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Businesses have traditionally operated under a brick-and-mortar strategy, paying little attention to the electronic retail channel. Now, though, increasing competitive pressures and Web technologies as an information source necessitate that managers adopt an integrated click-and-mortar strategy. With differing levels of success, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have invested in their own websites to promote their online presence. However, the recent power of information intermediaries makes it difficult for companies to attract consumers solely through their own webpages. As a result, companies are being forced to adapt their online strategies to increase customer attraction; a proper use of backlinks and infomediaries can accomplish this at relatively low cost. This article traces the emergence of infomediaries and backlinks and the mechanics of their operation, offering managers and practitioners guidance regarding how best to improve the impact of their online visibility.

Although it is well accepted that corporate communication has a direct impact on corporate reputation, little is known about the link between firms' social media communication strategies and the formation of firms' reputations in an online environment. This article contributes to this body of knowledge by studying the impact of social media communication strategies on firms' reputations. The setting for our study is the hotel industry. The results offer insights regarding the challenges of developing online communication strategies that affect corporate reputation.

This empirical research explores how 16 global corporations from four different industry sectors--retail, technology equipment, food/beverage/tobacco, and consumer goods--use social media platforms and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports to communicate about sustainability. Facebook, Twitter, CEO letters from annual reports and CSR/sustainability reports, and other company documentation are examined to compare the content and scope of these firms' corporate communication. The sample is divided into two subsamples (Green and Not Green firms) using Newsweek's Greenest Company 2012 rankings, and compared for differential use of social media and corporate reports. Results show that communication varies across firm and industry regarding types of sustainability initiatives reported, metrics employed, and communication media utilized, and that Green firms are more active than Not Green firms both in addressing sustainability and in general social media activity. Implications are discussed herein and recommendations are presented for companies seeking to better understand the effective use of social media and sustainability communication.

An immigrant entrepreneur created Hi-Bridge Consulting Corporation, a company that imported and distributed alcoholic products in Canada, among other activities. In 2009, the entrepreneur brought Yanjing beer to Canada from China, even though the Chinese brewery did not have an articulated international expansion strategy in Canada at the time. Despite numerous challenges in the Canadian beer market, the entrepreneur made significant headway. However, six years after the product’s introduction, she understood that many Canadian consumers were still not aware of Yanjing beer and that she needed to find an effective way to increase its market share.

Spinal Cord Injury Ontario is a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Toronto that assists people with spinal cord injuries to achieve independence, self-reliance and full community participation. In early 2014, the marketing manager is trying to understand how best to assess performance against the organization's crucial but hard-to-measure goal of becoming the expert on living with a spinal cord injury in the province of Ontario. In addition, she wishes to develop a reporting system based on the indicators laid out in the existing balanced scorecard. This monthly dashboard will allow the new chief executive officer to manage the organization using a summary sheet of measures that highlights how it is performing on critical dimensions. She faces two crucial questions: How should internal reporting be performed? What would being successful at community leadership look like and how can performance against this goal be monitored?

Student spreadsheet for W14557.

The marketing director of an advertising agency is considering marketing options to present to Porsche Canada. The goal is to generate sales of Porsche vehicles in Canada by using social media to highlight the fact that Porsches can be driven in winter conditions. The objective of this program, which includes a variety of social media tools and messages, augments Porsche Car Canada's traditional marketing campaign of billboards, event sponsorships and print ads in premium publications. The marketing director faces resource constraints: he has only a three-person marketing team and the limited marketing budget means the program can likely focus on only three distinctive social media vehicles. In addition, much of Porsche's social media efforts are run out of the United States. The marketing director needs to work within these constraints to build a social media campaign with a Canadian focus.

Dr. Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University were perfecting their tissue culture beef product-made entirely from muscle grown in his lab-to give it the same taste, texture and appearance of a traditional beef hamburger. A previous iteration of this product had been taste tested live, with good results, and Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, had provided Post with much of the funding to make the burgers. The next step was to form an independent company around this technology and take it to market. This innovative product could both radically disrupt the existing beef production and supply chain, and provide an animal welfare and environmentally-friendly food that had far less of an environmental impact than traditional beef products. Post faced several challenges in making this a commercially viable product though. He had to get price down, as it currently cost roughly $330,000 to make a single burger. He also had to find the right partner(s) to help him bring the product to market, but who should he work with: someone from the established beef production and supply system, a retailer, or someone entirely outside the traditional beef system? How could he expect established companies to react to this disruption of the status quo? Messaging around this product was critical: How should Post communicate with the public to convey that this was a natural product-the way muscle tissue grew in his lab was the same way it developed in cattle-and overcome public skepticism of overt scientific involvement in their food?

In an initiative to develop its herbal soap offering and create a repositioning strategy for its soap products, one of the front-runners in the Indian skincare market explored the perception of the brand image, using survey data to compare its own image with those of two of its strongest competitors. The challenge for this brand was to reposition itself and build its equity after taking into consideration the perceptual results of the study and the existing positioning of soap brands.

In mid-January 2013, the owner of Lake Superior Lodge and its newly appointed manager were meeting to figure out a marketing plan to turn things around at the motel. The owner, who was born and raised in Duluth, Michigan, bought Lake Superior Lodge primarily because of its location. The property sat on the scenic North Shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and Two Harbors. Ten years later, however, the motel had yet to turn a profit. The manager was hired in late 2012 to operate the motel and to increase its profitability. If he could not make this happen, the owner would have no choice but to sell the property and move on.

Supplement case for W14544.

A stock market analyst was reviewing one of his fund's holdings, Alliance Grain Traders Inc. (AGT). One of the world's largest traders of pulse crops, AGT was in the midst of entering a new line of business and expanding its non-core operations. On one hand, AGT would have been able to use its dominance in pulse trading as an advantage in expanding up the value chain. On the other hand, it was moving into sectors that were already mature and highly competitive. The key question for the analyst was whether he should continue to hold AGT stock given its stated objectives.

With four outlets of Taco Bell opened in Bangalore, India by December 2013, the managing director of Yum! Restaurants India, the parent company, felt eager to expand. The company took pride in providing the best Mexican-inspired fast food at a low price in a friendly atmosphere. Its target market was young people with global aspirations and/or experiences who were aware of the brand and willing to try something new. India appeared to be a large and fitting market for this quick service restaurant: a population of more than a billion people, the majority of whom were under 35, growing income levels and increasing tastes for international cuisines. Yet, despite a record-breaking launch in 2010, its retail foot traffic was declining. The addition of vegetarian items to the menu had limited success in luring customers to repeat visits. Were the price changes on the new menu reasonable and consistent with the brand promise Taco Bell had made during its launch? What could be done to sustain the company's survival in India?

With four outlets of Taco Bell opened in Bangalore, India by December 2013, the managing director of Yum! Restaurants India, the parent company, felt eager to expand. The company took pride in providing the best Mexican-inspired fast food at a low price in a friendly atmosphere. Its target market was young people with global aspirations and/or experiences who were aware of the brand and willing to try something new. India appeared to be a large and fitting market for this quick service restaurant: a population of more than a billion people, the majority of whom were under 35, growing income levels and increasing tastes for international cuisines. Yet, despite a record-breaking launch in 2010, its retail foot traffic was declining. The addition of vegetarian items to the menu had limited success in luring customers to repeat visits. Were the price changes on the new menu reasonable and consistent with the brand promise Taco Bell had made during its launch? What could be done to sustain the company’s survival in India?

MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga was investing significant time and attention to increase financial inclusion among individuals with historically no access to banking or financial services in countries around the world with large underserved populations. The effort included partnerships with governments and banks to issue MasterCard branded debit cards to millions of individuals. Financial inclusion could potentially help these individuals by increasing financial literacy, building credit records, improving savings rates, providing access to loans and other financial products, and, in general, by increasing the economic opportunities for these newly banked consumers. And by adding more customers, MasterCard potentially could also grow its bottom line. Financial inclusion raised questions for MasterCard. Was the management time and attention well spent given the low returns expected from adding millions of mostly very poor customers? What risks might MasterCard encounter-particularly in some countries where citizens resented their government partnering with and providing personal data to a large U.S. company.

Four years into a five-year contract with General Motors to be the exclusive website vendor to its U.S. network of more than 4,000 dealers, CDK Digital faced a crucial contract renewal at the end of 2012. The case follows Melissa McCann, director of strategic marketing, and Chris Reed, CMO, as they prepared for a critical meeting in July 2011: a presentation to the customer relationship management (CRM) subcommittee of the Chevrolet dealer council. Although GM dealers, like all auto dealers in the United States, were independent franchisees, GM saw the renewal of CDK Digital's exclusive contract as a collaborative decision between dealers and GM. According to Ed Vogt, GM's executive in charge of the renewal, if the dealer councils said no, the contract would not be renewed. This case challenges students to use CDK's big data and analytics capabilities to address the inherent conflict between dealers and manufacturers: when marketing to potential customers, manufacturers wanted consistency across dealer websites to maximize sales of their targeted brands, while dealers wanted flexibility to sell what they had in inventory.

Apple Inc. sued Samsung Electronics for approximately $2 billion, contending that Samsung violated some of its patents by copying Apple's product features. Apple's expert witness team used a conjoint analysis in order to assign a value to the product features in question-thereby attempting to assess the magnitude of Apples' revenue loss as a result of the patent infringement. This case asks students to evaluate the design of this study as well as the pros and cons of its use in this context.

Apple Inc. sued Samsung Electronics for approximately $2 billion, contending that Samsung violated some of its patents by copying Apple's product features. Apple's expert witness team used a conjoint analysis in order to assign a value to the product features in question-thereby attempting to assess the magnitude of Apples' revenue loss as a result of the patent infringement. This case asks students to evaluate the design of this study as well as the pros and cons of its use in this context.

Near the end of November 2013, Lululemon Athletica (Lululemon) became the subject of a viral firestorm after a series of negative events seriously ruptured the company's reputation. The company found itself facing its worst quality control problem to date, with a recall of 17 per cent of its Luon pants due to issues with sheerness. In addition, the company’s chief executive officer had stepped down. Was Lululemon destined to follow Blackberry as another example of a failed Canadian company, or could it resurrect its former glory by facing its critics head on?

This note presents two related measures for assessing the financial value of a customer to the firm. The first is the well-known measure of Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV for short. The second, which has received much less attention, treats the acquisition of a customer as a financial investment that has a quantifiable return based on future profit streams. Accordingly, we term this latter measure Customer Lifetime Return on Investment, or CLROI for short, and explain how it is calculated. We further show how employing CLROI can yield wildly different marketing implications relative to CLV (despite the strong link between them), particularly for targeting decisions. The note provides multiple examples to illustrate the concepts and also introduces formal characterizations of the two measures. The relevance of segment sizes, customer dynamics, social network influences, and strategic considerations are discussed.