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For French watchmaker Pequignet, its return to the annual luxury watch and jewelry show, Baselworld, signaled a new page in the company's 40-year history. As the only "haute horlogerie" manufacturer in France since the quartz crisis in the 1970s, Pequignet had caught the attention of both the media and the watch collector community, despite going through receivership and a change of ownership. In addition to showcasing its Calibre Royal collection, Pequignet presented a new line of entry-level watches. Should the company invest further in its manufacturing processes to make high-end mechanical watches, as it had in the past? Or should it focus on producing more affordable, accessible products, as with its most recent collection? As an independent atelier, Pequignet had to address these questions in order to succeed in the highly competitive global watch market.

Stack Brewing, a start-up craft brewery, has a capacity of approximately 5,600 litres per month based on twelve 117-litre batches per week. A government grant based on growth and job creation potential will help boost production capacity by five times, necessitating the development of additional distribution and marketing communication strategies. The owner cannot afford a listing in the Beer Store, the distribution monopoly owned by Labatt Breweries of Canada and Molson-Coors Canada Inc., and his budget for communications is small. While this case provides an opportunity for students to perform quantitative analysis based on revenues and market size, the focus of the case, however, is on an improved distribution and communication plan.

Many early adopters of data mining wasted millions of dollars due to the significant amounts of dirty data contained in IT systems and the length of time required to build data warehouses. But the potential payoff of data mining has soared along with the growth of digital data. Today, thanks to the massive amounts of user-generated content online, firms do not need to build a data warehouse to benefit from data mining. Mining social media sites for actionable intelligence should be on the radar of consumer product businesses. This article examines research that has helped develop an innovative, high-validity method of mining online product reviews such as those on Amazon.com. Firms can now learn what customers consider the strengths and weaknesses of their products and competitors’ products — right from the horse’s mouth — without conducting costly surveys or focus groups.

In June 2014, leading healthcare and consumer technology company, Royal Philips ("Philips"), announced its HealthSuite Digital Platform to house healthcare data and enable applications used by physicians and patients. Philips had strong equity in the healthcare technology space, due to its extensive portfolio of medical devices and related software sold primarily to hospitals. Philips designed the first two apps for the platform (eCareCoordinator and eCareCompanion) in-house, but it planned to open it up to third-party developers who would create an array of health-focused apps. Healthcare had long lagged behind other industries in adoption of technology as well as patient-relationship management. However, many health players had recently increased investment in new infrastructure and data analytics. Would the new Philips HealthSuite Digital Platform find success in the rapidly evolving industry?

In October 2013, Colgate-Palmolive Company, the world's leading oral care company, was about to launch its new Colgate® Maximum Cavity Protection™ plus Sugar Acid Neutralizer™ toothpaste in Brazil. Oral care category accounted for 46 percent of Colgate's $17.4 billion sales worldwide in 2013. The new toothpaste was clinically proven to reduce and prevent cavities more effectively than toothpaste with the same level of fluoride alone. All major industry players, including Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline and Colgate itself, had long ago launched products with the maximum amount of fluoride allowed by Health authorities. Yet cavities remained a significant threat to public health in many countries, both developing and developed. As Suzan Harrison, Colgate's president of Oral Care, prepared to launch CMCP+SAN in Brazil, the world's third largest oral care market, her executive team was divided over the product's positioning and pricing. Should it be positioned as a basic product to maximize reach for its health benefits or as a premium product for consumers who sought superior cavity protection?

The development of mobile applications has represented a challenge and opportunity for companies to market their brands and products through a new channel; however, the branded mobile applications (branded apps) currently available in the market are far from perfect and existing app designs do not yet have well established mobile and social features. This article offers systematic guidelines for branded app design by identifying different levels of strategies that should be taken into consideration by companies. We illustrate five business objectives (communication, customer relationship management, sales, product innovation, and marketing research) and identify five types of branded apps (tool-, game-, social-, m-commerce-, and design-centric). Three functional building blocks are proposed to specify how mobile features, social features, and brand mention elements should be incorporated into branded app development. Various examples of branded apps are provided to illustrate relevant best practices in order to guide marketers in improving branded app design.

Members of the Millennial Generation ('millennials') are strongly attached to their smartphones and engrossed in social media. They frequently post pictures and tweet about the products they like and buy. Consequently, established consumer brands unable to master the use of Twitter and other social media are likely to lose their ability to communicate with this generation. This article reports findings from a study of millennials' Twitter usage and presents the concept of brand entification as the next evolutionary stage of brand personality made possible by this social media. Brand entification refers to a distinct emotional and cognitive attachment between heavy-Twitter-using millennials and the brands they like, and to a unique set of attributions they make toward the brand. Herein, we explain the nature of brand entification, describe how it emerges, and distill some key lessons for brand managers interested in reaching Twitter-using millennials.

U.S. companies spent $5.1 billion on social media advertising in 2013, but a recent Gallup survey revealed that these advertisements had no influence on the majority of U.S. consumers' buying decisions. For social media marketing to be effective, we argue that social media marketing efforts need to be congruent and aligned with the different needs of social media users. To this end, this article presents a typology of current social media services using the following categories: relationship, self-media, collaboration, and creative outlet. We further elaborate on how each type of social media caters to basic human needs, and provide implications for social media marketing based on the need-congruence lens.

WoodBarn India was a construction company specializing in wooden houses and buildings. The company had worked primarily for business-to-business buyers but was fairly successful in earning a good reputation. However, to make profits, WoodBarn needed to tap into the Indian middle-class housing market, which was largely dominated by brick-and-mortar houses. The major challenge was to educate consumers and break the existing mindset that wooden houses were non-durable. Additional challenges related to procurement since the required raw material was not available in the domestic market and obtaining the same increased the final price of the product.

By 2013, Victoria's Secret, one of the most successful intimate apparel companies in the world, controls 35 per cent of the global lingerie market from its headquarters in California. However, the company's gross profits are beginning to decline because of higher buying and occupancy expenses and higher promotional costs. This slide in profitability, if left unchecked, has the potential to destroy the share price and brand equity of this eponymous brand. What can be done to reverse these financial trends?

On July 12, 1971, Sport Participation Canada, a not-for-profit company, was established by the Canadian government to encourage Canadians to increase their physical activity levels to fight the "obesity epidemic" that was causing health care costs to soar. One year later, the company was nationalized and renamed ParticipACTION. To spread its message, it relied on humourous ads, especially on TV, to encourage adults and children to exercise more. Despite considerable public support, the organization did not have enough capital to continue its operations without increased government funding and was forced to close in January 2001. The resulting uproar led the government to change its mind, and ParticipACTION was revived in 2007. However, its success with nationwide programs such as Sports Day in Canada and Bring Back Play was not enough to save it from further cuts in 2014. Would turning to social media outlets help to re-energize its campaign to encourage Canadians to adopt a healthier lifestyle? Could the organization attract enough donations from the public and private institutions to make up for the shortfall in government funds? These were the dilemmas facing its board in 2015.

In July 2014, the managing director of Lakshmi Projects in Delhi, India, finds himself struggling with the marketing and sales strategy for the year ahead. Founded in 1997, the company specializes in offering turnkey solutions for bulk material handling systems for industries in the fast-growing infrastructure segment of the Indian economy; its two main product categories are elevator and conveyor systems. Yet, the company was failing to meet its sales targets, largely due to an overextended and underachieving salesforce. What was the right structure for the sales, after-sales and quality teams in the organization? An additional concern was that a sales strategy for the company’s new product, set to launch in October 2014, had not yet been decided. Fluctuating industry dynamics, financial strains, field sales and service requirements meant that this was a complex decision that held larger consequences for the company’s future.

Founded in 1994, Motor Trike, Inc. produced kits that transformed a motorcycle into a three-wheeled vehicle or trike, providing increased safety and comfort for the riders. Trikes became increasingly more popular as the baby boomer generation aged. Jacquelyn Moore, marketing director at Motor Trike, faced decisions of whether to start an owners' group or brand community for the company and then, if so, how to start the group. Jacquelyn had marketing survey data available to help guide the decision making process, but the data needed to be properly analyzed and presented to the owners of the company.

The CEO of a health care-based REIT is considering alternative nursing home investment strategies. Students must consider macro-industry trends, scale and scope issues and consumer segmentation data in making their recommendations.

VW understood the customer funnel and worked backwards on planning ad inventories. ''Cost per lead'' was the key metric to measure any campaign performance. After brand awareness was built through display ads, VW invested in search engine marketing for organic and paid searches which led to ''Planet Volkswagen,''(PV). PV represented VW activities on a revolving circular globe with each section designed around a specific theme. PV received good response; however, owing to recession in industry in 2012, marketing had to lead to test drives - hence efforts towards PV were reduced. Two campaigns were launched one after other towards increasing leads. VW launched New Jetta in 2011 with a social media campaign called ''#AnythingforJetta''. It revolved around the concept that Jetta gave so much driving pleasure that people would do anything to own Jetta. Twitter was chosen for the campaign to get instant responses and to tap into specific customer segment. VW prepared video content showing people doing quirky stuff for Jetta. Full front page ads were published in leading newspapers, which gave the campaign a big push. #AnythingforJetta became the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter and it also led to 15% increase in Twitter users in India. "Jetta TSI YouTube Test Drive" campaign was launched in 2012, which took test drives drives from roads to viewers' desktops, tablets, and mobiles. The idea behind the YouTube test drive was to engage users and let them ask any questions about the car just as they would in a real world test-drive. The campaign, reached 21 million unique users against planned reach of 10 million. The challenge facing VW was how to break the clutter and engage fans to generate positive word-of-mouth.

With the help of technology, companies today sweep up huge amounts of customer data. But they tend to be opaque about the information they collect and often resell, which leaves their customers feeling uneasy. Though that practice may give firms an edge in the short term, in the long run it undermines consumers' trust, which in turn hurts competitiveness, say authors Morey, Forbath, and Schoop. In this article, the three share the results of a survey of 900 people across five countries, which looked at attitudes about data privacy and security. It examined what people knew about the information trails they leave online, which organizations they did--and did not--trust with their data, and which data they valued the most. The results show that the value consumers place on different data depends a lot on what it is and how it is used. In general, the perceived value rises as the data's breadth and sensitivity increases from basic, voluntarily shared information to detailed, predictive profiles that firms create through analytics, and as its uses shift from benefiting the consumer to benefiting the company. If data is used to improve a product, consumers generally feel the enhancement itself is a fair trade, but they expect more in return for data used to target marketing, and the most in return for data sold to third parties. To build trust, companies must be transparent about the data they gather and offer consumers appropriate value in exchange for it. Simple legal disclosures aren't enough, however; companies must actively educate their customers and incorporate fairness into their products and models from the start. Companies that get this will win consumers' goodwill and business and continued access to their data. Companies that don't will find themselves at a serious disadvantage, and maybe even shut out.

The author was Apple's second software "evangelist" and is now the chief evangelist for Canva, an online design firm. He believes that all managers can adopt the practice, with great benefit to their organizations and their careers. No matter what your company, it probably offers something valuable and differentiated and therefore worth evangelizing about: if not goods or services, then corporate values, cutting-edge accounting practices, or flexible work-at-home policies. Kawasaki outlines three ways to effectively evangelize: (1) Schmoozing. This requires you to get out of your office, ask questions, unveil your passions, follow up with people, e-mail effectively, make it easy to get in touch with you, and do favors. (2) Public speaking. You need to deliver quality content, omit the sales pitch, customize the speech for your audience, focus on entertaining your listeners, tell stories, circulate in the audience beforehand, control scheduling and venue when you can, and practice and speak all the time. (3) Social media. When posting you should offer value, be interesting, take chances, keep it brief, be a mensch, add drama, tempt with headlines, use hashtags, and stay active.

Optima Business Group (OBG), a consumer packaged goods firm, achieved significant improvements in its sales and distribution processes through the implementation of sales force automation (SFA). The implementation was carried out in the urban markets of OBG, but it was not an easy journey. The chief technology officer has to decide whether OBG should implement SFA in its rural markets and, if so, how it should be executed. What are the risks and benefits of implementing the system? Competitors are fast leveraging information technology in other functions such as finance, HR and vendor management and OBG needs to catch up. Finally, competitors of OBG are adopting innovative methods to share the costs of IT implementation (e.g., handheld devices) with their partners. Faced with different options, and a unique terrain of conducting business in the emerging economy of India, the chief technology officer has to decide on OBG's future IT strategy.

Optima Business Group (OBG), a consumer packaged goods firm, achieved significant improvements in its sales and distribution processes through the implementation of sales force automation (SFA). The implementation was carried out in the urban markets of OBG, but it was not an easy journey. The chief technology officer has to decide whether OBG should implement SFA in its rural markets and, if so, how it should be executed. What are the risks and benefits of implementing the system? Competitors are fast leveraging information technology in other functions such as finance, HR and vendor management and OBG needs to catch up. Finally, competitors of OBG are adopting innovative methods to share the costs of IT implementation (e.g., handheld devices) with their partners. Faced with different options, and a unique terrain of conducting business in the emerging economy of India, the chief technology officer has to decide on OBG’s future IT strategy.