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Birzeit Pharmaceutical Company (BPC), established in 1974, had successfully completed a number of mergers and had overcome challenges and development phases in order to secure a strong position in its local market, Palestine, as well as introduce a wide range of products in the export market. BPC’s continuous success, despite political instability and continuous restrictions on its growth and expansion, led the company to focus beyond its local presence. Despite the growth of BPC and its financial solidity, it was very similar to other Arab businesses, which were reluctant to invest significantly and take big risks in growing outside their areas. BPC did not wish to risk large amounts of money, and instead chose to expand to new markets or introduce new niche products on a conservative basis. BPC invested in an Algerian packaging company in 2006 and aimed to meet its vision of growth by entering new markets and introducing new products. It wanted the packaging company to later grow to a manufacturing company, and accordingly to an export location. In a business environment that was characterized by quick decisions and high competition, the company needed to make faster decisions, invest more money, and choose a new path to secure its business development and growth. Competition in pharmaceutical manufacturing, especially among generics, was increasing greatly, and the faster BPC moved, the more competitive it would be.

The development coordinator for Just Us! Development Education Society (JUDES) was reviewing the preliminary agenda for the JUDES Annual General Meeting (AGM). The meeting would take place some time between May 1 and May 14, 2010, during Canada’s National Fair Trade Weeks. The coordinator was preparing her to-do list for the event. Just Us!, a Nova Scotia-based cooperative that offered fair trade products, had a very loyal regional following, and the coordinator wanted to communicate how the premium paid for fair trade products actually helped producer communities. She was planning several events for the AGM, most importantly presentations and discussions of the Community-based Tourism (CBT) trip that JUDES personnel had taken to Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2009, and planned to take again in 2010. For the AGM presentation, she wanted to organize the trip guidelines and the budget information into a triple bottom line format.

The Canadian Pillsbury ready-baked goods cookie line is experiencing disappointing performance, and the marketing manager at General Mills Canada Corporation is under pressure to make strategic decisions that will help turn around the segment. The marketing manager has engaged the help of the consumer insight team to conduct market research studies that will shed light on consumers and their attitudes, behaviours, and preferences towards the product. The results from the market research studies have arrived, and the students, assuming the role of the marketing manager, must filter through them to determine how this information can be used to improve the performance of the cookie segment. More specifically, students will need to determine where the greatest opportunities lie, who the team should target, what brand messaging is the most relevant, and what type of communication plan would be most effective.

The Hotel Perennial case puts students in the shoes of Dan Jameson, founder and CEO of a boutique real estate private equity firm called EL Investments (ELI), as he wrestles with the decision of whether or not to acquire the distressed Hotel Perennial, a 194-room hotel on the north side of Chicago, Illinois. When making the investment decision, Jameson (and students) must consider various factors: What is ELI's implicit investment strategy, and what are the firm's core competencies? What are Jameson's goals for growing ELI, and how might the acquisition of the Hotel Perennial fit with those goals? What opportunities and challenges might ELI face if it decides to acquire the hotel? How much would a buyer likely have to pay for the Hotel Perennial to achieve an attractive return? In addition to containing a hotel valuation and modeling exercise, the Hotel Perennial case also exposes students to several real estate industry concepts and terminologies, including those regarding the hotel sector, equity sourcing, and distressed investing. The case material assumes that students have taken an introductory real estate finance course or have relevant work experience.

The power of analytics in decision making is well understood, but few companies have what it takes to successfully implement a complex analytics program. Most firms will get greater value from learning to do something simpler: basic business experiments. Managers need to become adept at routinely using techniques employed by scientists and medical researchers. Specifically, they need to embrace the "test and learn" approach: Take one action with one group of customers, a different action (or no action at all) with a control group of customers, and then compare the results. The feedback from even a handful of experiments can yield immediate and dramatic improvements. In this article, the authors provide a step-by-step guide to conducting business experiments. They look at organizational obstacles to success and outline seven rules to follow.

No matter what you do later in your career, you are going to have to learn how to pitch ideas. Perhaps you will want to convince a venture capitalist to invest in your new business idea. Perhaps you will want to convince your company to develop an innovative product. Perhaps you will want to convince your board of directors that it is worth developing a new market segment. This exercise helps students practice the skill of getting other people interested in their ideas.

The co-founder of an Italian, design based bicycle manufacturer evaluates if reducing costs by outsourcing would impact its brand. The company was founded in 2005 in Italy by three friends and in its first five years, it had enjoyed steady growth and built a strong reputation for producing high-quality city bicycles, appreciated for their retro-look and style. Its country of origin had probably helped them exporting their products as their bicycles were 100% made in Italy and the Made in Italy label had a reputation of high quality, craftsmanship and creativity. Yet their profit margins were relatively low as their manufacturing costs were very high. Should they outsource their production? If so, to China or to Eastern Europe? Was there some other way to improve the profitability of the company?

Barcelo Hotels and Resorts must decide whether to allow its many hotels to continue to undertake separate promotional campaigns or to run, for the first time, a broad corporate-level promotion. Complicating the decision is the fact that the many hotels in its portfolio vary greatly in their character, clientele, positioning, and locations.

Cheezburger Network was a Web publisher of humorous, user-contributed content, using social media for dissemination, and selling advertising against the traffic of 1 billion page views per quarter. In January 2011, it raised $30 million in venture capital for the network of 50 websites that featured an entertaining array of user-generated content. Beginning with a site based on pictures of cats with whimsical captions, it had grown into a small but impressive digital empire, riding waves of viral content. CEO Ben Huh prided himself on his ability to go from idea to implementation in just a few days, but this just-in-time method made strategic planning difficult. Profitable from day one and with $5 million of revenue across 50 brand identities, Huh's challenge was to evaluate his growth to date, to look critically at the digital media landscape, and to figure out how to best to spend the $30 million.

PatientsLikeMe (PLM) is an online community where patients share their personal experiences with a disease, find other patients like them, and learn from each other. The company was founded by Jamie and Ben Heywood when their 29-year-old brother was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. In less than five years, PLM has grown to 15 patient communities where over 80,000 patients discuss 19 diseases. In December 2010, PLM is discussing its planned launch of a General Platform that would expand the number of diseases covered from 19 to over 3,500. Is it the right move, and what does PLM need to do to make it a success?

Can an online discussion forum supply insight into the evolution of brand meaning? In 2003 Porsche launched a sport utility vehicle, dividing Porsche purists from newcomers to the brand. Vocal members of online and offline Porsche communities ridiculed the Cayenne SUV and disapproved of the new breed of driver. Some opposed offering Porsche Club membership to them, and some even refused to extend the fraternal Porsche "wave" or headlight flashing to them on the road. Porsche's values of speed, luxury, and a certain masculine zeal resonated strongly with its devotees, while drivers of the Cayenne (which came to be known as "the SUV for soccer moms") tended to be safety-conscious, family-oriented, and conservative. Evolving debates on forums allow a class to debate whether the brand had strayed too far from its core values and was at risk.

In late 2008, executives at Coca-Cola had to decide what to do with a fan-created page on Facebook that had amassed over one million followers in three months. From a legal point of view the fan-created page was in violation of Facebook's terms of service, because a non-copyright holder was using the imagery and logo associated with a known brand. Facebook contacted Michael Donnelly, Group Director, Worldwide Interactive Marketing for The Coca-Cola Company, to let him know that he was in the position to take down the hugely popular fan-created site or, conversely, he could take it over and make it an official marketing channel for the company. Coke was already revisiting its social media policies, with the Diet Coke and Mentos user-generated video incident fresh in its memory. Those videos, which featured elaborate geysers with Diet Coke as their main ingredient, were among the most viewed online videos at the time but were not initially sanctioned by the company. Donnelly knew that opening up the brand to creative consumers was necessary, but he and his team had to figure out how and to what extent they should do so while still protecting one of the world's most valuable brands.

Executives at Ford wondered if social media could be the marketing solution for the launch of the youth-oriented 2010 Fiesta. But with social media came a ceding of control. Some at the company believed that if Ford was going to move beyond its conservative brand image for the launch of the new subcompact chances had to be taken. Others erred on the side of caution. Chantel Lenard, Ford's Group Marketing Manager for Global Small Car and Midsize Vehicles and Connie Fontaine, Manager of Brand Content and Alliances championed a new approach for the new vehicle and set into motion a comprehensive 6-month social media initiative targeting a younger, ethnically diverse, and urban-based market, called "The Fiesta Movement". In doing so, a large portion of the marketing campaign was handed over to 20 and 30-somethings across America, and Ford had to acclimate to a new way of doing marketing. To what extent should the company guide the activities and messages of their army of bloggers? The case is set two months into the Movement, as the team evaluates the metrics from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and their website, and wonder if they're doing everything they need to do in order to make the Fiesta a success with a new target market.

West Ham United was an English football (soccer) team that competed to win the right to move its games to the stadium being constructed for the 2012 London Olympics. It secured financial support from the local government and the backing of U.K. athletics. West Ham’s rival bidder, Tottenham Hotspurs, presented a strong business case for the move and required no public support. West Ham, despite this, won the right to move. The case focuses on ensuring acceptance of the move by fans who have an emotional attachment to the old stadium and are displeased that the new stadium’s athletic track adds distance between fans and the field.

An established winery's first marketing director is charged with reviving the once-hot brand. Cofounded by an expert winemaker with ties to the famous Château Lafite-Rothschild, Clos Du Val had seen its glory days, with high ratings accompanied by robust sales. During the 1990s, however, sales had begun to lag, though it was unclear why. What should the new marketing director do first? A teaching note is available to verified faculty that covers both this condensed A and B case and the longer A and B cases as well as the follow-up C case (UVA-M-0749); a multimedia case supplement featuring interviews with the principals is also available.

In March 2009, Steve Fowler, vice president of strategy and client service at full-service advertising agency Ayzenberg, had just completed what he considered to be one of the most innovative campaigns he had ever handled. Capcom, a leader in the video gaming industry, had just launched Resident Evil® 5 (RE5), the latest release of one of the industry's most valuable game franchises. RE5, a powerful asset with a passionate fan base, had warranted the use of an online viral, or word-of-mouth (WOM), campaign for its worldwide game launch. Although the creative work and appropriate media for the RE5 launch had been meticulously planned, Fowler was also interested in measuring the effectiveness of the campaign to better serve his client. In the past, measuring WOM was practically impossible. However, a software company named Meteor Solutions had found a way to do exactly that. Fowler and his team had worked with Meteor to execute several campaigns for other clients, but he had never applied Meteor tools on such a large scale. Fowler knew Capcom would want to hear specific WOM figures. What was the return on investment for the RE5 campaign and the implications for future campaigns? Had the Meteor tools provided comprehensive and actionable information, or was more work needed before these solutions could be widely used in advertising?

Building a Marketing Plan: A Complete Guide is a 10-chapter book written by three marketing faculty at Central Queensland University, Australia: Ho Yin Wong, senior lecturer, Kylie Radel, lecturer, and Roshnee Ramsaran-Fowdar, senior lecturer. The book was written to provide both marketing students and business professionals with a comprehensive and practical framework for developing a marketing plan. Drawing together theoretical concepts, strategic thinking processes, and recent research findings, the text helps the reader conduct in-depth situational analyses, develop a deep understanding of target markets, set measurable and timely marketing objectives, develop a series of marketing strategies based on four key elements of marketing, and ensure that appropriate implementation and control mechanisms have been considered. To show how to apply the marketing planning framework discussed in chapters 2-10, the authors provide a comprehensive example in the appendix. Chapter 5 examines the role that marketing objectives play within the larger organizational strategic plan. The chapter first provides an overview of the components of effective marketing objectives. Next, it discusses methods for formulating marketing objectives by utilizing the Boston Consulting Group product portfolio mix, the Ansoff product-market matrix, the concept of competitive advantage, and the SMART approach to setting objectives. Then, examples of different types of marketing objectives from a variety of different products are introduced. Finally, the chapter covers the implementation of different marketing objectives.

Building a Marketing Plan: A Complete Guide is a 10-chapter book written by three marketing faculty at Central Queensland University, Australia: Ho Yin Wong, senior lecturer, Kylie Radel, lecturer, and Roshnee Ramsaran-Fowdar, senior lecturer. The book was written to provide both marketing students and business professionals with a comprehensive and practical framework for developing a marketing plan. Drawing together theoretical concepts, strategic thinking processes, and recent research findings, the text helps the reader conduct in-depth situational analyses, develop a deep understanding of target markets, set measurable and timely marketing objectives, develop a series of marketing strategies based on four key elements of marketing, and ensure that appropriate implementation and control mechanisms have been considered. To show how to apply the marketing planning framework discussed in chapters 2-10, the authors provide a comprehensive example in the appendix. In Chapter 6, the authors explore essential strategies methods for introducing and managing products and brands. The authors discuss the five-stages of the product life-cycle as well as the strategic implementations of each particular stage. Next, the six-step process of developing new products is explored. Product line breadth and depth and product positioning and repositioning are then considered. Finally, packaging and branding strategy are examined.

Building a Marketing Plan: A Complete Guide is a 10-chapter book written by three marketing faculty at Central Queensland University, Australia: Ho Yin Wong, senior lecturer, Kylie Radel, lecturer, and Roshnee Ramsaran-Fowdar, senior lecturer. The book was written to provide both marketing students and business professionals with a comprehensive and practical framework for developing a marketing plan. Drawing together theoretical concepts, strategic thinking processes, and recent research findings, the text helps the reader conduct in-depth situational analyses, develop a deep understanding of target markets, set measurable and timely marketing objectives, develop a series of marketing strategies based on four key elements of marketing, and ensure that appropriate implementation and control mechanisms have been considered. To show how to apply the marketing planning framework discussed in chapters 2-10, the authors provide a comprehensive example in the appendix. Chapter 7 examines strategies to consider when preparing a pricing plan. Internal and external factors affecting pricing decisions are discussed, including buyer's perceptions of price and value, competition, and demand and price elasticity. Five general pricing approaches are explored in detail: cost-based, demand-based, competition-based, channel-based, and product mix-based. Internet pricing is then discussed, as are methods for developing a pricing plan.

Building a Marketing Plan: A Complete Guide is a 10-chapter book written by three marketing faculty at Central Queensland University, Australia: Ho Yin Wong, senior lecturer, Kylie Radel, lecturer, and Roshnee Ramsaran-Fowdar, senior lecturer. The book was written to provide both marketing students and business professionals with a comprehensive and practical framework for developing a marketing plan. Drawing together theoretical concepts, strategic thinking processes, and recent research findings, the text helps the reader conduct in-depth situational analyses, develop a deep understanding of target markets, set measurable and timely marketing objectives, develop a series of marketing strategies based on four key elements of marketing, and ensure that appropriate implementation and control mechanisms have been considered. To show how to apply the marketing planning framework discussed in chapters 2-10, the authors provide a comprehensive example in the appendix. In Chapter 8 the authors discuss the necessity of integrated marketing communications (IMC), which aim to ensure a clear, consistent, distinct, and coordinated marketing message to target audiences. The essential elements of the promotion mix, a set of tools used for marketing communication purposes, and their strengths and weaknesses is examined. Factors to consider when determining the IMC mix and questions concerning IMC strategy are then explored