Abstract: Fan Ye has opened a U.S. sales office for the company his father founded in China: Suns International, a manufacturer of electronic switches. While competition in China was based almost solely on cost, Fan knew this would not be enough to break into the U.S. market-particularly in Suns' industry, where the cost of failure was high. Consequently, he decided to obtain the certifications needed to ensure Suns' product would meet U.S. standards. This gamble paid off as Suns attracted OEM customers like Honeywell and Otis Elevator. A main issue and decision point in the case is triggered by Suns taking over the exclusive supply of foot switches to Grainger, a major electronics catalog. ProSwitch, a U.S.-based family business that lost the Grainger account to Suns, has asked to meet with Fan, presumably to talk about a possible cooperative relationship. Fan must now decide whether to compete or cooperate with ProSwitch and what approach to take in the meeting.

Founded in 1987, China Merchants Bank (CMB) is a pioneer in the use of technical innovation and IT as a competitive tool in the rapidly evolving Chinese banking sector. With a relatively small branch network when compared to its larger competitors, CMB uses an IT-driven strategy to introduce an "all-in-one" card, which integrates a suite of financial products to drive its personal banking business enabling CMB to be ranked 6th among China's commercial banks and 2nd among the other national commercial banks in terms of total assets as of June 2006. Underlying its excellence in personal banking is CMB's leadership in developing its credit card business. By April 2006, CMB had issued a total of over 5 million credit cards, capturing one-third of the Chinese credit card market. In September 2006, CMB's IPO in Hong Kong fetched about $2.4 billion and, given deregulation in the banking sector in China, CMB's President was presented with new challenges and opportunities concerning how such funds should be productively allocated to ensure CMB's competitiveness.