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The founder and owner of Eden Creations debut line of hand-crafted specialty beaded jewelry had been well received by the local bridal industry, and several retailers throughout the region had placed orders. She now has to develop a formalized marketing plan to ensure the continued success of her company before returning to her postgraduate studies.

Two business partners must decide whether or not the accept an order for a large website project from a telecom just after they had accepted an even larger order from a key pharmaceutical company. Not only will the telecom order fall outside their pharmaceutical industry boundaries, it may require doubling the number of employees from 45 to 90 in this early stage entrepreneurial company. Serving the large pharmaceutical company could jeopardize the larger order and the company's reputation, to say nothing of the company's cozy 'family' culture. The supplement Infinet Communications Inc. (B), product #9B06A007, looks at the havoc that rapid expansion and subsequent shrinking wreaks on the employees. In the supplement Infinet Communications Inc. (C), product #9B06A008, describes what the company did in hiring and organizing employees and new systems that better tracked its project work.

Two business partners must decide whether or not accept an order for a large website project just after they had accepted an even larger order from key pharmaceutical company. This supplement to Infinet Communications Inc. (A), product 9B06A006, looks at what the rapid expansion and subsequent shrinking wreaks on the employees. Students are asked to make recommendations about ways to build a more flexible workforce.

This is a supplement to Infinet Communications Inc. (A), product 9B06A006. It highlights what the company did in hiring and organizing employees, and new systems that better tracked its project work.

A partner in an early stage entrepreneurial company wants to revolutionize the way pharmaceutical companies communicate with medical doctors. He created eRep, an online site for a doctor to interact with a pharmaceutical company's sales representatives. Unfortunately, after two years of trying to entice a key pharmaceutical company to support the development of an eRep working prototype, he has not been able to find such a co-developer with $1 million. Sales executives expressed interest in the concept, but seemingly no one wants to be the first mover. How should he overcome these obstacles and launch this product?

Advertising has always targeted a powerful consumer alter ego: that hip, attractive, incredibly popular person just waiting to emerge (with the help of the advertised product) from an all-too-normal self. Now, in cyberspace, consumers are taking the initiative and adopting alter egos that are anything but under wraps. These online personae, called avatars, range from simple but personalized cartoonlike characters used as pictorial signatures in instant messaging to fully developed characters in virtual worlds. And they represent a huge population of "shadow" customers who can be analyzed, segmented, and targeted. The experience of living through another self is most powerful in so-called massively multiplayer online role-playing games, which enable thousands of people to interact simultaneously within the same three-dimensional virtual world. In such settings, participants effectively become the avatars they've created, looking out through their eyes and engaging with other such beings. In this article, which expands upon an item in "The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2006" (HBR reprint R0602B), the author examines early efforts to market real-world products in virtual worlds. He argues that companies need to look quickly beyond the market itself and think about the potential customer, which may be the avatar rather than its creator. Of course, the human behind the avatar controls the money in the real-world wallet. But the avatar, as a distinct creation of the user's psyche, can influence its creator's purchasing behavior and even make its own purchases of real-world products in the virtual world, deliverable to the user's real-world door. At the least, avatars offer a window into people's hidden preferences and a means for achieving sustained consumer engagement with a brand. The marketing initiatives of the few pathfinding companies working in this area point toward some methods that might be used in the future.

Companies that introduce new innovations are the most likely to flourish, so they spend billions of dollars making better products. But studies show that new innovations fail at a staggering rate. While many blame these misses on lackluster products, the reality isn't so simple. The goods that consumers dismiss often do offer improvements over existing ones. So why don't people purchase them? And why do companies keep peddling products that buyers are likely to reject? The answer, says the author, can be found in the brain. New products force consumers to change their behavior, and that has a psychological cost. Many products fail because people irrationally overvalue the benefits of the goods they own over those they don't possess. Executives, meanwhile, overvalue their own innovations. This leads to a serious clash. Studies show, in fact, that there is a mismatch of nine to one between what innovators think consumers want and what consumers truly desire. Fortunately, companies can overcome this disconnect. To start, they can determine where their products fall in a matrix with four categories: easy sells, sure failures, long hauls, and smash hits. Each has a different ratio of product improvement to change required from the consumer. Once businesses know where their products fit into this grid, they can manage the resistance to change. For some innovations, major behavior change is a given. In those cases, companies can either wait for consumers to warm to the product, make the improvement so great that buyers get past their apprehension, or try to eliminate the incumbent product. Firms can also make products that are compatible with incumbent goods, seeking out those who are not yet users of the existing product or finding true believers.

On April 6, 2005, Sony Corporation announced the signing of a global partnership program contract with the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the organizer of the FIFA World Cup. The contract, which represented the first global marketing and communications platform for the Sony Group, would run from 2007 to 2014 with a contract value (excluding services and product leases) of 33.0 billion yen (approximately $305 million). This was a very significant marketing investment for Sony, since the cost of event sponsorship with advertising was typically two or three times the cost of the sponsorship rights; hence, Sony was potentially investing a billion dollars or more on FIFA-related marketing campaigns over the next several years. Many Sony senior executives were questioning the return on investment (ROI) of the FIFA sponsorship opportunity.

Offering customers too many product choices may decrease their sense of well-being.

PacifiCare's African American Health Solutions (AAHS) focused on improving the health outcomes of African Americans by providing culturally sensitive health education, health improvement opportunities, and access to high-quality health care services. By early 2006, approximately two years after the program's inception, the initiative had made significant headway in its two primary markets of Dallas and Los Angeles. In the new year, however, AAHS would face new challenges. Limited information was captured and tracked regarding the program's potential effect on the level of risk in the company's portfolio, and little was known about the profitability of the target community. Also, was AAHS making a positive contribution to the company? Finally, competition for African Americans' business was intensifying among health insurance providers. In 2006, AAHS had to define its purpose more clearly in the face of growing competition. The initiative also needed to decide on a customer acquisition approach. Was it really a goodwill program designed primarily to educate and inform African Americans? Or, was AAHS a powerful acquisition tool that should be integrated more directly into PacifiCare's mainstream customer acquisition strategy?

Public relations (PR) is an important component of a firm's integrated marketing communications strategy. Once populated by such passive acts as issuing press releases and responding to press inquiries, the field has "come of age" and developed into an active part of the firm's promotional activities. Today's PR employs such techniques as event sponsorship, stunt marketing, charitable activities, and placement (the paid appearance of a firm's products within entertainment content). This paper defines contemporary PR practices and develops rules for successful implementation of these modern approaches to promotion.

The co-founder of a continuing education lecture series needs to develop and implement a marketing communication strategy to meet target enrollment while constrained by limited promotional funds. The case focuses on the development of a marketing communication strategy in a non-profit environment and emphasizes the importance of target market definition. It introduces issues surrounding the use of e-commerce and websites to support a marketing plan.

An abstract is not available for this product.

Dr. Richard Florida wrote the book on creativity; in fact, he wrote two. In this interview he talks about why creative capital is drawn to certain places, the fate of 'second-tier' cities, and the dangers of our increasingly 'spikey' world, whereby a handful of cities are attracting a disproportionate number of what he has termed 'the creative class'. Florida describes how the creative class is looking for three things in life: a job that excites and challenges them; a place to live that is rich with cultural activities; and an ability to 'be themselves'. Organizations - and regions - who want to attract them, should take note.

Organizations are increasingly dependent on diverse teams for developing innovative products and improving efficiency, and they will be more efficient if they bring together a diverse set of experts to solve complex problems. Working in diverse teams can be challenging, however: although more perspectives may be beneficial, the very nature of team diversity can make it difficult for team members to communicate, coordinate their work, and perform. To better understand how diversity influences teams, the authors discuss different types of diversity and how they relate to information use, focusing on two types of diversity that are particularly relevant to the performance of complex cognitive tasks: diversity of education and of nationality.

Set in November 2005, the case examines a company that has been extremely successful in several product categories in its own domestic market and is defending its market position against intense competition from powerful multinational corporations, emerging domestic rivals and newer low-cost alternatives. The multinational corporations include some of the world's most sophisticated marketing companies. The case may be used independently or with the supplement Splash Corporation (B): International Expansion, product 9B06A015.

The Splash Corporation (A) case, product 9B06A014 focuses on the domestic Philippine market, particularly the competitive dynamics in the existing product lines of skin care and hair care. The Splash Corporation (B) case focuses on international expansion and the introduction of a new line of nutraceutical products. Both cases are set between late 2005 and early 2006 but deal with very different issues.

New York City is a pioneer in the emerging field of municipal marketing. The city's first chief marketing officer must develop a marketing organization with a self-funded business model that creates value for the city by leveraging the city's assets, including physical property and media opportunities. Although an independent corporation, the marketing organization must work with city government agencies to create value. Traces the appointment of the chief marketing officer and the objectives of marketing New York City. Summarizes the city's corporate partnerships (with Snapple and The History Channel, among others), media, and licensing activities to date. Challenges students to evaluate the marketing model and recommend strategies going forward, defining what activities create the most value for the city. Additionally, exposes students to the challenges of an entrepreneurial organization operating within the confines of a government structure.

With FY2005 sales of $27.3 billion, Richfield, Minn.-based Best Buy Co., Inc. was the leading retailer of consumer electronics, home-office products, and related services in North America. Its operations included the distinct store formats Best Buy, Future Shop in Canada, and Magnolia Audio Video as well as service provider Geek Squad. For the eight years leading up to 2004, Best Buy had reported double-digit revenue growth every year and rarely missed earnings. But on December 13, 2005, Best Buy missed its third-quarter earnings per share (coming in at $0.28, not $0.30). The company's stock price fell nearly 12% that day, a loss of $2 billion in market cap. The poor results were attributed to the aggressive rollout of 144 new "centricity" stores--revamped retail formats featuring a customer-centric operating model designed to offer targeted "value propositions" to one or two distinct customer segments. The new format was a departure from Best Buy's winning formula and required adjustments in interactions between various parts of the Best Buy organization, including a new set of segment leaders.

Nutricia's Middle East and African region is transitioning from a trading to a customer focus. CEO Ernest Vandenbussche must decide how to market infant milk formula most effectively in a region where the information environment is much less rich than in other countries/sectors and in which managers are concerned about measuring the effectiveness of their commercial actions. Among the most immediate decisions they need to make is the size of the salesforce--a decision that must be made in the context of a commercial strategy that is not yet fully defined. As Nutricia defines its strategy, it also has to define the strategic control systems it will use to monitor and fine-tune the strategy moving forward.