個案總覽

Viral marketing uses electronic communications to trigger brand messages throughout a widespread network of buyers. Often, the process is portrayed as a random, ground-up phenomenon over which marketers have little control. But an examination of successful viral marketing cases reveals a number of strategies underpinning this chaotic phenomenon, providing insight into how marketers can use it to position their brands, change their image, and increase adoption rates. Successful viral marketing campaigns have an engaging message that involves imagination, fun, and intrigue; encourages ease of use and visibility; targets credible sources; and leverages combinations of technology.

Brocade management is preparing for the launch of a new technology for data storage. The multiprotocol router improves on existing technology and has the potential to change the way firms design their data storage networks. Students must determine the target market for the router, how to leverage the OEM partners in convincing end customers to adopt it, and how to price the router. Forces students to understand the traditional segmentation of the data storage market and whether firms should concentrate on specific segments, as in the past. Also forces students to grapple with the willingness of end customers to adopt new solutions in the high-tech realm.

Ito-Yokado, the 16th largest retail conglomerate in the world, has struggled with the declining performance in the apparel division of its superstores for over a decade. Apparel sales are slipping, eating hard-won gains in the retailer's food division. CEO Toshifumi Suzuki has already instituted a number of revolutionary changes to sourcing and merchandising. What should he try next?

An abstract is not available for this product.

Marketing is becoming more analytic and less creative. That's why, HBS professors Gail McGovern and John Quelch assert, more companies are finding it makes sense to outsource many marketing functions.

In February 2003, President and CEO Nick Lazaris faces critical decisions on Keurig's launch of a new consumer coffee brewing system. Keurig has successfully sold single-cup brewing systems through commercial distribution channels and is now expanding to the lucrative consumer segment. However, a meeting with key strategic partners six months prior to launch raised questions about the product design. This prompted the Keurig management team to revisit its decisions on product design, pricing, and the marketing plan. With six months to launch, what should the company do?

In 1987, Eli Lilly began to market Prozac, the first available drug in a new class of psychotropic drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Prozac, and other SSRIs that followed it, revolutionized the treatment of depression and changed the philosophy and practice of psychiatry. It allowed depression to be treated by nonpsychiatrist physicians, substantially increased the number of depressed patients who had access to treatment, and lowered the cost of treating depression and other mental illnesses. Prozac quickly became the biggest selling drug in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. Explores the history of Prozac and the factors that combined to make it the best-selling drug of all time. Provides a brief history of depression and the theories that led some scientists to pursue SSRIs. Covers Lilly's uncertain development of Prozac, the thoughtful marketing that went into the launch, and the company's post-launch marketing strategies as the drug became widely used. Emphasizes the management difficulties, including product lawsuits and patent expirations, generated by blockbuster drugs.

Since its controversial merger with Compaq, Hewlett-Packard had been under pressure by analysts and some stockholders to divest itself of its low-margin PC business. For CEO Carly Fiorina and others on HP's management team, however, PCs seemed integral to the company's broader strategy of becoming more customer focused. In May 2004, with HP's stock substantially undervalued, Mike Winkler, HP's chief marketing officer, was asked to weigh in on the company's PC strategy going forward. Could HP serve its customers better with PCs or without them? And if HP stayed in PCs, how should the company price them?

With liberalization of India's economy and the opening up of markets to foreign multinationals such as Procter & Gamble, the Indian subsidiary of Unilever--Hindustan Lever Ltd. (HLL)--was under pressure to grow revenues and profits. HLL had a long and stellar record of market leadership in India (with market shares of nearly 60%) in categories such as soap, detergent, and shampoos. Documents HLL's innovative approach to penetrate rural markets (with populations less than 1,000), where two-thirds of India's population lives, with a scheme named "Shakti" (meaning empowerment). The central question is: How should the company scale Shakti and make it profitable?

Spreadsheet supplement for case 505-056.

On the plane back to New York City, L. Londell McMillan focused on the music on his headphones, the latest offering from his friend and long-time client, Prince Rogers Nelson--the artist known as "Prince." McMillan and Prince had spent several days contemplating a strategy for the release of Musicology, Prince's newest album-length recording. As McMillan reflected on their discussions, the infectious music on his headphones underscored the enormous commercial potential of this project. To realize the full value of that potential, however, McMillan would have to work with Prince to craft and execute a carefully developed plan to market and distribute the album.

The technical director of Shimla Dairy Products, a government-licensed food manufacturer, has spent time working in the cheese industry in Australia. He has returned to India with new skills and ideas to share with the company. Cheese is a fairly new product in India and he must decide how best to take advantage of the growth potential in the Indian cheese market. He must consider issues of marketing, branding, production processes, operations, and customer focus.

For three years after its spin off from Lucent in late 2000, Avaya struggled with how best to structure its go-to-market organization. Chronicles Avaya's repeated attempts to create an effective go-to-market structure. Ends in late 2003, when Don Peterson, the CEO, must choose between four final options.

The category manager and category development analyst for bicycles and bike accessories at Canadian Tire Corporation were faced with making both strategic branding and tactical assortment decisions in an effort to grow the sales and profitability of the bicycle business for Canadian Tire Retail. Sales have been flat due to increased competition, lack of product innovation and a market that was not growing. The category team must evaluate opportunities to add a premium, national brand to the retail chain's brand portfolio.

Dexit is a new electronic payment system that offers a convenient alternative to cash for small-value retail transactions. The chief executive officer is faced with some critical target market and marketing mix decisions as she prepares for launch. The situation is complicated by the fact that action is needed on two fronts: Dexit must not only recruit end-consumers to use the service, it also has to convince merchants to install the payment terminals. Since paying with cash is free, the company will need to persuade both groups that the added convenience of Dexit justifies a transaction fee. Although the concept appears to have good potential, the recent test market failures of two similar offerings suggest that success is far from guaranteed. The case reinforces the importance of solid consumer analysis when selecting a target market, demonstrates the concept of value to the customer, and provides a basis for discussing push versus pull marketing strategies.

Intelliseek harvests, filters, and mines the content of messages posted by consumers online and on discussion boards and blogs. For any specified consumer product brand, Intelliseek measures the volume of work-of-mouth and its valence (proportion of positive and negative comments) and produces organized sets of quotes in the manner of a focus group report. This "marketing intelligence" company has been successful selling its reports to the car industry, but finds it difficult to achieve client retention in other areas. New initiatives are suggested: (1) to arrange data in problem-specific templates so that it is more "actionable" and (2) to develop industry benchmark metrics against which the metrics can be compared in a more informative manner. The CEO of the company believes that the key to success is a streamlined, standardized approach to the metrics developed for client brands. The CMO believes that Intelliseek should go much further to capitalize on the opportunity to understand customers emerging from what he calls "consumer-generated media."

Provides tools and methodologies that allow forecasting demand for innovative new products. Highlights the Bass model--the theory behind it and ways to determine its parameters. Provides a detailed example of how to use the Bass model to forecast demand for satellite radio. Also covers ways to incorporate marketing mix variables and competition and explores the impact of these factors on the adoption and diffusion of an innovation. Finally, illustrates how to construct forecasts when early sales data are available via data-driven forecasting models.

Information technologies outsourcing is one the emergent fast-growth industries in the global high-tech economy. India is the leading country for IT outsourcing and Infosys is the largest Indian company in this sector. The branding challenge for Infosys is to leverage its reputation for predictable excellent results for information technology outsourcing. Management had identified overall company top-line revenue growth to achieve 30-40 per cent annual increases while allocating a negligible budget for marketing communications. Therefore, the key to the global brand strategy would not be through brand image advertising, but through communications of product strategy developments to large global IT outsourcing companies. The goal for Infosys is to be on the short-list of providers for the large, most sophisticated assignments for IT services to bid against IBM and Accenture, while leapfrogging over other competitors in the fast growing and fragmented information technology outsourcing market.

An engineer for Wind to Energy has led the creation of the North American division of a German start-up company that designs wind-energy electric power generation units - wind turbines. The engineer and his fellow engineers have licensed the technology to a small-share assembler of wind turbines and are about to receive their first payment from this firm. As they look ahead, they see opportunities for revenue in possibly supplying spare parts to wind farms, or even operating their own wind farm. The challenge is to focus this start-up company.

Quantec Geoscience is a leading global supplier of geophysical services to the mineral exploration industry. It developed TITAN 24, an award-winning highly innovative technology for deep earth imaging. TITAN 24 provided geophysical information with higher clarity at greater depths (up to 2,000 metres versus 400 of existing methods) to enable better targeting of drilling. However, by mid-2004, TITAN was far short of its sales targets. Mining companies, the major target market for TITAN, were resisting adoption. Quantec's marketing director had to rethink the company's whole marketing strategy, including its target segments, pricing, positioning and market communication.