In 2008, the German coffee and consumer goods corporation Tchibo has launched Tchibo Ideas, an internet platform where customers can share their product/design ideas with the company. The tension in the case emerges from the uncertainty regarding Tchibo's intentions for Tchibo Ideas. While some people perceive this move as a genuine attempt by the company to establish closer interactions with customers, some people see it simply as a marketing gimmick. The case describes the challenges and potential benefits that Tchibo Ideas is encountering, to foster a discussion on the value of a co-creation strategy.

The stream of customers who visit Flanagan Theme Parks has started to dwindle. The fictional Australian company must decide, with the help of consultant Allie James, whether to try to attract a whole new crop of customers using DailyDilly, a fast-growing social-coupon venture. Allie and Ruth Davison, Flanagan's marking director, take a lunchtime tour of the marketing landscape to answer a key question for any company that is considering such an initiative: "Are daily deal seekers the right kind of customers for our business?" Expert commentary comes from Gideon Lask, the founder of BuyaPowa, a UK-based social media business; and Al Bhakta, CEO of Genghis Grill, a Dallas-based restaurant chain. HBR's online readers also weigh in.

The stream of customers who visit Flanagan Theme Parks has started to dwindle. The fictional Australian company must decide, with the help of consultant Allie James, whether to try to attract a whole new crop of customers using DailyDilly, a fast-growing social-coupon venture. Allie and Ruth Davison, Flanagan's marking director, take a lunchtime tour of the marketing landscape to answer a key question for any company that is considering such an initiative: "Are daily deal seekers the right kind of customers for our business?" Expert commentary comes from Gideon Lask, the founder of BuyaPowa, a UK-based social media business; and Al Bhakta, CEO of Genghis Grill, a Dallas-based restaurant chain. HBR's online readers also weigh in.

The stream of customers who visit Flanagan Theme Parks has started to dwindle. The fictional Australian company must decide, with the help of consultant Allie James, whether to try to attract a whole new crop of customers using DailyDilly, a fast-growing social-coupon venture. Allie and Ruth Davison, Flanagan's marking director, take a lunchtime tour of the marketing landscape to answer a key question for any company that is considering such an initiative: "Are daily deal seekers the right kind of customers for our business?" Expert commentary comes from Gideon Lask, the founder of BuyaPowa, a UK-based social media business; and Al Bhakta, CEO of Genghis Grill, a Dallas-based restaurant chain. HBR's online readers also weigh in.

Tim O'Shaughnessy, the 29-year-old CEO of LivingSocial, is growing a revolutionary worldwide business of "daily deals"-in which retailers offer a heavily-discounted product or service available for purchase for brief (often 24-hour) windows. The case explores the complicated sharing of risks and rewards between LivingSocial, participating retailers, and customers, focusing on the return on investment in both the short- and longer-term for LivingSocial's retail partners. In addition, given the rapid growth of the daily deals space and the accompanying proliferation of competitors including Groupon and Amazon.com, the case focuses on the need for constant innovation in product offerings to maintain differentiation from copycats.

Virtually all managers in consumer businesses recognize major social, economic, and technological trends. But many do not consider the profound ways in which trends-especially those that seem unrelated to their core markets-influence consumers' aspirations, attitudes, and behaviors. As a result, companies may be ceding to rivals an opportunity to transform the industry. For instance, the impact of the digital revolution on consumers' daily lives is hardly a revelation. But it may be less obvious that heavy digital users tend to focus on short-term goals, demand immediate gratification, and expect to multitask. That insight, the authors argue, is as important for a company that sells lipstick as it is for one that sells smartphones. The authors present a process for identifying the trends that could reshape a business and three strategies for leveraging trends to create new value propositions: Infuse aspects of the trend into the product category to augment traditional offerings, as Coach did with its lower-priced Poppy handbags. Combine aspects of the trend with attributes of the category to produce offerings that transcend it, as Nike did with its Nike+ sports kit and web service. Or counteract negative effects of the trend with new products and services that reaffirm the category's values, as iToys did with its ME2 video game, which encourages children to be physically active.

Surprisingly, your best tool for getting customers to see beyond price may be the price itself. New research finds that four pricing moves in particular can cause buyers to stop treating your offering as a commodity and instead consider its quality and relevance to their individual needs. You can change the basis of your pricing structure, as Goodyear did when it priced tires according to how many miles they would last. You can stimulate curiosity with willful overpricing, as Burt's Bees does with its natural beauty products. You can partition a price into component charges to make customers notice a key benefit-as IKEA does by charging separately for a table's top and legs, reminding people of its useful modularity. Or you can price the options you provide uniformly-as Apple does when it charges 99 cents for any track on iTunes-so that customers simply focus on their preferences. The power of each of these strategies is illuminated by controlled studies the authors conducted to understand the link between price and customer attention.

Ferran Adrià, chef at elBulli, the highest-ranked restaurant in the world for two consecutive years, faces two related decisions. First, Adrià and his team must continue to develop new and different dishes for the ground-breaking cuisine at elBulli to guarantee a continuous stream of innovation, the cornerstone of the restaurant's success. In addition, they are also faced with the challenge of growing the business, exploring whether the core concepts from elBulli - this "taste of innovation" - can be applied to domains ranging from consulting to fast food. The case walks readers through an evening at elBulli, by using the rave reviews of former patrons to capture the full experience, from the long trip required to get to the restaurant, to the tour, to descriptions of the meal itself.

Fiyta had long been on of China's foremost watch brands. However, as China's economy began to improve and the livelihood of many Chinese rose with it, their tastes began to change. Exposed to more luxurious foreign brands, many Chinese strived to purchase a Swiss or Japanese watch. How could Fiyta build up its brand image to a more sophisticated Chinese consumer? What marketing activities should it undertake to reinvigorate its brand? Is it meeting the needs of all segments of Chinese consumers? Should it?

Rapid growth is pushing Burt's Bees' natural personal care products into mass distribution channels, with products and brand elements that are less quirky, more commercial than they used to be. Indeed, CEO John Replogle believes that by focusing on efficacious, natural, and unique ingredients, and also by promoting earth-friendly production processes, Burt's Bees will impose superior product expectations and win over the mainstream personal care category. Can Burt's Bees become the "Starbucks of personal care" without distancing itself too much from the people, values, and narratives that have made the brand successful thus far?

A leading sporting goods company in China competes aggressively against global brands Nike and Adidas, with marketing strategies adapted to geographic segments. In the main cities, where competition takes place at a very conceptual level, Li Ning has chosen to adopt a very controversial "oriental theme" for its brand, while becoming at the same time a major sponsor of international athletes of the highest caliber.

Intelliseek harvests, filters, and mines the content of messages posted by consumers online and on discussion boards and blogs. For any specified consumer product brand, Intelliseek measures the volume of work-of-mouth and its valence (proportion of positive and negative comments) and produces organized sets of quotes in the manner of a focus group report. This "marketing intelligence" company has been successful selling its reports to the car industry, but finds it difficult to achieve client retention in other areas. New initiatives are suggested: (1) to arrange data in problem-specific templates so that it is more "actionable" and (2) to develop industry benchmark metrics against which the metrics can be compared in a more informative manner. The CEO of the company believes that the key to success is a streamlined, standardized approach to the metrics developed for client brands. The CMO believes that Intelliseek should go much further to capitalize on the opportunity to understand customers emerging from what he calls "consumer-generated media."

Harvard Real Estate Services executives need to design the 2005 Graduate Student Housing Survey for maximum impact in anticipation of Harvard's long-term expansion project in Allston. Students are challenged to help executives in charge to (1) draw the lessons from their earlier survey experience: what survey data had most--or least--impact and why? and (2) imagine what survey data--accounting for the power and limits of survey research--could be most useful for the Allston initiative. Provides a complete template for survey research, while at the same time raises critical issues--technical issues as well as more managerial questions related to the proactive management of market research in organizations.

Brodie Keast is anxious to understand the sharp contrast between the inertia of prospects and the deep emotional response shown by converted users of TiVo. After an overview of the company's situation and problems, the case focuses on different kinds of data (sales results, satisfaction and usage data, purchase influence, demographics, attitude data, and behavioral data) and explains how that data emerged over time as the company was more and more pressured to explore the essence of its value proposition.

This case reveals the genesis of the Apple Stores, a revolutionary retail concept launched by Ron Johnson, Apple Computer's senior vice president of retail. In January 2002, Apple Computer was at the eve of one of the most stunning commercial successes ever known in consumer markets. The case details how the retail strategy emerged as a keystone of Apple's overall strategy to support the digital lifestyle of its customers. By analyzing the stores' most innovative elements and discussing the implied management challenges, students reach a deeper understanding of the multi-faceted role of distribution channels in contemporary marketing. The case is an ideal vehicle to understand how the different stages of the marketing process (analysis, strategy, implementation) can be tightly integrated for maximum impact. It also raises interesting issues in consumer behavior: the processes of consumer engagement, empowerment, and conversion to purchase.

An offspring of French catalog marketer 3 Suisses, and a popular sponsor of Tour de France, Cofidis sells consumer credit over the phone, defying conventional banking with a product policy and a communication strategy that perfectly fits the company's comparative (dis)advantages. This case describes: Cofidis' product and value proposition; the evolving competitive context and cultural complexity of the European credit market; the adaptive marketing strategy of the company, which evolved from bundling with the 3 Suisse catalog, to direct mail, to print advertising in TV guides, to bicycling sponsorship, the results of the strategy; and the challenge and opportunities posed by the Internet. Based on the lessons of the past, can we advise Michel Guillois, CEO of Cofidis, on the best way for him to preserve Cofidis' competitive edge?

Spreadsheet supplement for case 501038.

Clust is a French group-buying Web site. Instead of marketing products to consumers, Clust is marketing aggregated consumer demands to manufacturers. Consequently, beyond the usual act of choosing among predefined alternatives, consumers are expected to bring up their demands and create new product ideas, to discuss and support the ideas of others, to call on their friends to join the Clust community, and to monitor the efforts of the Clust purchasing team. In fact, Clust holds no inventory beyond a warehouse to organize deliveries. No product is put on sale before enough supporters endorse it and 5%-40% discount on retail price can be secured. After a very interesting launch strategy, the Web site comes short of breath. Two pathways are outlined (focus on group-buying and good deals vs. focus on consumer creation and exclusives) with enough details to support decision making and evaluate both profitability and concept consistency.

TiVo is a digital video recorder that allows viewers to watch what they want, when they want to watch it. Fourteen months into the launch, sales are very disappointing. Brodie Keast, VP of marketing and sales, wants to combine a catchy communications campaign, product bundling with satellite television receivers, aggressive pricing, and sales support, in order to boost demand for the new category. One important goal is to position TiVo as a strong brand before the entry of big player Microsoft. TiVo is confronted with the difficulty of selling a new and complex electronics product that is meant to change consumer habits radically. Moreover, the impact of TiVo on the television and advertising industries is ambiguous, and TiVo needs to demonstrate that it can play a constructive role in the future media landscape.

Under the leadership of Nicholas Hayek, the Swatch Group, makers of the Swatch watch, is widely credited with revitalizing the Swiss watch industry by offering a consistent set of brands addressing all segments of the global watch market. New opportunities beyond the watch market have been explored recently (e.g., telecom, cars), but they did not live up to expectations. In October 1998, the Swatch Group launched Swatch Internet Time (SIT). SIT divided every day into 1,000 "beats" equivalent to 86.4 seconds each. Each day began with @000 (@ was the abbreviation for beats) and noon was @500. A new meridian line was created that passed over Swatch headquarters in Biel, Switzerland, making Biel Mean Time (BMT) the official reference for Internet time. Many questioned Swatch's motive behind SIT. Some believed that launching SIT was merely a way to reenergize the Swatch brand in markets such as the United States where sales and the Swatch image had been suffering. And others questioned whether the concept of SIT would catch on.