In September 2015, with the peak of the holiday season only three months away, Karin Nebot, CEO and part owner of the House of Kaviari, is questioning how to sustain the growth of the company. Kaviari, with €26m in annual sales, is a French family business trading and retailing farmed caviars, which means that they import and brand the product, and sell it to fine food stores, chefs, and wholesalers. The caviar market in France is changing in a new way due to the introduction of inexpensive brands and new retail channels for the precious grains. In recent past, major hypermarkets and supermarkets have introduced caviar with a 'downmarket' product. With the high sales season fast approaching, Nebot needs to decide whether Kaviari should maintain its current position, go mainstream and broaden its consumer base, or increase the brand visibility in its traditional luxury segment.

As marketers love to teach students, differentiation must be the focal point of marketing strategy. But what happens when a firm's competitive set is shared by similar customers, perceived differentiation is weak among rivals, and loyalty is a thing of the past? This was the dilemma the French luxury jeweler Mauboussin faced: how to leverage its iconic brand to access new customers, domestically and abroad, and through new channels, while preserving the image of luxury goods founded on the myth of rarity and exclusivity? The case was designed and used for the latter portion of an international MBA marketing course and would work well in most international business courses.

"With a global leadership and sustainability perspective, this case uses SNCF, a state-owned railway and public service company based in France, to set the stage for an analysis of change management in a large company. It also allows for an exploration of sustainable development within the context of a large company. Written from the field, it depicts the firm's overall strategy to adopt sustainable practices and provides an opportunity to introduce basic leadership, strategy, sustainability, and operational terms that can be explored in subsequent classes. The case opens with a summary of urgent issues that include an influential employee who resists new policies, a public scandal around a supplier that employed undocumented workers, and pressure to present the accounting department with financial metrics to evaluate the sustainable procurement efforts. In a big-picture view, Olivier Menuet, directeur délégué achats durable et solidaires, and his boss, Pierre Pelouzet, directeur des achats, want more visibility around sustainable development not only within the procurement function but throughout the organization. How might changes already made at SNCF be driven deeper into the company? "

The Vigeo case is used in Darden's Global EMBA ""Business Ethics"" course. The case raises the issue of how we determine what constitutes a socially responsible business, and how to apply that idea in a global context. It therefore could also be used effectively in courses in Marketing, Finance, or Global Economies and Markets. With a global leadership and sustainability perspective, this field-based case uses Vigeo, a European leader among environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating agencies headquartered in Paris, to set the stage for an analysis of what it means to be a socially responsible business. It allows for an exploration of decision making and moral overtones that are often difficult to resolve. The material also lets students explore the idea of global values-is there such a thing, and if so, what are they? The case opens with a summary of issues that include how CEO Nicole Notat plans to grow the company in 2012. She had to take a strategic view of where the SRI market was going and be prepared. The board had asked Notat to think more strategically about China. Would Vigeo adapt existing services and products to the Chinese market? Would entering an emerging market such as China mean rethinking the business model from the ground up? How would either strategy fit with the company's overall mission?