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LINE Corporation was started in 2000 as a local company in Japan focused on developing a mobile communication application. It later expanded its reach to operate a wide range of products and services in various markets including retail, entertainment, financial technology, and artificial intelligence. LINE Corporation was operating in two global markets—Asia and North America—with its top four strategic business units. The LINE mobile messaging application was the cornerstone of the company, launched in Japan shortly after the Great East Japan earthquake in 2011 to allow individuals to connect with loved ones, participate in relief efforts, and express their feelings through emojis and stickers. LINE FRIENDS INC. was a standalone entity created to sell and distribute character-related merchandise featuring the popular animal characters Brown, Cony, and Sally. LINE PLAY Corporation, the company’s popular avatar-building game, had over 75 million registered users, but some users saw it as merely a cash-grabbing game. LINE Next Inc. was a venture focused on developing and expanding the global non-fungible token ecosystem. In 2023, the main issue that LINE Corporation was facing was how best to allocate budget and resources to the two markets (Asia and North America) and to its top four strategic business units.

<p align="justify">Acen Haitao Jiang, founder and chief executive officer of Aomi, faced a dilemma. Founded in 2016, Aomi was an online food delivery platform in Macao with a local market share of over 90 per cent. Nevertheless, Macao was a small market with a population of about 680,000 and an area of 32.9 square kilometres, which was becoming a bottleneck for Aomi’s growth. Jiang was considering a Y-strategy, composed of three business development strands: food delivery (i.e., maintaining the core business); business diversification (e.g., livestream commerce and online supermarket services); and international expansion to new, larger markets (e.g., Hong Kong). With limited resources and potential risks, however, Jiang was struggling to choose between diversification and market expansion. June 1, 2022, would mark Aomi’s sixth anniversary and Jiang had to decide on a growth strategy before then.

Dabba Chetty Shop was a small unique retail shop in Chennai, India that had been in operation for four generations. For more than a century, the shop had sold natural and processed materials to customers who used alternative medicines for well-being. The shop’s strong reputation was based on the quality of the materials sold. Key factors for success included the ability to identify and reliably procure materials, having an intimate knowledge of various natural ingredients and processed goods, providing appropriate quality, and maintaining strong customer relationships. The continued success of Dabba Chetty Shop over four generations was primarily attributable to the family’s emphasis on customer service and wellness, rather than on increasing profits. During the pandemic, Koonala Badrinath, the shop’s current owner, used the Indian postal service to fulfill customer orders. With the growing demand for his shop’s products from consumers outside the region and across the world, he was considering expanding the shop’s services to customers in different locations, especially the numerous Indian diaspora consumers residing abroad.

Dabba Chetty Shop was a small unique retail shop in Chennai, India that had been in operation for four generations. For more than a century, the shop had sold natural and processed materials to customers who used alternative medicines for well-being. The shop's strong reputation was based on the quality of the materials sold. Key factors for success included the ability to identify and reliably procure materials, having an intimate knowledge of various natural ingredients and processed goods, providing appropriate quality, and maintaining strong customer relationships. The continued success of Dabba Chetty Shop over four generations was primarily attributable to the family's emphasis on customer service and wellness, rather than on increasing profits. During the pandemic, Koonala Badrinath, the shop's current owner, used the Indian postal service to fulfill customer orders. With the growing demand for his shop's products from consumers outside the region and across the world, he was considering expanding the shop's services to customers in different locations, especially the numerous Indian diaspora consumers residing abroad.

Neeraj Bakshi, who bought a vodka distillery in 2019 in Mississauga, Ontario, had big dreams for the distillery and purchased a 2.5-hectare property in Welland, Ontario, to increase its production capacity. Bakshi had invested significantly in NB Distillers, which now produced three types of vodka, two types of whisky, and one type of gin, and he wanted to see nothing but success. He had advertised on billboards, bus shelters, and radio, but he wanted to spend his communication budget more strategically and was open to trying new ideas. Now, in May 2021, he needed answers to several important questions: What audience segment should NB Distillers target? How should Bakshi position the distillery? What other promotional tools might help him achieve greater brand awareness?

On December 15, 2020, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Australian event-staging company Stagekings Pty. Ltd. (Stagekings) was honoured with a SmartCompany Resilience award. Speaking at the event, he reflected on the dreadful day of Friday March 13, 2020, when a lockdown was announced due to COVID-19. In the 48 hours following this announcement, Stagekings lost all its live-event jobs. Sick to the core, the CEO decided to post an open letter asking Australians what they needed the most. Addressing many requests from people working from home, Stagekings rapidly launched a new brand, IsoKings, with a single product: a flat-pack desk. In just 15 months after its launch, IsoKing reported revenue of AU$1.5 million. As lockdowns lifted and people returned to offices, the CEO was worried: Should IsoKings be further developed, or should the company get back to its core business of making stages?

In 2017, Fatih Uysal (AMP 2021) became CEO of Kariyer.net. By then, the business was already the industry leading online job board in Turkey. However, faced with stalling growth, a turbulent macroenvironment, and growing competition from international players, Uysal kicked off a transformation of the business from an online job board to a horizontally diversified recruitment company, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The case chronicles the transformation, highlighting new AI-driven tools built both for internal use and as products to be sold. The case also describes two new business lines (employer branding services/ virtual job fairs, and an online tech-talent job board coupled with training services) that showed potential to become new core products. By 2023, Uysal and his team were targeting doubling revenue and growing the contribution of non-job ad revenues from 30% to 50% of the total over the next three years. Uysal and his team were constantly balancing exploring promising new products and verticals against doubling down on those generating revenue today. In order to reach their financial targets, Uysal and his team were debating not only which product(s) to pursue but how to do so efficiently.

A traditionally mono-brand menswear luxury company faces growing competition from international groups and changes its brand focus from formal wear to leisure wear.

Over two decades old, Effet Boomerang is an advertising agency based in Quebec, Canada. In recent years, it has found it harder to win client contracts, which has been partially due to changes in the industry. This has left its co-founder and president examining her options for repositioning the agency. This case provides an interesting opportunity to introduce students to internal and external analyses by having them examine how a small firm may leverage its strengths to effectively adapt to a changing industry.

In 2022, the India-based patient-centred integrative oncology start-up ZenOnco was struggling with brand equity and impact. The company had introduced two innovative apps-Ziopar and CANNECT-to help empower, educate, and enable patients and caregivers to access scientifically-based information and support on cancer treatment. However, the company had yet to become the most sought-after platform for cancer guidance. More than a dozen oncology start-ups were springing up across India's fragmented, disorganized, and complex cancer-care industry, known for service-delivery issues and high drug costs. ZenOnco's biggest challenge was brand building and navigating the customer service journey to become the preferred destination for free and low-cost, fact-based cancer-care guidance, counselling, and support.

In August 2022, Falguni Nayar, the founder and chief executive officer of Nykaa-a Mumbai, India-based omnichannel beauty, personal care, and fashion retailer-confronted declining profitability and a stock price that had fallen 36 per cent since the company's initial public offering in late 2021. As a woman entrepreneur who had launched her venture at the age of 49, Nayar's attempt to emulate the French multinational retailer Sephora in the Indian market had had a strong start amid heady media coverage. However, the company had been expanding out of its core beauty and personal care market, where it was an early entrant, to the crowded and highly competitive fashion market, which impacted profitability. Nayar and her management team had to address two major issues: determining how to increase profitability and deciding whether or not to make a strong push to India's Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, where the competitive intensity was likely to be lower, but the demographics were unlike those in the country's large metropolitan areas, where Nykaa was successful.

This note provides an overview of how psychological principles may be used as part of a seller's pricing strategy. The note defines the concept of psychological pricing and explains the motivations for firms to engage in it. Prominent practices and tactics, with detailed reference to the psychological and behavioral principles at play, are featured. Numerous examples are given to illustrate the material covered. The note also highlights several concerns companies might have in employing psychological pricing techniques, along with thoughts on how to mitigate or counter these reservations.

In the fall of 2019, the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever (HUL), India's largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firm, is wondering what to do about their experiments to digitize distribution. Despite three years of intense efforts, their apps to empower retailers have not seen any traction. Is it time to shut them down and focus on another area with more potential for digital transformation?

The managing director of Leosb Private Limited has to select a distribution channel for his factory-produced roti (a flat bread popular in India) in the city of Hyderabad, a large metropolitan city in India. In July 2022, he considered the best distribution channel, which would offer access to retail consumers, and be cost effective, easy to scale, and expandable to related product categories. His options were using one or more distributors, selling to modern trade outlets, developing a sales team to sell directly to retail outlets, or selling directly to the consumer through Leosb’s website and mobile app. He was running out of funds, so his time was limited.

In 2022, the Crocs Classic Clog was the best-selling item of clothing on Amazon, the brand was one of the fastest growing brands in the U.S., and global net revenue had increased to approximately $3.6 billion. By most accounts, Crocs had become the "it" shoe. Crocs shoes were spotted on high-fashion runways, collaborating with luxury brands and designers including Balenciaga, Christopher Kane, and Christian Cowan, and on the feet of massively popular celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Post Malone, Bad Bunny, and Luke Combs. Crocs was also considered a top preferred footwear brand among U.S. teens in 2023. Few could have predicted Crocs' meteoric success given the state of the brand just ten years earlier. Indeed, in the late 2000's and early 2010's, Crocs shoes were often mercilessly mocked for their hideous appearance, and the organization had nearly gone bankrupt. So how did Crocs clogs go from internet meme fodder to sought-after cultural sensation? Could the Crocs brand maintain its popularity and grow more globally, or was the brand destined to fall out of favor once the tides of fashion changed again? How should Crocs evolve its product portfolio and marketing strategy to ensure a stable and permanent place in consumers' wardrobes?

This white paper examines pricing strategy and methods to determine target customers' willingness to pay (WTP). It examines the role of qualitative research and quantitative research to identify market opportunities and to determine the price point that best matches the WTP. The note uses examples of different consumer products to demonstrate the pricing decision exercise.

DayTwo is a young Israeli startup that applies research on the gut microbiome and machine learning algorithms to deliver personalized nutritional recommendations to its users in order to minimize blood sugar spikes after meals. After a first year of trial rollout in Israel, CEO Lihi Segal and her team are devising a global go-to-market plan for the firm. The team is considering several target markets, ranging from people with diabetes to professional athletes, and distribution strategies including selling direct to consumers or through partnerships with healthcare professionals or insurance companies. Their choices are important because they will affect DayTwo's costs, pricing, positioning, distribution channels, marketing efforts, and product development.

Tianlala is a Chinese new-style tea drink brand that has been developing, producing, and selling fresh ice cream, tea, and coffee since 2015. By 2021, the brand covered twenty-eight provinces, 105 cities, and three municipalities across China. It had opened more than one hundred directly operated stores and more than six thousand franchised stores nationwide, served more than two hundred million customers, and sold an average of 1.5 million cups of milk tea every day.<br><br>It had taken only six years for Tianlala, a small, unknown milk-tea brand, to become one of the representative brands in the low-tier city market, going from being unknown to being accepted and appreciated by consumers, especially young ones. Despite this quick growth, the question for Wang Wei, the founder of Tianlala, was, How should the company reinforce its brand to grow further?

Spreadsheet supplement for case 523005.

Established in 1929, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group (CTF) was not only among the most popular brands in the Chinese-speaking world but also one of the largest jewellry retailers in the world with over 7,400 points of sale, mainly in Mainland China, generating Group revenue about US$5 billion in early 2023. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and rising macro-economic headwinds, how did CTF achieve a resilient business performance? Two strategies based on retail expansion and smart retailing which automated the order fulfillment process and enhanced customer shopping experiences proved successful. Moreover, elevated product offerings through brand differentiation targeting different market segments such as high-end luxury, mass luxury and youth were also implemented. As of 2023, would CTF's strategy be robust enough to face the continuing economic and political challenges? Should it continue to expand? And is its current brand portfolio too broad?