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In 2007, the marketing director for Cineplex Entertainment is trying to decide whether or not to proceed with a loyalty program that would provide incentives for customers to see more movies and events, and spend more on concessions. An important by-product would be the collection of detailed customer buying data. She has crafted four possible combinations of rewards and received proposals from three suppliers with experience in managing customer data banks. She must decide the structure and richness of the program, the supplier, the likely response rate to determine financial feasibility, and whether to launch regionally or nationally.

Coca-Cola developed a distribution model for emerging markets by learning how its Peruvian bottler succeeded in the mom-and-pop channel. The tenets: Turn wholesalers into distributors, use IT to link and control distributors, and employ simple technology. PepsiCo has taken a page from the same playbook; other multinationals can, too.

Advertising on the internet increases sales in brick-and-mortar stores even more than it does online. Individually, search ads and display ads have the power to drive purchases, but they get the best results when used together in a single campaign.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Thanks to a variety of online social applications -- including blogs, social networking sites like MySpace, user-generated content sites like YouTube and countless communities across the Web -- people are increasingly connecting with and drawing power from one other. In fact, customers are now beginning to define their own perspective on companies and brands, a view that's often at odds with the image a business wants to project. But organizations need not be on the defensive. Indeed, some savvy executives have already been turning this groundswell of customer power to their advantage. To investigate how, the authors interviewed managers and employees at over 100 companies that were rolling out social applications. From this research, they developed a strategic framework that businesses can use to implement social applications in a number of departments, including research and development, marketing, sales, customer support and operations.

Problem customers can cost your business lots of money, but quickly ejecting them may not be the best way to relieve the burden. Mittal, of Rice University, Sarkees, of Penn State, and Murshed, of Towson University, explore the ins and outs of customer divestment. Using real-world examples, the authors show how deciding to end a relationship with a customer segment or individual can increase profitability, improve employee morale, address capacity constraints, and bolster a business strategy. However, divestment also comes with potential downsides for various constituencies, including employees and remaining customers, both of whom may wonder whether they're next. In addition, ethical and legal consequences - and the risk of bad publicity - always loom. Before you rush to action, say the authors, walk through their five-part customer divestment framework. First, reassess the context of present customer relationships, looking beyond simple profitability. You may find that the most productive option is to educate customers rather than drop them. In some cases, if you renegotiate the value proposition with them, both of you will win. In other instances, you'll want to migrate customers to other subsidiaries or providers, as long as the move is undertaken - and perceived to be conducted - in good faith. If it becomes necessary to terminate a customer relationship, use a direct, interpersonal approach. No business can afford to squander its customer base, so divestment should not be boiled down to determining merely who is profitable and who is not - the strategic consequences are too weighty. In the end, the decision about whether to divest might prove to be the toughest customer of all.

On a winter day in December 2007 at the American Family Mutual Insurance Company (AMFAM) headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, Dave Anderson and Jack Salzwedel remained in the conference room after the senior management meeting had concluded. Anderson, CEO of AMFAM since January 2007 and Salzwedel, named President in August 2006, reflected together on how far the company had come over the past two years. Both recalled meetings in which top executives simply read out activity reports to help prepare a previous CEO for a largely ceremonial board meeting. These days, they sensed energy and movement at different levels--whether in a strategic planning meeting, or in Salzwedel's recent visit to a regional office to explain in person the content of and motivation for the company's new strategic plan. Anderson and Salzwedel were pleased that the just-ended meeting exhibited the kind of engaged discussion, "pushback," and argumentation they had been encouraging.

This note develops a framework for considering the challenges of incorporating marketing input when setting innovation strategy. The framework lays out the possible innovation opportunities a firm can entertain and describes how the customer knowledge gained from conducting market research at the front end of NPD affects which of these opportunities the firm should pursue. Pitfalls in analyzing the customer data are described, along with guidelines on how to overcome them. The impact of competition in the context of setting innovation strategy under market uncertainty is also addressed.

This is a supplement to the (A) case. It shows that the networks that the firm had been investing in-- commercial banks--were becoming less and less valuable over time. Given this, Tamotsu Adachi must think about how to go about building a new set of networks.

This is a supplement to the (A) and (B) cases. It documents the shift in Carlyle's networking strategy. The firm decreased its focus on building contacts in commercial banking an increased instead the focus on building more contacts with industry directly.

Tamotsu Adachi, Managing Director of Carlyle Japan, wants to formulate a strategy to improve his firm's ability to source high-quality deals at competitive valuations, or prices. Buyout funds like Carlyle typically have two deal phases: sourcing and monitoring. These correspond to (i) "selling" the benefits to a business owner of going with Carlyle as a buyout partner, and then (ii) increasing the value of that business following the buyout. Since the profitability of a buyout depends on finding high-quality deals, the firm has focused to date on leveraging its contacts in the banking business, which has been a powerful institution in Japan for many years. These contacts have brought to Carlyle a number of good quality companies, but the volume of buyouts done by Carlyle in Japan has not been what they hoped it would be. Students are asked how the firm can improve on this deal sourcing approach.

Following a successful IPO in June 2006, Banyan Tree Holdings Limited planned to use parts of the proceeds to finance an ambitious expansion plan. At the core of this business development plan was an ambitious proposal to open 28 new resorts over four years which would span non-Asian territories from Greece to Mexico. The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, the SARS crisis of 2003 and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 had taken their toll on the travel and tourism industry in the region where Banyan Tree's resorts and spas were concentrated. Although recovery was on the horizon, those events left haunting memories and CEO Ho Kwon Ping understood the need to diversify risks across geographic regions. This case considers how a company with an experiential brand should manage its global expansion without losing the core values associated with its brand.

A recently hired U.S.-trained sales account manager at Medical Equipment Inc. (Medical Equipment) returned to his office after meeting with the head of the cardiology department at a specialist hospital and research center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He had worked very hard to secure his first sale of US$725,000 for healthcare equipment, but was disheartened when the head of cardiology told him that the hospital's purchasing director intended to give the order to Medical Equipment's main competitor. The competition's sales representative and the purchasing director had known each other for 10 years and the head cardiologist implied that there might be side payments involved. The sales account manager knew Medical Equipment's product was superior and wondered how he could secure the order without having a history with the purchasing director or without engaging in practices he found ethically questionable.

Outlines the challenges faced by Sony with the launch of its PlayStation 3. Information on the 2006 and 2007 holiday seasons and the success of rival consoles is outlined. In addition, the case allows examining the costs and revenues associated with a business model based on the sale of the hardware and game titles. Can be used with "Home Video Games: Generation Seven" (505-072), which provides supplementary information on the industry.

In 2007, Goldlion, one of Hong Kong's oldest menswear brands, opens the first Goldlion Accessories store in the city as part of its plan to rejuvenate its brand image. The company aims to promote Goldlion as a youthful and trendy brand by creating a fresh, chic and elegant appearance while maintaining its sophisticated image. By rejuvenating its brand image, Goldlion hopes to regain its Hong Kong market, especially the younger segment. This case illustrates the rise and fall of a Hong Kong-born apparel brand. It can be used to teach students to identify the types of marketing information needed to help a company answer its doubts and devise a viable strategy in order to achieve its goals. The case can also be used as a learning tool for designing an appropriate ad-hoc market research plan.

On a fall day in September 2003, Robert Swanborough made his way down a thickly carpeted hallway in Purolator's headquarters in Toronto, Canada, toward a meeting with his two deputies. Several months earlier, Swanborough, then vice-president of Marketing, had been named vice-president for Sales Effectiveness atop a transformed sales division. The previous week, the team had presented to top management the results of the customer segmentation research that Swanborough had contracted while in marketing. The research identified customers that would be willing to pay more for the services that Purolator was or could potentially provide to them. The new Sales Effectiveness team planned ....

It is late 2007. So-called cell phone ("keitai") novels have turned into an extremely popular form of entertainment on the go in Japan, in particular among young, female readers. In fact, consisting mostly of love stories written by amateurs in short sentences and containing little plot or character development, cell phone novels republished in book form and even remade as movies have come to dominate mainstream media content. At media giant Sony, Ken Munekata, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), and Atsushi Fukuda, President of Sony Digital Entertainment (SDE), are attempting to craft an adequate response. After establishing SDE as a 100% subsidiary of Sony Japan, they now develop a wide range of digital content offerings for mobile phone users, mostly original content "made in Japan"-including keitai novels. But can SDE's subscription model compete in a market dominated by free keitai novel offerings? And, more generally, do Sony's current keitai initiatives move the company in the right strategic direction? Allows for an in-depth examination of viable business models for established media companies competing in digital markets dominated by user-generated, advertising-supported content. Also enables an assessment of the economics of producing and distributing traditional films and books versus digital (cell phone) content.

Follow-up to "Citigroup: Re-Branding in 2007" (A), describing the development of a new brand identity for Citigroup.

Most managers believe that filling their websites with a broad array of information diverts attention from their company's core offerings. A new global study, however, has revealed just the opposite: that such information increases customer engagement. The research also shows that exploiting consumers' desire for engagement is the strongest predictor of superior shareholder value for e-commerce companies.

The true power in the collective wisdom of crowds isn't in people's expressed opinions--it's buried deep inside your company's database. New tools are allowing organizations to mine their data for the "unconscious wisdom" that the crowd itself may never have thought to share.