factors: first, that brands have multiple dimensions depending on who is valuing them, and second, that those dimensions change in space and time. Drawing on automotive industry examples such as Maybach, Morgan, and BMW's Mini, the authors demonstrate the importance of managing a brand's evolution so that the brand does not lose its roots in the past. They go on to highlight the importance of understanding that brands have a life and meaning independent of what their initiators intended--as embodied by the thriving user community around Apple Computer's long-obsolete Newton handheld and evident in the influence of Harley-Davidson owners over many of the company's strategic decisions.

Chateau Margaux, luxury brand or connoisseur brand? Although France is awash with unsold wine, demand has never been stronger for the very finest Bordeaux. How should Margaux sustain and grow its business? The Chateau management team is wondering if it can take more control of distribution instead of leaving it to the Bordeaux wine merchants. Also, can the Chateau build marketing and sales capabilities on its own? Who is the target market, wine connoisseurs or the newly rich? Corinne Mentzelopoulous, who took over the estate from her father in 1980, wonders whether a new lower-priced wine should be added to the portfolio.

Marketing tends to view technology as a means to meeting customer needs and desires. This view has led some marketers to focus perhaps too exclusively on the customer to the detriment of a deep understanding of technology and its interaction with society. Drawing on the ideas of the philosophers Heidegger and Popper, this article contends that technology is more than a means to the end of satisfying consumer needs and wants--it is an active force that frequently escapes the control of the marketer. Explores the ways in which technologies, firms, customers, and society interact and suggests how firms might adopt different strategies toward technology to take advantage of these emergent interactions.

Among marketing mix variables, price alone directly affects a firm's revenue. The advent of a new medium for buyer-seller interaction, the Internet, is changing the issue of price for both customers and suppliers in an unprecedented way. On the one hand, there are Internet dynamics that flatten the customer value pyramid (defined by the value of the customer to the firm) because of technology that facilitates customer search, customer control over transactions, the provision of means by which the customer can make rather than take the price, a return to one-on-one negotiation, and commoditization of markets. Countervailing dynamics of the Internet enable the firm in some instances to differentiate pricing all the time, to create customer switching barriers, to "de-menu" pricing, to differentiate on other dimensions of the purchase decision, and to reduce transactions costs. A conceptual model is proposed for identifying Internet-based pricing dynamics and market forms according to the relative strengths of buyer and seller. These dynamics suggest that pricing decisions can be as creative as those made about the development of new products and services or advertising campaigns. Indeed, pricing may be the last frontier for marketing creativity. In the hands of the wise, the Internet might be the digital wagon that carries pricing pioneers to the edge of the digital frontier.

This article reviews a central tension in management--the relationship between customers and innovation. It explores the contrast between serving and creating customers and examines the sometimes uneasy relationship between an innovation orientation and a customer orientation. From this discussion, the article develops a model that provides an inclusive paradigm of the different strategies that firms have used to resolve the tension and explores the dynamics of the change process for several well-known companies. It concludes by developing the managerial implications of the model, with particular emphasis on how new technology is changing the desirability of alternative strategies.

A new medium--the Internet and World Wide Web--is changing distribution channels like no other force since the Industrial Revolution. It is modifying many of the assumptions on which channel structure is based, and in some cases it is transforming and even obliterating channels themselves. As a result, many intermediaries will die out, while new channels and intermediaries will take their place. There are three essential purposes of distribution channels: to support economies of scope, to routinize transactions, and to search for information essential to both producer and consumer. However, the Internet and Web have brought about the death of distance, the homogenization of time, and the irrelevance of location. A matrix model of these developments, arrayed versus distribution channel functions, provides a guide to identifying which traditional channels will either undergo transformation or perish and where new channels will emerge. The matrix model suggests how existing firms and entrepreneurs can perform their distribution functions more efficiently. It enables identification of competitors poised to use the media to change the rules of the marketplace. Finally, it helps managers brainstorm ways in which an existing industry can be vulnerable and a totally new one defined.

Advocates of the World Wide Web claim it is a great leveler and that participants have a more equal voice. This flatness of the Web creates a major challenge for many businesses: How do you attract visitors and prospective customers to the firm's Web site? The Web site that can attract more visitors, all other things being equal, is more likely to communicate its message to a wider audience or sell its product to more people. Organizations want to build mountains--or "attractors"--in the otherwise flat landscape of Web-based marketing and advertising. This article classifies existing approaches to creating attractors, identifies four basic types of attractors, and predicts that there will be a move toward creating highly interactive attractors as a device for mass customization. The article also addresses the notion of sustainable attractiveness and presents recommendations for designing an attractor.