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Provides a description of the rise and decline of Napster, the free Internet music-swapping service. Also describes second-generation peer-to-peer services (e.g., Gnutella) as well as paid subscription services (e.g., MusicNet, pressplay).

Pokemon, the colloquial name given to a collection of 150 fantastic, animal-inspired creatures with organic powers and the capacity to evolve, are the stars of video games, trading card games, and TV cartoons. Conceived in Japan in 1996, Pokemon quickly became that nation's favorite toy phenomenon, and attracted the attention of Nintendo of America, who, in February 1998, purchased all intellectual rights to everything bearing the Pokemon name outside of Asia. Launched in September 1998, Pokemon quickly took the United States by storm, single-handedly resuscitating Nintendo's lagging video game sales, and earning stature as one of the top three licensing success stories of all time by year-end 1999 (on worldwide sales of $7 billion and U.S. sales of $1.2 billion). This case begs the question of how management at Nintendo and licensing partner 4Kids Entertainment did it and, perhaps more importantly, whether they can sustain (and perhaps grow) Pokemon's success over time. Is Pokemon just a passing fad to be "milked," or can it be managed as a sustainable brand franchise? Was Pokemon's success simply a fluke, an unpredictable function of mere good fortune, or is sound brand strategy and planning the cause?

i-mode is a wireless Internet service offered in Japan by NTT DoCoMo. In just three years, the service has won over 30 million subscribers and achieved a 60% share of Japan's mobile Internet market, making it the most successful mobile data service in the world. It is now early 2002 and Keiichi Enoki, managing director of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service, faces two challenges. On the domestic front, i-mode must fend off two strong competitors while managing the migration of i-mode's existing customer base to DoCoMo's new 3G (third-generation) wireless service. On the international front, the company must figure out a way to bring the i-mode model to U.S. and European markets, where consumers appear reluctant to adopt the mobile Internet.

In early 2002, Pamela Pollace, vice president and director of Intel's worldwide marketing operations, is debating whether the company should extend its "Intel Inside" branding campaign to non-PC product categories, such as cell phones and PDAs. The "Intel Inside" campaign has been one of the most successful branding campaigns in history. However, the campaign is more than ten years old, and growth in the PC market appears to be stagnating. In contrast, sales of portable digital devices--such as PDAs and cell phones--appear to be growing at a healthy rate. Pollace is debating whether the "Intel Inside" campaign will work in these other product categories, even though Intel doesn't dominate these other markets like it does the PC market, and it isn't clear that consumers will associate Intel with these other markets.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 502-083.

Marketers have masterfully targeted the middle class and the very rich, but a breed of consumer is flying under their radar--those who aren't truly wealthy but still rank in the top 20% of earners. Three tactics can help companies reach the "almost rich."

What do your customers really think? Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman discusses his novel market-research method for revealing consumers' unconscious thoughts about everything from fabric sprays to the Internet.

You can choose from 4 key strategies to systematically create and master new markets. Path 1 is to start from a blank slate with unknown customers and unknown products. This is the most exciting path to take, but the most formidable and riskiest; Path 2 is to deliver new products to known customers; Path 3 takes known products to unknown customers; and Path 4 is building a new market with known customers and known products--usually results in product line extensions and runs the risk that you will become defined by your knowledge. The opportunity to create and dominate a new market offers the prospect of working without competition and with increased margins. However, the firm must choose the path that leverages its knowledge. It is important to remember that the product is not just the device or service, but also the delivery process, customer interfaces, and support systems. Examples from FedEx, AT&T, GlaxoSmithKline and other companies illustrate the pitfalls and advantages of each of the 4 paths to new market strategies.

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?

Describes the marketing of Prozac and Paxil, two of the best-selling mental health drugs in history. Set in 2001, several months before the expiration of Prozac's patent, Eli Lilly (Prozac's manufacturer) and GlaxoSmithKline (Paxil's manufacturer) must decide how to respond to the introduction of generic Prozac into the market.

Sa Sa Cosmetics has had spectacular success as a low-price retailer of branded cosmetics. But recently, growth has slackened. What are the causes? This case describes recent strategic initiatives and provides market research data to aid the students in diagnosis.

Founded in 1984, Dell Corp. has achieved phenomenal growth, and by 2000 had topped $25 billion in sales and over $2 billion in net income. In the 4th quarter of 2000, however, the PC industry's average 30-year growth rate crashed to a negative 10%. Dell must make difficult decisions on how to sustain its profitability in light of its broad product portfolio--PCs, workstations, and servers on storage products for a broad cross section of customers in the United States and worldwide. Should it stay the course or fundamentally change strategy?

In its first two years as a direct-response retail bank in Canada, ING Bank of Canada attracted more than 160,000 customers and assets of $1.6 million. Several other direct banks have entered the marketplace with similar services, and the management team needs to consider the company's next strategic move. The team must decide whether to recommend an alliance that would place ING automated banking machines in Canadian Tire stores nationwide.

Surveying contented customers just once can increase profitability over the course of a year, surprising new research finds. That may be tempting news to marketers, but beware: Surveying unhappy customers could have the opposite effect.

The growing popularity of the Internet for shopping has launched the latest round of multiple retail channel integration as traditional stores, cataloguers, online stores and others all seek to provide customers with the choice of when and how to do business with them. Multi-channel retailing presents both significant opportunities and challenges. Success depends on how well a retailer addresses these opportunities by creating a seamless, fully integrated, multi-channel operation focused on providing high-quality, cost-effective service to consumers. Multi-channel integration is a complex strategy to undertake. This note discusses the major issues that retailers have to address.

Gino SA was a major European-based manufacturer of burner units that are sold in China through exclusive contracts with three distributors. As a result, the three Chinese distributors have significant bargaining power with Gino. A leading boiler manufacturer, who is currently purchasing through a distributor, has approached Gino to receive OEM treatment (a further discount by purchasing the burners direct from the manufacturer, in return for a commitment to purchase a percentage of their burners from Gino). In deciding whether or not to pursue the company's first direct OEM relationship, the marketing manager must consider the impact of his decision on the distributors, the competition and the company's corporate management.

Accellion sought to position itself as a service provider in the Distributed File Storage, Management and Delivery market space. Its major targeted customers are Global2000 entreprises and Internet-based providers of premium content who need to supply their organizations and clients with reliable and fast access to their Internet-linked servers. As more and more companies move their applications and data from isolated desktops and local area networks (LAN's) to more globally accessible Internet-based applications, Accellion promises the instant infrastructure to provide the required availability and download and upload times, improving their revenues and reducing their costs. Still new to the industry, Accellion developed its service guarantee as a part of its value proposition to potential customers. The guarantee was designed to credibly promise high service standards to potential clients.

Many commodities sellers resort to price cuts to attract customers; they fail to realize that their customers will pay premium prices for the right deals. The secret lies in reducing customers' risks.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is premised on the belief that developing a relationship with customers is the best way to gain their loyalty. It is argued that loyal customers are more profitable than nonloyal customers. Recently, academic researchers have questioned some of the key premises that are used to support CRM in general and relationship marketing and customer loyalty programs in particular. This article critically examines the assumptions that underpin CRM and presents the results of research that is skeptical of its value. CRM should be adopted only after a careful appraisal of its cost effectiveness.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For too long, people have made unwarranted but detrimental assumptions about pricing. Changing prices, for example, has been looked on as an easy, quick, and reversible process, and new technologies have only reinforced that way of thinking. Similarly, extracting value from a product by pricing it correctly has been seen as relatively uncomplicated; the hard part is creating the valuable product in the first place. But these dismissive attitudes toward pricing miss the mark. Pricing is complex, and it's only growing more so as new tools and techniques become available. The ability to set the right price at the right time, any time--the very definition of a pricing capability--is also becoming increasingly important. In fact, in the course of working with dozens of companies in the past couple of years, the authors have spoken with several executives who believe that developing a pricing capability is essential to their business' survival. And they are backing up their views by investing in three areas: human capital, systems capital, and social capital. The authors explain the nature of these investments and how they come together to form a pricing capability that competitors will have a hard time imitating. Building such a capability requires an effort that some companies may not be in a position to undertake. Those that do take a comprehensive approach, however, can make superior pricing decisions that fit with their positioning, customers, suppliers, and evolving market conditions for years to come.