In 2022, Mazatlán was enjoying a reputation as a popular seaside town on the Mexican Pacific Coast, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. Protected by a bay and three islands, it offered sandy beaches and favourable weather year-round, making it an attractive destination for Mexican, American, and Canadian vacationers. It was a popular stop for Pacific Ocean cruises, where tourists could enjoy beaches, sunshine, Mexican cuisine and culture, and various sporting activities including baseball, marathons, triathlons, sport fishing, and soccer. However, Mazatlán’s image was being tainted by unfavourable events, which presented unique challenges for the city’s marketers and threatened to endanger the city’s highly successful tourism industry. Mazatlán’s tourism authorities were wondering how to keep the city’s tourism brand and image strong, despite these new and significant challenges.
In 2022, Mazatlán was enjoying a reputation as a popular seaside town on the Mexican Pacific Coast, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. Protected by a bay and three islands, it offered sandy beaches and favourable weather year-round, making it an attractive destination for Mexican, American, and Canadian vacationers. It was a popular stop for Pacific Ocean cruises, where tourists could enjoy beaches, sunshine, Mexican cuisine and culture, and various sporting activities including baseball, marathons, triathlons, sport fishing, and soccer. However, Mazatlán's image was being tainted by unfavourable events, which presented unique challenges for the city's marketers and threatened to endanger the city's highly successful tourism industry. Mazatlán's tourism authorities were wondering how to keep the city's tourism brand and image strong, despite these new and significant challenges.
Major League Baseball (MLB) had been financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a shortened season without fans in attendance, revenue-generating opportunities decreased dramatically from previous years. This case examines issues that MLB teams dealt with during the 2020 season, including the loss of revenue during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. How would MLB move forward into the 2021 season, having lost a significant amount of money in the previous year? How should its teams invest their resources to maximize earning potential—despite the ongoing pandemic—for this upcoming season and possibly years to come?
Major League Baseball (MLB) had been financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a shortened season without fans in attendance, revenue-generating opportunities decreased dramatically from previous years. This case examines issues that MLB teams dealt with during the 2020 season, including the loss of revenue during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. How would MLB move forward into the 2021 season, having lost a significant amount of money in the previous year? How should its teams invest their resources to maximize earning potential-despite the ongoing pandemic-for this upcoming season and possibly years to come?
Kalahut: The House of Arts (Kalahut) was an Indian e-commerce site that connected instructors specialized in traditional Indian arts and cultural forms with customers interested in these services. Since its launch in July 2020, it had mainly served customers in India; however, it had also seen modest engagement on social media platforms and its website from individuals outside of the current customer pool. As the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in both increased web traffic to e-commerce sites and an increase in the number of people looking for new activities while in lockdown, Kalahut hoped to take this opportunity to expand into a new market. In late 2020, Kalahut’s co-founder needed to decide which of three potential market countries to enter. Which would be the most suitable avenue for expansion?
Kalahut: The House of Arts (Kalahut) was an Indian e-commerce site that connected instructors specialized in traditional Indian arts and cultural forms with customers interested in these services. Since its launch in July 2020, it had mainly served customers in India; however, it had also seen modest engagement on social media platforms and its website from individuals outside of the current customer pool. As the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in both increased web traffic to e-commerce sites and an increase in the number of people looking for new activities while in lockdown, Kalahut hoped to take this opportunity to expand into a new market. In late 2020, Kalahut's co-founder needed to decide which of three potential market countries to enter. Which would be the most suitable avenue for expansion?
In the spring of 2018, the marketing team at Nike Inc. (Nike), based in Oregon, was faced with a decision regarding whether to follow the suggestion of the company’s long-standing advertising agency to sign Colin Kaepernick as the face of its upcoming “Just Do It” promotional campaign commemorating the 30-year anniversary of the slogan. Kaepernick was an NFL quarterback who had famously begun kneeling during the US national anthem in 2016 to protest social inequality and police brutality. At this juncture, the US political climate was extremely polarized, President Donald Trump had spoken out very negatively about Kaepernick’s “take-a-knee” protest, and the campaign would mark the first time in Nike’s history that the company adopted a clear political position in its promotional messaging. The company had to carefully weigh several issues, including the impact using Kaepernick would have on sales and on Nike’s brand image. Should Nike partner with Kaepernick on its campaign or pick a less controversial spokesperson? What market segments would be affected, and how? What were the implications for company sales and brand image?
In the spring of 2018, the marketing team at Nike Inc. (Nike), based in Oregon, was faced with a decision regarding whether to follow the suggestion of the company's long-standing advertising agency to sign Colin Kaepernick as the face of its upcoming "Just Do It" promotional campaign commemorating the 30-year anniversary of the slogan. Kaepernick was an NFL quarterback who had famously begun kneeling during the US national anthem in 2016 to protest social inequality and police brutality. At this juncture, the US political climate was extremely polarized, President Donald Trump had spoken out very negatively about Kaepernick's "take-a-knee" protest, and the campaign would mark the first time in Nike's history that the company adopted a clear political position in its promotional messaging. The company had to carefully weigh several issues, including the impact using Kaepernick would have on sales and on Nike's brand image. Should Nike partner with Kaepernick on its campaign or pick a less controversial spokesperson? What market segments would be affected, and how? What were the implications for company sales and brand image?
The Holy Grail of modern online marketing is video content that "goes viral,"meaning that it captures an enormous number of views and leads audiences to share, comment or click that they "like"a video. Various experts have ventured theories about what kind of content makes for a hit. The advice varies widely and is even contradictory. Depending on the expert, success is thought more likely if a video is humorous, shocking, dramatic, topical, warm, arousing, angry, scary, socially beneficial, cute, violent, sexy, uplifting, intriguing, quirky, interesting, authoritative, tear-jerking, educational, controversial or baby- and animal-filled. One of the reasons for the various views is that researchers have often looked at only popular videos and did not compare the popular clips with the content almost no one saw. To see if they could clarify some of the contradictions, the authors examined a mix of popular and unpopular videos, then systematically coded and empirically tested the effect of each element on some relatively objective and observational measures of viewer engagement. The authors assigned a team of research assistants to watch 750 videos and to independently score each on a range of attributes. Did the video feature babies, attempt to be funny or use sexually suggestive content? How would watching the video make the typical viewer feel? They collected information on dozens of different video elements and correlated these with three measures of engagement: the number of times people left comments on the video, the overall "liking"index for each video (calculated by subtracting the number of "dislikes"from "likes") and the number of views. The authors' key finding? Emotionally surprising videos generated liking and views more than any kind of specific content element they studied. The authors also looked at novel and incongruous content and found that both were associated with feelings of surprise, which increased views and liking.
In August 2013, the research director of Superb Trucks LP, a large Ontario-based trucking transportation company, is expected to prepare a recommendation to top management on how to improve the efficiency of the company's trucks. He had made a decision that an innovative fuel additive might serve this purpose and subsequently conducted two studies to assess its effectiveness. What considerations should be made when designing such a field experiment? How can these considerations affect interpretation of study findings and inform business decisions?
This case discusses the future of the Dove brand and what type of advertising it should use moving forward. The brand has previously launched the Dove Real Beauty Campaign, which focuses on widening the definition of beauty. Students are given the history of the campaign and are asked to assess various options for the Dove brand.
This case discusses the future of the Dove brand and what type of advertising it should use moving forward. The brand has previously launched the Dove Real Beauty Campaign, which focuses on widening the definition of beauty. Students are given the history of the campaign and are asked to assess various options for the Dove brand.
In 2010, the commissioner of the Ontario Hockey League was generally satisfied with its operations but knew that certain markets were not reaching their potential. Management needed to use data to make some potentially difficult decisions, including possibly closing several teams down. The data included proximity of competition from other hockey leagues and other sports teams; how long a team had been in its city; how many points the team earned each season and how many of its players graduated to the National Hockey League; the make-up of the city in terms of its size, median income, median house price and its immigrant and visible minority populations; and, finally, the price of tickets. There were a few teams that were significant outliers at each end of the spectrum. What was the league going to do with the teams at the bottom that were dragging down average attendance figures? Student spreadsheet 7B13A028 with data is available.
The president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A is a devout Christian who publicly operates his restaurants according to Biblical principles. A recent controversy has surrounded his public opposition to gay marriage. As a result, the company is being accused of discrimination and prejudice. Are the company's deeply rooted Christian values hindering the business?
In 2009/10, the commissioner of the Ontario Hockey League was generally satisfied with its operations but knew that certain markets were not reaching their potential. Management needed to use data to make some potentially difficult decisions, including possibly closing several teams down. The data included proximity of competition from other hockey leagues and other sports teams; how long a team had been in its city; how many points the team earned each season and how many of its players graduated to the National Hockey League; the make-up of the city in terms of its size, median income, median house price and its immigrant and visible minority populations; and, finally, the price of tickets. There were a few teams that were significant outliers at each end of the spectrum. What was the league going to do with the teams at the bottom that were dragging down average attendance figures? Student spreadsheet 7B13A028 with data is available.
The president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A is a devout Christian who publicly operates his restaurants according to Biblical principles. A recent controversy has surrounded his public opposition to gay marriage. As a result, the company is being accused of discrimination and prejudice. Are the company’s deeply rooted Christian values hindering the business?
When a well-known mass media corporation revises the image of a beloved and non-traditional movie character in a way that conforms to a physical stereotype, the female members of the viewing audience express their disapproval on a widespread scale. In the wake of the backlash, the company has a decision to make: Should it stick with the revised image, which has been deliberately redesigned to support an upcoming media campaign, or should it revert to the original image in order to appease the viewing public? The case presents both sides of the dilemma, revealing the psychological and commercial implications of using one image versus the other.
This case considers the hedonic goals that motivate consumers to make choices among various options that offer them unique experiences. As a birthday gift to his girlfriend Danielle, Jack presented two game-day options to watch the Denver Broncos. Option 1 offered seats with excellent views close to the action while Option 2 offered a more diverse experience including tailgating, souvenirs and concessions, but with seats more removed from the action. As a passionate Broncos fan, Danielle struggled to choose an option that would maximize her “Broncos experience.” Through class discussion from the point of view of both consumers and management, students will be encouraged to think more about what hedonic elements are important when making buying choices.
This case considers the hedonic goals that motivate consumers to make choices among various options that offer them unique experiences. As a birthday gift to his girlfriend Danielle, Jack presented two game-day options to watch the Denver Broncos. Option 1 offered seats with excellent views close to the action while Option 2 offered a more diverse experience including tailgating, souvenirs and concessions, but with seats more removed from the action. As a passionate Broncos fan, Danielle struggled to choose an option that would maximize her "Broncos experience." Through class discussion from the point of view of both consumers and management, students will be encouraged to think more about what hedonic elements are important when making buying choices.