In mid-September 2022, Saumil Majmudar, the co-founder, chief executive officer, and managing director of Sportz Village faced a problem. The company, based in Bengaluru, India, was India’s leading sports education organization, which provided a structured physical education (PE) curriculum to K–12 schools. Thirteen years after its inception, EduSports, a division of Sportz Village, was unable to reach its goal of penetrating 5,000 schools with its PE curriculum. Research had indicated that the low penetration rate stemmed from not offering inter-school sports competitions to showcase the ability of the students involved in the structured PE program. Majmudar had to evaluate between two funding sources to enable EduSports to offer inter-school sports competitions: pass on the increased subscription price to students or keep the subscription price the same but look for brands to offset the increased costs of running inter-school events. Given that the yearly sales cycle would begin in about two weeks, Majmudar’s decision was urgent.
In mid-September 2022, Saumil Majmudar, the co-founder, chief executive officer, and managing director of Sportz Village faced a problem. The company, based in Bengaluru, India, was India's leading sports education organization, which provided a structured physical education (PE) curriculum to K-12 schools. Thirteen years after its inception, EduSports, a division of Sportz Village, was unable to reach its goal of penetrating 5,000 schools with its PE curriculum. Research had indicated that the low penetration rate stemmed from not offering inter-school sports competitions to showcase the ability of the students involved in the structured PE program. Majmudar had to evaluate between two funding sources to enable EduSports to offer inter-school sports competitions: pass on the increased subscription price to students or keep the subscription price the same but look for brands to offset the increased costs of running inter-school events. Given that the yearly sales cycle would begin in about two weeks, Majmudar's decision was urgent.
GoSports Foundation was a non-profit venture that developed India’s emerging athletic talent through athletic scholarships and other supports that helped the athletes achieve sports excellence. The foundation had limited funding and numerous applicants, requiring that it carefully choose the athletes it would support. Nandan Kamath, a co-founder of the organization, has to choose one athlete from several applicants for support. He also has to decide whether the foundation should start supporting the development of coaches and trainers and how it should balance its support with a desire to advance the profile of athletes competing in the Paralympics.
GoSports Foundation was a non-profit venture that developed India's emerging athletic talent through athletic scholarships and other supports that helped the athletes achieve sports excellence. The foundation had limited funding and numerous applicants, requiring that it carefully choose the athletes it would support. Nandan Kamath, a co-founder of the organization, has to choose one athlete from several applicants for support. He also has to decide whether the foundation should start supporting the development of coaches and trainers and how it should balance its support with a desire to advance the profile of athletes competing in the Paralympics.
Minnetonka Corp. which was founded in 1964, began as a niche player in the gift soap and novelty toiletries markets. In 1980, it entered--and managed to capture a piece of--the mass bar-soap market with pump-dispensed Softsoap liquid soap. In 1984, the company took on the toothpaste market with plaque-fighting, pump-dispensed Check-Up. This time, success was more fleeting. Minnetonka launched the hugely successful Obsession fragrance in 1985, following up with Eternity in 1988. Minnetonka's various businesses were sold over the period 1987 to 1989. Analysis suggests that the key is the use of scope--starting a new game linked to an existing game in which rival players are already established. Analysis indicates that rivals may then deliberately choose to delay imitating the innovator if they view the innovation as: 1) sufficiently unlikely to succeed in the marketplace, and 2) sufficiently close a substitute to their existing products. A rewritten version of an earlier case.
Recent developments in the software business point to some of the reasons why companies offer their products or services in bundles. One is the opportunity to leverage market power, as Microsoft arguably has done by bundling applications software with its operating systems. Another reason for bundling is the economics of scope, as indicated by the emergence of software suites and the shift toward broad-line players (Microsoft, Lotus, and Borland-WordPerfect). But there appears to be still more to bundling: individual software programs continue to be offered in addition to suites, and suites are priced at a steep discount to the total price for the separate programs.
Describes Xerox's "rental only" policy for its machines during the period when it had a monopoly of the plain paper copier market and how that policy changed once it was faced with entry by IBM, Canon, Kodak, and others. Data on the breakdown of Xerox's revenues between sales and rentals are included.
Examines whether product proliferation can be used as a preemptive device--as alleged in the FTC's 1982 complaint against four manufacturers of ready-to-eat cereals.
Examines the pricing policy for a firm that is a monopoly supplier of a durable good. Lowering price over time in an attempt to increase market penetration seems desirable. But doing so may also cause some buyers to postpone their purchases. Describes these considerations in the context of a specific example that can be analyzed numerically.
Concerns a 1983 joint venture between General Motors and Toyota to produce small cars in the United States. Describes the globalization of the auto industry and the competitive positions of the two companies.
An introduction to the formal analysis of strategic situations. Ideas of game trees, backwards induction, and dominated strategies are introduced. The methods of backwards induction to find optimal strategies is related to the method of successive eliminations of dominated strategies for games of perfect information.