個案總覽

Bob Berney, president of Newmarket Films, must decide on a distribution and marketing strategy for Mel Gibson's controversial new movie, The Passion of the Christ. Fueled by Gibson's star power as well as an extensive prescreening campaign among Christian leaders and others representing likely target audiences in the summer of 2003, the religious movie had started to generate publicity in mainstream media. Five months prior to the film's scheduled opening on February 25, 2004, Berney has to choose whether to continue with the prescreening campaign to stimulate further word-of-mouth among core audiences or switch to a mainstream media advertising campaign more commonly used to promote new movies. He also has to determine the appropriate distribution strategy, in particular whether to opt for a wide or limited release and whether to change the timing of the release.

Supplements the (A) case.

This case provides a synopsis of three companies-Dell, Inc., IKEA, and Seven-Eleven (Japan)-that has developed a competitive advantage through channel management. Each case highlights the company's focus on customer relationships and how the channel is designed to maximize customer service. Examples illustrate how these companies think "outside the box" in their selection of channel partners and in the sequencing and assignment of the activities involved in product design, production, and transfer. They also illustrate how closely these companies work with their suppliers in order to coordinate activities and reduce channel cost. The net effect is a more efficient channel designed to serve the customer more effectively.

In late 1997, Tom Casola, brand manager for Propecia, debates the best approach to market this breakthrough one-a-day pill for hair loss. This launch would be atypical for a prescription drug because of the key position of the consumer. As a result, the team's experience of past launches has little bearing on how its two available instruments, physician detailing and direct-to-consumer advertising, might play out in this case. Three issues present themselves as new: the form of advertising, the consumer message, and the balance between consumer and physician marketing efforts. The ensuing discussion allows participants to explore the goals of and interdependence between various marketing instruments.

Can a successful novelist use direct-to-consumer marketing to grow his brand? The author, who in a previous career ran a major advertising agency, uses advertising with great success to build his stature as a crime fiction writer. Further, he applies his experience at managing the advertising creative process to employ co-authors on a "literary assembly line," turning out more product than any other best-selling author. Now he considers whether book clubs can be used to systematically build buzz for his new releases. Is it time for a shift to direct mail and one-to-one marketing, or is fame in the book business only won in the limelight of publicity and broadcast marketing?

The Porsche 911 has long been the face of the company's product line. Over the years, Porsche has added models priced either above or below the 911, but only the lower-priced models have sold well. Porsche seems to struggle between what an executive calls the "pull of the market" and the "tug of brand equity." This case provides an opportunity for students to analyze the optimal breadth of a product line that will balance sales, profitability, dealer satisfaction, and long-term brand health and customer satisfaction.

As traditional television advertisements continue to lose their effectiveness, brand managers are being more pressured to think creatively by going undercover to reach consumers surreptitiously. To capture the attention of jaded, fickle consumers, they are urged to devise below-the-radar approaches that are harder to detect. Examines six stealth marketing techniques and shows how stealth marketing is a viable alternative to obtrusive conventional advertising. Some stealth efforts are so subtle that consumers do not know they are being pitched to. There are emerging ethical and legal issues raised by critics of these techniques. Although some stealth marketing campaigns are setting off alarms with consumer watchdog groups, these techniques will inevitably grow more common. They have a powerful role to play when they are tastefully implemented and respect consumers' intelligence. Brand managers are gambling that the benefits of stealth marketing will outweigh the complaints of its critics.

Sales promotions targeted at consumers (e.g., coupons, sweepstakes, free offers) are becoming a large and growing part of marketing budgets worldwide. Presents a framework that examines the effect of managerially controllable actions--specifically, designing and communicating a sales promotion--on increasing the incentive for different segments of consumers to purchase a product. Sales promotions have three distinct aspects: an economic aspect that provides both incentives and disincentives to purchase a brand; an informational aspect that consumers use to make purchase decisions; and an affective aspect that influences how consumers feel about their shopping transaction, both positively and negatively. How a promotional offer is designed and communicated determines both its information value and its affective appeal, which then enhances or diminishes the attractiveness of the offer beyond the economic incentive it provides. Companies' promotion strategies should attempt to maximize the positive informative and affective aspects, as these can lessen the need for a large economic incentive and thereby increase the promotions' profitability.

In late 1999, India's second largest tea company, Tata Tea, is faced with a highly competitive home market that is about to become more so as impending deregulation takes effect. The company is thus contemplating internationalisation. Tata Tea is grappling with the decision of how to internationalise. It can choose to build its own international brand or, take the opportunity of buying Tetley Tea, the world¿s second largest tea brand, which has recently been put up for sale. Should Tata Tea build its own brand or buy Tetley. If the decision is to buy, how much should they offer?

In less than a decade, Korea's Samsung has transformed itself from a maker of low-end consumer electronics into a legitimate rival to Japanese industry giants such as Sony and Panasonic. Success has been due largely to efforts to reposition Samsung as a provider of stylish, leading-edge digital technology. But shadows of the old brand image remain, spurred on by the continued availability of several of the company's traditional products. The president of Samsung Electronics Canada has been directed to solve this problem, prompting difficult choices regarding product, pricing, distribution, and promotion that threaten to hurt sales and short-run profits.

In early 2004, less than a year after its launch, Sony's EyeToy, a unique video gaming concept, had become a tremendous success across Europe. Developed for use with Sony's PlayStation 2 console, the revolutionary technology allowed users standing in front of a small camera to interact with game objects appearing on a television screen just by moving their bodies. Sales for the first EyeToy product ("Play"), a bundle of the camera and software, exceeded all expectations. However, sales for the second product ("Groove") were disappointing. Was it time for the EyeToy team to rethink its product development and marketing strategy? How could the team sustain EyeToy's initial success and prove that the concept was not a fad?

This case describes the brand-building efforts of Harley-Davidson and some of the programs the company has used to maintain a dialogue with consumers. The case discussion is anticipated to focus on the causes, consequences, and threats to almost fanatical brand loyalty exhibited by Harley owners.

Amway is a large manufacturer of household products that uses the direct selling approach. The company was established in the late 1940s and over the years, still using direct selling, branched into the United Kingdom, Europe, and Japan. With this global success, it expanded further, into the Chinese market. However, the company must look at its strategy after the Chinese government implements regulations on the direct marketing business model.

Supplements the (A) case.

Software maker TopTek has acquired a consulting and systems-integration firm, mainly to profit from the software sales that are a natural by-product of consulting engagements. But in many ways the two companies worked better when they were separate. Before the acquisition, the same people who delivered services to clients made the consulting firm's sales. By contrast, TopTek's professional salespeople, all of them highly skilled at selling product, handled sales. Now the consultants and the salespeople are trying to work together, but they're making a hash of it. For instance, the CIO of a TopTek customer--a retailer--is complaining that consultants from the acquired firm are driving him nuts. They've got his boss's ear, and they're selling additional projects left and right, stimulating demand for a pace of change that the CIO says the retailer can't handle. The consultants in the newly constituted TopTek aren't happy either. They get no commissions on products they sell, because commissions for all sales to an account--forever--go to the salesperson who snagged it in the first place. The sales force has its own gripes. The consultants aren't much help in winning new business, according to Ron Murphy, TopTek's sales VP. What will it take for cross selling to succeed at TopTek? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0407B and R0407Z are Ram Charan, an author and adviser to CEOs; Caroline A. Kovac, the general manager of IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences; Jerome A. Colletti, an author and consultant; and Federico Turegano, the managing director of SG Corporate and Investment Banking, an arm of Societe Generale Group.

Over the past decade, the distribution of household incomes has shifted so much that a much larger proportion of consumers now earns significantly higher-than-average incomes--while still falling short of being truly rich. As a result, what used to be a no man's land for new product introductions has in many categories become an extremely profitable "new middle ground." How can marketers capitalize on this new territory? The key, say the authors, is to rethink the positioning and design of offerings and the ways they can be brought to market. Procter & Gamble, for instance, redefined the positioning map for tooth-whitening solutions by offering its $35 Whitestrips. P&G wisely positioned itself between the $400 bleaching technique that dental centers popularized and $2 to $8 whitening toothpaste. In product categories where the middle ground is already populated, it's important for companies to design or redesign offerings to compete. An example is the Polo shirt. How do you sell a man yet another one after he's bought every color he wants? Add some features, and call it a golf shirt. Here, marketers have introduced designs based on the concept of "occasional use" to stand out. Finally, companies wishing to reach the almost rich can change how they go to market. Consider Target Stores, which has pioneered a focus the company itself characterizes as upscale discount. The strategy has made Target an everyday shopping phenomenon among well-heeled urbanites and prosperous professionals.

Companies spend billions of dollars on direct marketing, targeting individual customers with ever more accuracy. Yet despite the power of the myriad data collecting and analytical tools at their disposal, they're still having trouble optimizing their direct marketing investments. Many marketers try to minimize costs by pursuing only those customers who are cheap to find and cheap to keep. Others try to get the most customers they possibly can and keep all of them for as long as they can. But a customer need not be loyal to be highly profitable, and many loyal customers turn out to be highly unprofitable. Companies can get more out of direct marketing if they see it as a single system for generating profits than if they try to maximize performance measures at each stage of the process. This article describes a tool for doing just that. Called ARPRO (Allocating Resources for Profits), the tool is essentially a complex regression analysis that can estimate the impact of a company's direct marketing investments on the profitability of its customer pool. With data that companies already gather, the tool can show managers how much to spend on acquisition vs. retention and even what percentage of their funds they should allocate to the different direct marketing channels. Using the model, companies can easily see that even small deviations from the optimal levels of customer profitability are expensive. The tool can also show that finding the optimal balance between investments in acquisition and retention can be more important than finding the optimum amount to invest overall.

Software maker TopTek has acquired a consulting and systems-integration firm, mainly to profit from the software sales that are a natural by-product of consulting engagements. But in many ways the two companies worked better when they were separate. Before the acquisition, the same people who delivered services to clients made the consulting firm's sales. By contrast, TopTek's professional salespeople, all of them highly skilled at selling product, handled sales. Now the consultants and the salespeople are trying to work together, but they're making a hash of it. For instance, the CIO of a TopTek customer--a retailer--is complaining that consultants from the acquired firm are driving him nuts. They've got his boss's ear, and they're selling additional projects left and right, stimulating demand for a pace of change that the CIO says the retailer can't handle. The consultants in the newly constituted TopTek aren't happy either. They get no commissions on products they sell, because commissions for all sales to an account--forever--go to the salesperson who snagged it in the first place. The sales force has its own gripes. The consultants aren't much help in winning new business, according to Ron Murphy, TopTek's sales VP. What will it take for cross selling to succeed at TopTek? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0407B and R0407Z are Ram Charan, an author and adviser to CEOs; Caroline A. Kovac, the general manager of IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences; Jerome A. Colletti, an author and consultant; and Federico Turegano, the managing director of SG Corporate and Investment Banking, an arm of Societe Generale Group.

Software maker TopTek has acquired a consulting and systems-integration firm, mainly to profit from the software sales that are a natural by-product of consulting engagements. But in many ways the two companies worked better when they were separate. Before the acquisition, the same people who delivered services to clients made the consulting firm's sales. By contrast, TopTek's professional salespeople, all of them highly skilled at selling product, handled sales. Now the consultants and the salespeople are trying to work together, but they're making a hash of it. For instance, the CIO of a TopTek customer--a retailer--is complaining that consultants from the acquired firm are driving him nuts. They've got his boss's ear, and they're selling additional projects left and right, stimulating demand for a pace of change that the CIO says the retailer can't handle. The consultants in the newly constituted TopTek aren't happy either. They get no commissions on products they sell, because commissions for all sales to an account--forever--go to the salesperson who snagged it in the first place. The sales force has its own gripes. The consultants aren't much help in winning new business, according to Ron Murphy, TopTek's sales VP. What will it take for cross selling to succeed at TopTek? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0407B and R0407Z are Ram Charan, an author and adviser to CEOs; Caroline A. Kovac, the general manager of IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences; Jerome A. Colletti, an author and consultant; and Federico Turegano, the managing director of SG Corporate and Investment Banking, an arm of Societe Generale Group.

The managing director of a fundraising organization has recently taken on the project of raising money for charity by managing the third edition of a calendar. He had guidance from the founder of the original calendar project that raised funds for the fire fighters in New York. He focused his energies on creating high quality calendars but they were still not printed as the due date drew near and he was encountering a number of obstacles. He was beginning to feel a bit let down, but he still had to decide how to market the calendars for maximum effect. This is a supplement to Wgirl, Wboy Calendars (A) and (B), products, 9B02A018 and 9B02A019.