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The blockbuster strategy is a time-honored approach, particularly in media and entertainment. When space is limited on store shelves and in traditional distribution channels, producers tend to focus on a few likely best sellers, hoping that one or two big hits will carry the rest of their lists. But online retailing and the digitization of information goods have changed the commercial landscape: Virtual shelf space is infinite, consumers can search through innumerable options, and the marginal cost of reproducing and distributing products is low. What does that mean for the blockbuster strategy? In his 2006 book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, argues that the sudden availability of niche offerings more closely tailored to their tastes will lure consumers away from homogenized hits. The "tail" of the sales distribution curve, he says, will become longer, fatter, and more profitable. Elberse, a professor at Harvard Business School, set out to investigate whether Anderson's long-tail theory is actually playing out in today's markets. She focused on the music and home-video industries-two markets that Anderson and others frequently hold up as examples of the long tail in action-reviewing sales data from Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen VideoScan, the online music service Rhapsody, and the Australian DVD-by-mail service Quickflix. What she found may surprise you: Blockbusters are capturing even more of the market than they used to, and consumers in the tail don't really like niche products much. Elberse outlines the implications of her research for producers and retailers, and offers strategic advice to both groups.

Tibal Fisher made a fortune selling trendy, inexpensive home furnishings to baby boomers. With that generation beginning to enter its sixties, he sees a huge opportunity in products for aging consumers. Focus groups and surveys confirm strong market demand for such items, and the media love the idea. So why is TF's NextStage, his new line of stores for older consumers, a disaster? Four experts comment on this fictional case study in R0807A and R0807Z. Donna J. Sturgess, global head of innovation for GlaxoSmithKline, thinks Tibal's research missed the subconscious associations in customers' minds-the deep metaphors that reveal people's true feelings about products. The solution: Find ways to generate positive emotional associations, as GSK has done with its weight-loss product. Alex Lee, president of household-products maker OXO International, says consumers are attracted by brands they associate with the type of people they'd like to be-not the type they are. TF's NextStage must avoid trying to get customers to "act their age" and using labels and positioning that call attention to their senior status. Yoshinori Fujikawa, a professor at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, says certain businesses-those led by executives with a talent for sensing what their customers want-can forgo deep research into customers' feelings, at least in the short term. But over the long term, firms need to have an organizational capability to create a systematic method for discovering what's going on in customers' minds. Lewis Carbone, CEO of market research firm Experience Engineering, points out that customers often are unable to articulate their deepest feelings. That's why companies need to go to the trouble to work with them one-on-one to find out what's driving them toward-or away from-a brand.

Tibal Fisher made a fortune selling trendy, inexpensive home furnishings to baby boomers. With that generation beginning to enter its sixties, he sees a huge opportunity in products for aging consumers. Focus groups and surveys confirm strong market demand for such items, and the media love the idea. So why is TF's NextStage, his new line of stores for older consumers, a disaster? Four experts comment on this fictional case study in R0807A and R0807Z. Donna J. Sturgess, global head of innovation for GlaxoSmithKline, thinks Tibal's research missed the subconscious associations in customers' minds-the deep metaphors that reveal people's true feelings about products. The solution: Find ways to generate positive emotional associations, as GSK has done with its weight-loss product. Alex Lee, president of household-products maker OXO International, says consumers are attracted by brands they associate with the type of people they'd like to be-not the type they are. TF's NextStage must avoid trying to get customers to "act their age" and using labels and positioning that call attention to their senior status. Yoshinori Fujikawa, a professor at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, says certain businesses-those led by executives with a talent for sensing what their customers want-can forgo deep research into customers' feelings, at least in the short term. But over the long term, firms need to have an organizational capability to create a systematic method for discovering what's going on in customers' minds. Lewis Carbone, CEO of market research firm Experience Engineering, points out that customers often are unable to articulate their deepest feelings. That's why companies need to go to the trouble to work with them one-on-one to find out what's driving them toward-or away from-a brand.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The world in which marketing operates has fundamentally changed. Has marketing research and practice kept up? The answer, says the author, is no. At the heart of the current trouble is a severance of academic rigor from managerial relevance. Through its maturation as a discipline over the past half century, marketing science in academia has emerged as a rigorous field. Conjoint analysis, econometric modeling, techniques derived from mathematical psychology, and many other tools and approaches have revolutionized its practice. But many of the most rigorous tools were developed years ago, in response to old problems. And managers and organizations increasingly find those tools irrelevant to the new challenges they face. So business practitioners adopt approaches that appear to address their real and current marketing problems but that lack the rigor of the academically established methods. Now, argues the author, we need to rethink and transform the field of marketing so it balances rigor and relevance. He details seven strategies that would help achieve that aim: Bridge the disciplinary silos. Shift from traditional management to network orchestration. Change the focus from customer relationship management (CRM) to customer managed relationships (CMR). Shift from company-branded products to customer-branded solutions. Use analytics and metrics as the glue. Adopt the adaptive experimentation philosophy for all your activities and strive for empirical generalizations. And, challenge (and change) your mental models. And how to pursue those strategies? In a collaboration between both practitioners and academic researchers, says the author. (Editor's Note: This article is excerpted from a paper the author presented when he accepted MIT's 2007 Buck Weaver Award, which recognizes individuals who have made important contributions to the advancement of theory and practice in marketing science.)

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For many teenagers and young adults, cell phones, personal digital assistants and other handheld devices have become a necessity of everyday life. That fact has not escaped the attention of companies that have had great difficulty reaching young consumers through traditional marketing approaches. In theory, the mobile platform provides the perfect mechanism for reaching young consumers. A large retailer might, for example, send a group of teenagers who are at a shopping mall various electronic coupons on their phones to promote special discounts. Many global corporations, including Burger King, MTV, Procter & Gamble and Ford, have initiated programs that enable consumers to search for the nearest restaurant location using their cell phones, receive electronic coupons or participate in other mobile marketing activities. Such campaigns have generated click-through rates up to 10 times those of traditional Internet banner ads, and recent forecasts for global mobile marketing spending range from $9 billion to $19 billion by 2011. That said, several brands, including Budweiser, ESPN, Sprite and adidas, have launched mobile marketing efforts only to see some successes amidst an equal number of disappointments. To investigate what truly influences whether young consumers will participate in mobile marketing activities, the authors recently conducted a survey in the United States and Pakistan. The study looked at the relative importance of a number of factors, including consumers' personal attachment to their cell phones, their concerns for privacy and their willingness to "opt in" and accept permission-based marketing. An analysis of the results uncovered important insights in consumer behavior. Such results hold a number of important implications for companies developing mobile advertising campaigns across global markets.

In recent years, researchers and consultants have advanced a number of customer metrics to explain the connections between customer behavior and growth. But these efforts have generated more smoke than heat. Despite claims to the contrary, the authors argue that the most popular metrics have shown only modest correlations to growth. None of them appear to be universally effective across all competitive environments. Early customer metrics tried to explain why people buy. To many companies, it came down to marketing. Yet, as the authors explain, the issues that affect customer loyalty are complex and go beyond standard marketing. This gave rise to a new category of metrics aimed at understanding customer experience. Although managers have learned a lot about the components of service quality (including reliability, responsiveness and empathy), the approach doesn't point managers to specific actions t. Beginning in the 1990s, many managers began paying closer attention to customer retention -- in particular, understanding dissatisfaction and satisfaction. But as the authors note, the linkages among satisfaction, customer behavior and positive financial outcomes have been modest. Today's most popular metric, the Net Promoter Score, focuses on how customer word of mouth -- both negative and positive -- can advance growth. Developed by Bain & Company Inc. consultant Fred Reichheld, it claims the ability to predict future growth from customer replies to one question: "How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" The authors found that the linkage between the NPS and subsequent customer behavior was modest at best; models based on multiple variables consistently outperformed models based on NPS. The authors are skeptical that there can be a single metric that reduces complex, multifaceted constructs to one or two dimensions; if there is, they write, "there's a good chance it will ignore one or more important aspects of the equation."

In 2005, COFCO Ltd., one of China's largest and most successful companies, acquired Xinjiang Tunhe, a tomato processing firm, which had been, in recent years, poorly managed. COFCO changed Tunhe's management team and set out to create a culture of professionalism and impressed upon the employees that the customer came first. Qin Yelong, Tunhe president, had ambitious goals for the company. he wanted Tunhe to be the world's largest supplier of tomato products (primarily paste) within three years. To do so, Tunhe needed to secure relationships with top-of-the-line international customers, such as H.J. Heinz and Unilever. These companies were interested in Tunhe as a supplier, but needed assurances that the company could provide a reliable supply of high quality, competitively priced, and safe tomato paste year in and year out before they would finalize long term contracts with Tunhe. Qin and his management team knew that to be number one, Tunhe would need to take a lead role in modernizing China's current "peasant mode of agriculture." Indeed, Tunhe's tomato supply came from 200,000 mainly uneducated farmers, working small parcels of land (less than 0.2 hectare on average) with little to no mechanization, scattered across the regions of Northwest China. The challenge: How to manage so many farmers (the number was expected to grow to 300,000 if Qin's revenue targets were achieved) so as to ensure consistent tomato quality and safety without dramatically increasing costs. Qin realized that Tunhe had an opportunity to create a new mode of agriculture, which could be the model for all agribusiness in China moving forward. On the other hand, a misstep could lead Heinz and other large international companies to look elsewhere for their supply requirements.

This case describes the work of the Innovation Program Office (IPO) within the Personal Systems Group (PSG) at technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP). It shows how this group solicits, qualifies and develops ideas for new products and services.

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This three-part case study relates to the 2007 product recalls of toys manufactured in China for Mattel Inc., the world's biggest toy maker. Part (A) focuses on the recall of toys on 1 August, coated with lead paint. Part (B) focuses on a subsequent double recall involving production problems and product design errors. Part (C) focuses on the reactions of the Chinese authorities and Mattel's subsequent apology to China.

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Wang's Fortune Tea, marketed as Wanglaoji in mainland China and considered to be the founder of Chinese herbal tea, grew from a strong regional brand in China with limited national market penetration to becoming China's top soft drink giant with 90% market share of the country's herbal tea industry. This case explores how Wang's Fortune Tea became China's top selling herbal tea brand. The case asks students to analyze the company's growth strategies and to consider if it can continue to sustain its competitive advantage while facing intense competition from domestic and international companies.

Northwest Mutual Funds is a boutique mutual funds company that differentiates itself on a high level of customer service. The case describes how the company is considering marketing its funds directly to retail investors. Thus far, the company has marketed its fund only to the financial planners that make up the channel. The case illustrates channel issues, and helps students discuss how products must be differentiated from competitors' products in the channel.

This case explores the expansion of an imported product - garlic and herb cubes. This case can be used to explore the merits of alternative channels of distribution or it may be used more broadly to explore the development of a more effective marketing program. Students are asked to 1) assess how the competition affects Toppits' marketing plan; 2) select a customer group to target and determine how this group affects the marketing plan; 3) determine and evaluate distribution options; 4) develop a promotional strategy and budget and 5) make a decision.

This case describes the proposed acquisition of Tribune Company by Sam Zell in 2007. Tribune Company is one of the largest newspapers and broadcasting companies in the United States. Zell's proposed acquisition is unusual in several respects. It is two-tiered, employs an ESOP as the acquisition vehicle, involves a high degree of leverage as well as significant asset sales, and Zell himself will own almost no common stock in the post-deal Tribune. The case is set in late October 2007, at which point the first stage of the acquisition has been completed, but the second stage has not. Recent deterioration in both Tribune's operating results and credit market conditions make it unclear whether the transaction can be closed as scheduled in 2007, or indeed at all.

The choice of subscribing to renewable electricity has been available to Australian households for more than a decade, yet consumer uptake remains low for some green marketers. This case study uses a retailer's perspective to examine the implementation of a green marketing program for a renewable electricity retailer. Based on interviews, internal company documentation, and secondary research, findings show that effective differentiation for renewable energy is required to increase consumer involvement levels and the likelihood of consideration. While consumers lack understanding of, and interest in, renewable energy, the marketing program relied on customers to seek information. It was apparent the success of green marketing programs depends on the integration of education into a carefully targeted marketing program emphasizing functional and emotional values to differentiate renewable energy and simplify consumer decision-making processes.

Founded in 1934, Muzak pioneered the industry of background music. Equipped with propriety technology and a vast music library, over the ensuing decades the Muzak franchise organization expanded geographically. Despite a history of innovation, by the late 1990s Muzak had anemic financials and low employee morale. When new CEO Bill Boyd took the helm in 1997, he assembled a new management team. The new VP of Marketing, Kenny Kahn, worked with design firm Pentagram to re-brand the company, not just for customers but to spark organizational change. But because Muzak was a franchise organization, Kahn had to convince independent affiliates to pay for what turned out to be an extensive re-branding. This case can be used to teach how branding can be used as a tool for spearheading culture change; not to exercise influence without authority and how businesspeople can effectively work with a design firm.

ScriptLogic is a software company that has built a product portfolio that fits under a 'Point, Click, Done!' umbrella; its products are easy to download, easy to install, and easy to use. The company's online marketing program and inside sales force have been very successful in finding and bringing in new customers, in part because of a laser-like focus on increasing its marketing ROI. As ScriptLogic looks towards its next phase of growth, however, it is becoming clear that some changes need to be made in order to take full advantage of its growing product portfolio. Students debate the merits of going after new customers by building an enterprise sales force or mining the existing customer base with an inside sales force that already has a lot on its plate.

This case explores the expansion of a product - garlic and herb cubes. This case can be used to explore the merits of alternative channels of distribution or it may be used more broadly to explore the development of a more effective marketing program. Students are asked to 1) assess how the competition affects Toppits' marketing plan; 2) select a customer group to target and determine how this group affects the marketing plan; 3) determine and evaluate distribution options; 4) develop a promotional strategy and budget and 5) make a decision.