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Explores the predicament Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), one of the world's leading luxury products makers, faces with respect to brand management while expanding operations in China. LVMH, a $13 billion group of companies with operations across the world--1,500 retail stores in about 60 countries--had conquered the luxury goods market successfully in Europe, the United States, and some parts of Asia. In the early 1990s, LVMH decided to expand its operations in China and South Korea. A decade later, LVMH made its entry into India. In 2004, Asia accounted for about 40% of the sales of LVMH. LVMH is determined to capture the growing Asian market. However, it faces several challenges in its expansion plans in Asia; one of its major concerns is protecting its brand against dilution. Although China is a huge market, phony branding is endemic there. In addition, LVMH's expansion plans in Asia introduced the issue of private ownership vs. franchising with regard to the profitability of companies in the luxury goods industry.

Harvard Real Estate Services executives need to design the 2005 Graduate Student Housing Survey for maximum impact in anticipation of Harvard's long-term expansion project in Allston. Students are challenged to help executives in charge to (1) draw the lessons from their earlier survey experience: what survey data had most--or least--impact and why? and (2) imagine what survey data--accounting for the power and limits of survey research--could be most useful for the Allston initiative. Provides a complete template for survey research, while at the same time raises critical issues--technical issues as well as more managerial questions related to the proactive management of market research in organizations.

An upscale ecolodge in southern Nicaragua hopes to achieve a 53 per cent occupancy rate within three years of opening, and has hired a management company to prepare a marketing strategy. Despite its proximity to Costa Rica and its focus on providing a unique luxury vacation retreat for one of the fastest growing segments in the travel industry - the ecotourist - the hotel faces numerous hurdles. The greatest challenge is to overcome Nicaragua's negative reputation, based on its recent history of political and social unrest, still fresh in the minds of tourists. The hotel must also operate within the country's rural infrastructure, characterized by interruptions in the power supply, poorly maintained roads and below-standard sanitation. Additionally, Nicaragua does not have a pool of skilled employees to work in the high-end service industry. The effects of these factors on the hotel's market positioning and market penetration rate are addressed in the preparation of the marketing strategy.

Due to differences in incentive compensation, work experience, and objectives, sales and marketing, in many organizations often clash. At Microsoft Canada, the national sales manager, Home & Entertainment Division and the group product manager for PC marketing are considering investing a recurring $1 million a year - 10 per cent of their combined promotional budget - to produce and maintain a consumer-focused website, Microsoft Home Magazine. This proposed investment comes at a time where sales growth is slowing in the firm's PC business. As a surprising twist for students, this case is unique in the sense that it highlights an example where sales and marketing work together to achieve a common goal.

The founder and chief executive officer of Global Source Healthcare was struggling with how to allocate sales resources among acquiring new accounts, penetrating existing accounts and up-selling existing accounts. Global Source Healthcare provided domestic and international staffing services to healthcare facilities. The company had been operational for a year and growth had been considerably slower than expected. What made this decision especially important was that the healthcare staffing market was experiencing a substantial downturn. Consolidation was occurring in the industry. Given the limited sales and financial resources of the company, this decision was critical to ensure the very survival of Global Source. Other issues that may be raised include understanding the sales strategy in the business and marketing strategy, motivating a sales force in a difficult, limited-resource environment, and understanding the trade-off between the length of the sales cycle and the size of the potential account.

Boots Group PLC, one of the best known and respected retail names in the United Kingdom, provided health and beauty products and advice that enhanced personal well being. The marketing manager at Boots was planning his sales promotion strategy for a line of professional hair-care products. The professional hair-care line consisted primarily of shampoos, conditioners and styling products (gels, wax, mousse, etc.) developed in collaboration with United Kingdom's top celebrity hairdressers. The marketing manager's challenge was to select one of three promotional alternatives - get three for the price of two, receive a gift with purchase or an on-pack coupon - for the Christmas season. He realized that the alternative he selected would have both immediate effects on costs and sales, but also long-term implications for the brands involved. His primary objective was to drive sales volumes and trade-up consumers from lower-value brands, while retaining or building brand equity.

Design is now understood as a core activity that confers competitive advantage by bringing to light the emotional meaning products and services have - or could have - for consumers, and by extracting high value from such emotional connections. This understanding is creating more design-focused enterprises in a wide variety of industries -- organizations that use consumer-centered product development to move quickly and effectively from intimate customer knowledge to successful product and service offerings. The authors explain how a focus on design translates into a focus on customers' true needs and unarticulated aspirations, ultimately creating better-informed, more nimble companies. They review six design strategies that can be used to bring a design focus to any organization.

Innovation is a rallying cry for today's organizations. Yet encouraging both innovation and the superb execution of routine work concurrently runs the risk of sending a mixed message that can end up accomplishing neither. The author defines the concepts of 'psychological safety' and 'evaluative pressure' and their effects on employees' willingness to experiment, and shows how creating a consistent work environment containing psychological safety can reduce employees' fear of failure and promote experimentation. She presents findings that creativity is related to organizational culture, reward systems, supervisory encouragement and trust.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. To optimize a portfolio of brands, companies can use a step-by-step approach: decide on the brands to review; analyze each brand with respect to its contribution to the company; assess the brands according to current market performance (traction) and future prospects (momentum); and classify the brands along those three dimensions (contribution, traction, and momentum), allowing managers to identify both challenges and opportunities. The process enables companies to sort their brands into different categories: power (a brand that needs to be defended ferociously and deployed judiciously), sleeper (a brand that with a little fast tracking can build into a power brand), slider (a valuable brand that has lost momentum, is slipping backwards, and needs immediate intervention to prevent meltdown), soldier (a solid brand that contributes quietly without the need for much management attention), black hole (a brand that sucks up resources and may or may not ever pay out), rocket (a brand that is on its way to power-brand status), wallflower (a small, underappreciated brand with very loyal customers, often underpriced and undermarketed), and discard (a brand that should have been mothballed years ago). Companies can then tie together the objectives for each brand into an overall plan, which will include brand architecture and resource allocation.

Hasbro's newest toy is so unique it requires a unique launch strategy. Comparing traditional media (TV, print) with a non-traditional viral campaign, Matt Collins must weigh the risks and benefits of doing things the way they've always been done or blazing a new path in the marketing of toys.

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Loyalty Management UK (LMUK) manages British supermarket chain Sainsbury's frequent-shopper card program, called Nectar. LMUK uses Sainsbury's sponsorship as the magnet to attract other retailers into a profitable, multisponsor loyalty network. Examines the economics and consumer behavior of retail loyalty programs and allows comparison of the brand-building power of a single-sponsor program to the promotional power of a multisponsor program. Describes the launch of the program and its first 18 months of growth, at the end of which it is the largest loyalty program in Britain. Illustrates the use of the program to deliver customer-specific promotions to the 13.5 million-member database and how the program evaluates the success or failure of specific promotions.

Professors Francesca Golfetto and David Mazursky describe how a group of Italian yarn makers market their expertise, not just their products.

The primary purpose of this case is to describe the challenges facing Rasurel, the swimwear brand of Lejaby, a French lingerie company that has set itself the ambition of revitalizing the image of Rasurel in the minds of consumers. The case focuses on the issues facing the company as it considers the launch of the Rasurel Summer 2004 collection. The Lejaby management team has envisaged various options, favoring one where it would keep Rasurel in the company¿s portfolio and work on its repositioning. Bruno de Lalande, the newly appointed Marketing & Sales Director, has the task of leading the repositioning.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For decades, companies relied on push marketing to sell their products and services. Then, in the 1990s, the emphasis shifted to relationship marketing, as slogans such as "delight your customers" became the mantra of many marketers. But those tactics have been losing their effectiveness, particularly as the power of customers continues to grow. Thanks to digital technologies like the Internet, today's increasingly educated consumers expect companies to do more than just delight them. In response, innovative companies are now trying a different approach: They are providing customers with open, honest, and complete information, and then finding the best products for them--even if those offerings are from competitors. In short, they are truly representing their customers' best interests, essentially becoming advocates for them. The strategy is this: If a company advocates for its customers, they will reciprocate with their trust, loyalty, and purchases--either now or in the future. The firm might then command higher prices for its products and services, as many customers will be willing to pay for the extra value. And when people trust a company, they will often tell others about it, helping to reduce the organization's costs for acquiring new customers.

Todd Wilson, manager of partner development at Educational Technology Corp., needed to determine the targeting, positioning, and selling strategy for its innovative Interactive Mathematics software for the college market. This required determining what types of colleges to target and which stakeholders to focus on within institutions. His task was complicated by the unclear objectives of nonprofit institutions and the differing motivations of teachers, students, and college administrators in adopting software-based learning technology. Highlights the difficulties in innovation adoption within large nonprofit institutions and the challenges in marketing to institutions with complex decision-making processes, multiple influencers, and conflicting motivations.

The vice-president of regulation at the Investment Funds Institute of Canada is reviewing the monthly statistics. It shows the continuance of three trends, prevalent during the last 12 months in the Canadian mutual funds industry. Net sales of mutual funds were declining, fund redemptions were rising and the rate of growth in mutual fund assets had been marginal. The vice-president must determine how the Investment Funds Institute, as the industry trade association for mutual funds, can influence these trends. He must decide on the message, who he should target with the message and the media through which he should reach his target audience, and present his plan at the next executive committee meeting.

Plant Nutrients is a medium-sized retailer of crop supplies. The general manager is preparing a proposed operating statement to send to the parent company. This statement must reflect an increase in volume of two per cent while maintaining the required 13 per cent on investment in business. He is considering a number of ways of improving performance: getting better utilization of fertilizer blending capacity, adding a new line of seed and adding precision agriculture services. Another option is to alter pricing.

The Ontario Machinery Ring is a cooperative set up to perform a matchmaking service for farmers who want to have custom work done and farmers who want to do custom work. This concept is widespread in Europe but has not been tried in North America. The general manager of the organization has set up a prototype operation and is looking at expansion opportunities. Expansion will take more funds than are available and the general manager has sought financial assistance from the provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Before committing funds to this project, the ministry requires marketing research to measure demand for the machinery ring concept. Supplemental cases, Ontario Machinery Ring (B) and (C), product 9B04A022 and 9B04A023 look at questionnaire development and data analysis.