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Handout for case UV7031.

Handout for case UV7031.

Perhaps among the most popular newspapers in the world, the Times of India (TOI) was faced with developing a national strategy in a very diverse country. The paper's strategy included lowering the price of print newspapers, developing readership among India's youth, embracing active story coverage, and continuing to deliver door-to-door in metro areas. But by 2014, the cost structure required to keep newspapers on doorsteps every morning had Rahul Kansal, executive president at Bennet, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (TOI's publisher), reexamining the paper's direction. The firm's growth model had included nonmetro and digital expansion. Should TOI continue to tap into the increasingly literate and underserved Indian population to grow its print readership in metro and nonmetro areas? What effect would that decision have on TOI's digital penetration?

Modeled loosely after the American restaurant chain Chipotle, Picante Mexican Grill seeks to offer fresh and healthy vegetarian fast-food options. The owners of this start-up chain in Gurgaon, India, struggle to manage their quickly growing operation. As they consider expanding into new locations, diverse issues-including determining store hours, location, managing centralized production, and meeting staffing needs-challenge the entrepreneurial trio.

This short case serves as an epilogue to the A and B cases. Specializing in local organic meat and produce, Retail Relay has developed a new business model for online grocery shopping and delivery. Relay could tell from its customer-level purchase data that many of its existing customers were purchasing some of their grocery products from other vendors. Relay therefore developed a heuristic to categorize customers as active or churned. They then explore how to use customer-level purchase information to determine factors that distinguish between active and churned customers.

This note supports cases used in Darden's "Marketing Analytics" course elective. Marketing analytics powered by "big data" holds the promise to shift marketing strategy from an intuitive discipline to a fact-based, decision-making process. Based on interactions with more than 100 executives in conferences, executive education seminars, case study development, and consulting projects, this technical note serves as a road map for improving implementation of marketing analytics.

This case is used in the Marketing Analytics elective at Darden. A Sticks executive team is interested in opening a second quick-service restaurant in Richmond, Virginia. But before doing so, the team wanted to gain a better sense of who were Sticks' customers, which location would attract the best customers, and how to best connect with customers. An opportunity to gather survey data presented itself. Would the demographic and psychographic assumptions the team had gathered from talking to people in stores align with the survey answers? And what would the data suggest about where to locate new stores and about what marketing channels and messages to use to promote them?

Managers must understand their marketing efforts as precisely as possible in order to determine how much to spend on each marketing channel. This technical note explores marketing analytics-the process of systematically using empirical data about customers, companies, and industry context to inform strategic marketing decisions and create models that are helpful in understanding consumer behaviors. Resource allocation is the endgame of analytics for any company. Using marketing analytics properly, any firm should be able to determine the optimal level of spending it should make on each of its marketing channels to maximize future performance and success.

This case, follows Ali Hurbas's efforts to use data extracted from the Dunia data warehouse to establish potential customers' customer lifetime value (CLV). Hurbas plans to use a spreadsheet model to evaluate Dunia's various cross-selling activities and their effectiveness in creating the greatest CLV. First, students should explain how the spreadsheet reflects the way in which Dunia makes money from cross-selling. Then students should use the spreadsheet to conduct what-if analysis to see how combinations of activities might improve total CLV, and sensitivity analysis to understand how cost parameters and other parameters would affect profitability. A teaching note for this case series is available to instructors to aid in class preparation.

This note provides a primer on paid search advertising, which is an important component of digital marketing. The mechanics of paid search is explained using the Google search engine platform. The note covers metrics for evaluating the performance of paid search, the strategic objective of paid search, the relationship between customer lifetime value and search ads, how to overcome sparse data problems using keyword clouds, and the nature of Google AdWords's enhanced campaigns.

This technical note presents the reason for using a binomial logic regression in marketing applications. It is used in Darden's "Big Data in Marketing" course elective. The issues surrounding the use of a linear regression model when the dependent variable is a dummy variable are identified. A consumer-utility-based behavioral rationale is presented for the applicability of the binomial logistic regression for modeling dummy variables. Simulated and real data examples are used to present the mechanics of the logistic regression and the interpretation of the outputs. The relationship between odds ratio and the logistic regression probabilities are presented. Application areas such as brand choice and customer retention are discussed.

This technical note provides a basic introduction to multiple linear regression. The concept of regression using a single independent variable is first introduced and then some of the practical challenges associated with it--including multiple independent variables in a regression--are discussed. Particular attention is paid to bias in the regression coefficients in the presence of omitted variables. The concept of the economic significance of a model is introduced and is contrasted with statistical significance. At Darden, it is used in a course elective titled "Big Data in Marketing."

This case is an abridged version of UVA-M-0768, "The Tata Nano: The People's Car (A)," and UVA-M-0804, "The Tata Nano: The People's Car (B)."

Ohio Art is shifting its advertising and distribution strategy for a new line of construction toys aimed at adults called nanoblock. Distribution is focused on toy and hobby outlets, avoiding mass merchandisers, but Amazon.com also stocking and selling the nanoblock line. Digital marketing strategies are being developed for both promotion through Amazon.com and social media. In the midst of its efforts to shift marketing to new media, management is distracted by the media storm over an aide to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who commented that Romney's platform is "almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again." The case describes a number of digital marketing strategies, including temporary price reductions implemented through Amazon's "Gold Box" deals. The case is a sequel to the A case, which describes more traditional advertising experiments for toys distributed through mass merchandisers.

This case is intended to be part of a first-year MBA marketing course, or a second-year elective in advertising, integrated marketing communications, market research, or marketing analytics. The case provides students with examples of two real advertising experiments and the challenges involved in executing the experiments. It allows for a discussion of the need for advertising experiments, and also, at a more general level, the need to measure the return on marketing. Biases surrounding the field experiments allow for a discussion of the problems with establishing a causal relationship between advertising and sales.

A financial analyst is asked to appraise the value of Netflix stock at a time of unprecedented turmoil for the company. This case introduces customer lifetime value (CLV) as a useful metric for subscription-based businesses.

Soon after Pernod Ricard acquires Absolut vodka and other brands, the economic downturn results in changes in purchasing behavior away from premium to standard products. Brand managers consider whether to introduce a "basic" Absolut, promote a lower-priced alternative, or rebrand other vodkas under the Absolut brand to trade on its considerable brand equity.

Conventional wisdom holds that manufacturers and retailers see little benefit from unused coupons, but new research shows that unredeemed coupons serve as advertisements to consumers. In an experiment with eight retailers, the authors analyzed campaigns involving more than 500,000 targeted coupons for items representing more than 300 brands, mailed out over a 16-month period. They found that consumers who received but did not redeem coupons still typically increased their purchases in the associated stores. If businesses realized how powerful this increased awareness could be, they would take as much care with coupons as they do with other marketing materials, striving to delight customers, not simply to close a deal.

Cardagin provides a mobile loyalty point program and coupons service to local businesses. The new startup in the increasingly competitive space of consumer/merchant apps for smart phones has received positive reviews and is reaching an inflection point: decisions made at this stage can be the difference between a national presence and an also-ran. The CEO needs to demonstrate the value of this service in compelling ways to retailers and consumers. As an intermediary, Cardagin needs to ensure consistent usage by consumers and for retailers to provide attractive offers to their consumers. Building a nationwide network of consumers and retailers itself can be critical. The case provides students an opportunity to analyze a new digital venture, explore expansion options, and evaluate the challenges in working with many small businesses, each with its own idiosyncrasies.