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In 2002, Brazilian-based Petrobras joined the Argentine fuel retail (gas stations) market. The venture faced several challenges. On the one hand, Argentina was undergoing one of the most severe economic and social crises in history. On the other, the local fuel market was dominated by a few players with brands that held significant consumer mindshare over many years. Additionally, employee morale at Eg3, the company acquired by Petrobras to enter the local market, was besieged by uncertainty and disillusionment as a result of a string of mergers and acquisitions and underlying H.R. management remoteness. Finally, the company's Brazilian origin could jeopardize its appeal for Argentine consumers, given the cultural and sports-based (soccer) rivalry between these neighboring countries. The case presents this scenario and calls for decisions as to which market segment(s) it should target, how it should brand its stations, and what other related marketing decisions it should make given it domestic and international ambitions. This case received the 2007 Curtis E. Tate Jr. Award for the best case published in Case Research Journal and is also available in Spanish and Portuguese versions.

No question, Galen McDowell knew how to sell. He quickly hooked a big-league outfit, Kinan Motors, as a potential customer. He invited their representatives to come take a tour of the company and, while they were in town, visit the Red Ruby Club. The Red Ruby? That's a strip club. Galen assured CEO Bob Carlton that it was upscale and full of businesspeople. He said his reps had often made use of the club to woo important accounts away from rivals. As if to prove his point, Kinan quickly signed a multimillion-dollar contract with OptiMotors after the visit. Then April Hartley, Bob's first salesperson, quit. She had tried to build relationships with customers, but the really big accounts, it seemed, were looking for "more exciting stuff" than she could give them. Now Joan Warren--another saleswoman, and one who would happily close a deal anywhere she got the chance--is complaining because Galen won't let her go to the club with him. "I won't stand by and be disadvantaged simply because I'm a woman," she says. When does client entertainment cross the line? In R0604A and R0604Z, four experts discuss this fictional case study: John Brown, the director of institutional sales and customer relations at Fortis Investments; Katherine Frank, a former dancer who is now an author and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Das Narayandas, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School; and Denise Rousseau, a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School of Public Policy and Tepper School of Business.

Even as loyalty programs are launched left and right, many are being scuttled. How can that be? These days, everyone knows that an old customer retained is worth more than a new customer won. What is so hard about making a simple loyalty program work? Quite a lot, the authors say. The biggest challenges include clarifying business goals, engineering the reward structure, and creating incentives powerful enough to change buying behavior but not so generous that they erode margins. Additionally, companies have to sort out the puzzles of consumer psychology, which can result, for example, in two rewards of equal economic value, inspiring very different levels of purchasing. In their research, the authors have discovered patterns in what the successful loyalty programs get right and in how the others fail. Together, their findings constitute a toolkit for designing something rare indeed: a program that won't do you wrong. To begin with, it's important to know exactly what a loyalty program can do. It can keep customers from defecting, induce them to consolidate certain purchases with one seller (in other words, win a greater share of wallet), prompt customers to make additional purchases, yield insight into their behavior and preferences, and turn a profit. A program can meet these objectives in several ways--for instance, by offering rewards (points, say, or frequent-flier miles) divisible enough to provide many redemption opportunities but not so divisible that they fail to lock in customers. Companies striving to generate customer loyalty should avoid five common mistakes: Don't create a new commodity, which can result in price wars and other tit-for-tat competitive moves; don't cater to the disloyal by making rewards easy for just anyone to reap; don't reward purchasing volume over profitability; don't give away the store; and, finally, don't promise what can't be delivered.

No question, Galen McDowell knew how to sell. He quickly hooked a big-league outfit, Kinan Motors, as a potential customer. He invited their representatives to come take a tour of the company and, while they were in town, visit the Red Ruby Club. The Red Ruby? That's a strip club. Galen assured CEO Bob Carlton that it was upscale and full of businesspeople. He said his reps had often made use of the club to woo important accounts away from rivals. As if to prove his point, Kinan quickly signed a multimillion-dollar contract with OptiMotors after the visit. Then April Hartley, Bob's first salesperson, quit. She had tried to build relationships with customers, but the really big accounts, it seemed, were looking for "more exciting stuff" than she could give them. Now Joan Warren--another saleswoman, and one who would happily close a deal anywhere she got the chance--is complaining because Galen won't let her go to the club with him. "I won't stand by and be disadvantaged simply because I'm a woman," she says. When does client entertainment cross the line? In R0604A and R0604Z, four experts discuss this fictional case study: John Brown, the director of institutional sales and customer relations at Fortis Investments; Katherine Frank, a former dancer who is now an author and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Das Narayandas, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School; and Denise Rousseau, a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School of Public Policy and Tepper School of Business.

No question, Galen McDowell knew how to sell. He quickly hooked a big-league outfit, Kinan Motors, as a potential customer. He invited their representatives to come take a tour of the company and, while they were in town, visit the Red Ruby Club. The Red Ruby? That's a strip club. Galen assured CEO Bob Carlton that it was upscale and full of businesspeople. He said his reps had often made use of the club to woo important accounts away from rivals. As if to prove his point, Kinan quickly signed a multimillion-dollar contract with OptiMotors after the visit. Then April Hartley, Bob's first salesperson, quit. She had tried to build relationships with customers, but the really big accounts, it seemed, were looking for "more exciting stuff" than she could give them. Now Joan Warren--another saleswoman, and one who would happily close a deal anywhere she got the chance--is complaining because Galen won't let her go to the club with him. "I won't stand by and be disadvantaged simply because I'm a woman," she says. When does client entertainment cross the line? In R0604A and R0604Z, four experts discuss this fictional case study: John Brown, the director of institutional sales and customer relations at Fortis Investments; Katherine Frank, a former dancer who is now an author and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Das Narayandas, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School; and Denise Rousseau, a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School of Public Policy and Tepper School of Business.

Today's consumers crave variety. A new approach to providing luxury gives the superaffluent access to a range of big-ticket items.

Companies aggressively research what customers want. Yet most vendors just don't understand what customers expect of their salespeople.

Marketing plans are critically important tools for marketing executives. If you can't create a strong marketing plan, it is unlikely that you will be successful. Explains why marketing plans are so important and provides a framework for creating a strong marketing plan and keys to success.

For many years two entrepreneurs have run a successful chefs school in combination with Ontario's apprenticeship program, their two private restaurants and the support of a few generous patrons. However, as they approached eventual retirement, they had no successors in sight and no teaching building apart from their restaurants. A professional fund-raising firm said that the various interested parties might raise $600,000 to help fund a teaching building but the total need of $2 million would be out of reach. The entrepreneurs were looking for a marketing and fund raising campaign to raise $2 million.

Two years later, Braun has a revolutionary new shaving system and is struggling over how to communicate its benefits to the market. Its novel feature, an automatic cleaning center, is not quite yet debugged, which adds to the concerns of those who believe that the new shaver, outstanding in itself, should be launched solo, leaving the cleaning center as an attractive accessory. Others believe that Braun needs to offer more than "just" a new shaver at a time of declining market share. How they launch and market this new product around the world may determine the fate of the Braun brand into the 21st century. For a company whose new "brand promise" is "Designed to Make a Difference," a critical challenge is how to position the radically new product both to gain new, convenience-oriented consumers and to keep loyal, conservative customers who want "only a closer and more comfortable shave."

CEMEX has pursued an aggressive decommoditization strategy focused on its relationship with small Egyptian retailers. In particular, the strategic role and effectiveness of the Rewards Program, a tournament that rewarded the sales performance of the retailers, was called into question by Assiut Cement's management based on the results of its first two rounds.

A social entrepreneur undertakes to launch a bank with charitable status itself that could provide financial services to up to 161,000 charities. He has quietly arranged support from major for-profit banks and government officials. The day before his press conference to tell all stakeholders about this new bank, he is still struggling with the key words to describe the bank so that it conveys it purposes, but offends as few stakeholders as possible. Students must evaluate his proposed three key words and propose other descriptors.

In 2005, Cabo San Viejo, a premier health and fitness spa resort located in Palm Springs, California, is debating whether to introduce a Customer Rewards Program. Describes the customer management challenges the firm is facing and outlines the various ways in which a rewards program might be structured to help address those challenges.

An abstract is not available for this product.

Highlights issues that a multidivision firm faces as it moves from managing products for profit to managing customers for profit.

An abstract is not available for this product.

One of the key problems in marketing decision making is how to measure the effectiveness of marketing actions, for example, the effect of temporary price promotions on sales. Many outcomes of marketing decisions are multiply determined and involve both short- and long-term effects that are hard to pin down. So marketing managers are often unable to specify the precise effects of what they are doing, and instead rely on intuitive estimates of the effects of their decision making or, worse, on commonsensical arguments to complement ill-conceived cost-plus pricing approaches. Scanner data-based records of customer purchase decisions provide a wealth of data that managers could use, but how can they get useful input for their decision making out of thousands and thousands of purchase transactions?

Student spreadsheet supplement for INS413.

Companies tend to rely on industry wisdom about where to put their R&D dollars to improve their products. But sometimes the industry is wrong.

Examples of consumer value propositions that resonate with customers are exceptionally difficult to find. When properly constructed, value propositions force suppliers to focus on what their offerings are really worth. Once companies become disciplined about understanding their customers, they can make smarter choices about where to allocate scarce resources. The authors illuminate the pitfalls of current approaches, then present a systematic method for developing value propositions that are meaningful to target customers and that focus suppliers' efforts on creating superior value. When managers construct a customer value proposition, they often simply list all the benefits their offering might deliver. But the relative simplicity of this all-benefits approach may have a major drawback: benefit assertion. In other words, managers may claim advantages for features their customers don't care about in the least. Other suppliers try to answer the question: Why should our firm purchase your offering instead of your competitor's? But without a detailed understanding of the customer's requirements and preferences, suppliers can end up stressing points of difference that deliver relatively little value to the target customer. The pitfall with this approach is value presumption: assuming that any favorable points of difference must be valuable for the customer. Drawing on the best practices of a handful of suppliers in business markets, the authors advocate a resonating focus approach. Suppliers can provide simple, yet powerfully captivating, consumer value propositions by making their offerings superior on the few elements that matter most to target customers, demonstrating and documenting the value of this superior performance, and communicating it in a way that conveys a sophisticated understanding of the customer's business priorities.