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Discusses how Grey Worldwide Hong Kong and China (Grey WW-HK/China) is repositioning itself through defined e-marketing and CRM strategies for the Asian market. Examines how integral its customer relationship group is in building a CRM strategy to deliver client value proposition. Grey WW-HK/China has very strong umbrella brand equity, but the brand capital has to be invigorated through a renewed e-marketing focus. Constrained by changing market conditions, particularly industry pressure on commission margins, Grey WW-HK/China needs to differentiate itself and is assessing CRM's value in developing loyal and lifetime customers. However, in a growing Asian market, Grey WW-HK/China is in heated competition with other players, including management consultants, traditional agencies, and pure on-line players who are actively pursuing a CRM business focus. Grey WW-HK/China's CRM team is in the process of developing an Asia-specific CRM blueprint for its internal management, something that is transferable to Grey's clients. Grey WW-HK/China is considering merging technology with traditional marketing philosophy, and the team is expected to deliver a proposal that outlines the CRM tools that Grey WW-HK/China should use to reposition its brand and build customer loyalty.

Grupo Elektra is Latin America's largest consumer finance company based on credit sales in its hard goods retail outlets. It has started to internationalize in Latin America but now must to decide whether to enter the U.S. Hispanic market and which of its two core businesses (retail and finance) to emphasize.

Reveals the interesting and unusual story behind Ford's selection of "Edsel" as the new brand name for its ill-fated 1957 new product launch. Noteworthy as perhaps the most extensive, creative, and politically charged naming stories on record. Although both nontraditional approaches to name generation (i.e., correspondence with a popular poet of the time) and more traditional research tools (e.g., consumer surveys exploring top-of-mind brand-name associations and opposites, advertising agency brainstorming) provide input to the naming decision, this is all put aside by the company's chairman of the board, who makes a unilateral decision to use "Edsel" in the final hour. This name choice goes against both consumer research, which suggests problems with the name, and the beliefs of Edsel's sons, who feel that their father may not want his name so utilized, thus revealing the aesthetic quality of the naming decision.

Retailing is and always has been an inefficient business. Retailers, particularly those that operate large chains, have to predict the desires of fickle consumers, buy and allocate complex sets of merchandise, set the right prices, and offer the right promotions for each individual item. Inevitably, there are gaps between supply and demand, leaving stores holding too much of what customers don't want and too little of what they do. Now, however, a new set of software tools promises to revolutionize the entire merchandising chain. These merchandising optimization systems, as they're called, determine the right quantity, allocation, and price of items to maximize retailers' returns. By applying sophisticated data processing techniques to existing inventory and sales data, they accurately model future patterns of supply and demand at the item and store level. In other words, they turn the art of merchandising into a science. Early users of the new software, such as Gymboree and J.C. Penney, are already reporting promising gains in gross margins in the range of 5% to 10%. Retailers are also seeing significant increases in efficiency: At one chain, for instance, planners' productivity rose 20%. Equally important, retailers are showing improvements in customer satisfaction, as shoppers become more likely to find desired merchandise in stock at fair prices. This article provides retailers with a guide to merchandising optimization systems, explaining how they work and how they change processes at each step of the merchandising chain.

Nintendo Co. Ltd. is a worldwide leader in the retail video game industry. In 1998, the color version of Nintendo Game Boy would be launched simultaneously in North America and Europe and would be one of Nintendo's most important launches. The president of Nintendo, Canada must develop a marketing plan that would generate the most profit.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 502-011.

Describes a situation facing Philip Satre, chairman and CEO of Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. Satre was reading a May 2000 Wall Street Journal story that discussed the company's marketing success in targeting low rollers, the 100% growth in stock price and profits in the year to December 1999, and the revenue growth of 50%, which significantly outpaced the industry. The exciting articles aroused Satre's desire to know more about the activities of his then COO, Gary Loveman, and his team of "propeller heads" with respect to their database marketing efforts and the Total Reward Program. Satre was interested in two questions: He wanted to know how much these marketing efforts had contributed to Harrah's overall performance and whether these marketing results were a one-shot event or could be achieved year after year, especially as the competition introduced similar programs.

In 1993, Calgene is on the verge of introducing the world's first genetically engineered plant product--a tomato will taste better and stay fresh longer. At the same time, it is using biotechnology to produce improved plant products for the cottonseed and the industrial and edible oil markets. As it develops and brings these products to market, however, it faces a series of marketing and public relations hurdles, including regulatory requirements consumer education activist resistance to production, and distribution logistics. How Calgene reacts to these challenges may determine whether it succeeds or fails in its quest to revolutionize the business of agriculture. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

An important distinction is drawn in psychology between explicit and implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge refers to consciously held beliefs about an individual or object that often draws on the remembering of experiences in the past. In contrast, implicit knowledge refers to the cognitive associations a consumer holds between two constructs that exist outside his or her conscious awareness. Although it is possible that explicit and implicit knowledge correspond, the exciting opportunity for marketers is that often there is a discrepancy; that is, what a consumer believes explicitly may have no bearing on his or her actual behavior.

Nintendo Co. Ltd. is a worldwide leader in the retail video game industry. In 1998 the color version of Nintendo Game Boy would be launched simultaneously in North America and Europe and would be one of Nintendo's most important launches. The president of Nintendo, Canada must develop a marketing plan that would generate the most profit.

Future Shop is a large retail store chain that specializes in audio, video, computer equipment and software, and appliances. A student group has conducted a research study of Future Shop customers' perception of the strengths and weaknesses of the chain and submitted their findings.

Highlights the key role of selecting creative in brand communications, the challenges of building a brand in a turbulent cultural environment, the challenges of extending an advertising campaign, and the interpretation of ads as a crucial senior management skill. Includes color exhibits.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 502-040.

In the past decade, marketing gurus have called for customer care, customer focus, even--shudder--customer centricity. But according to marketing professor Stephen Brown, the customer craze has gone too far. In this article, he makes the case for "retromarketing"--a return to the days when marketing succeeded by tormenting customers rather than pandering to them. Using vivid examples, Brown shows that many recent consumer marketing coups have decidedly not been customer driven. They've relied instead on five basic retromarketing principles: First, exclusivity. Retromarketing eschews the modern marketing proposition of "Here it is, there's plenty for everyone" by holding back supplies and delaying gratification. You want it? Can't have it. Try again later, pal. Second, secrecy. Whereas modern marketing is up-front and transparent, retromarketing revels in mystery, intrigue, and covert operations. (Consider the classic "secret" recipes that have helped to purvey all sorts of comestibles.) The key is to make sure the existence of a secret is never kept secret. Third, amplification. In a world of incessant commercial chatter, amplification is vital, and it can be induced in many ways, from mystery to affront to surprise. Fourth, entertainment. Marketing must divert, engage, and amuse. The lack of entertainment is modern marketing's greatest failure. Fifth, tricksterism. Customers love to be teased. The tricks don't have to be elaborate to be effective; they can come cheap. But the rewards can be great if the brand is embraced, even briefly, by the in crowd. Managers may be dismayed by the thought of deliberately thwarting consumers. But if marketers were really customer oriented, they'd give their customers what they want: old-style, gratuitously provocative marketing.

Consumers are regularly blitzed with thousands of marketing messages--television commercials, telephone solicitations, supermarket circulars, and Internet banner ads. Still, a lot of these messages fail to hit their targets or elicit the desired response: the purchase of a product or service. It has been very difficult for companies to isolate what drives consumer behavior, largely because there are so many possible combinations of stimuli. In this article, consultants Eric Almquist and Gordon Wyner explain that although marketing has always been a creative endeavor, adopting a scientific approach to it may actually make it easier--and more cost effective--for companies to target the right customers. "Experimental design" techniques, which have long been applied in other fields, let people project the impact of many stimuli by testing just a few of them. By using mathematical formulas to select and test a subset of combinations of variables, marketers can model hundreds or even thousands of marketing messages accurately and efficiently--and they can adjust their messages accordingly. The authors use a fictional company, Biz Ware, to describe how companies can map out on a grid a combination of the attributes (or variables) of a marketing message and the levels (or variations) of those attributes. Marketers can test a few combinations of those attributes and levels and can apply logistic regression analysis to extrapolate the probable customer responses to all of the possible combinations. The company can then analyze the experiment's implications for its resources, revenues, and profitability. The authors also present the results of their work with Crayola, in which they used experimental design techniques to test that company's e-mail marketing campaign.

There is a strong current trend toward globalization of the sales function, driven by increasing customer power, initiatives in customer relationship management, and the design of customer-centric organizations. This article questions the wisdom of rapid adoption of global account management by vendor companies. Drawing on field and survey research among global account managers, the authors highlight a number of ways in which vendors can fail to reap the benefits of global customer relationships and, instead, suffer falling prices. A number of managerial guidelines are suggested for a strategic approach toward global customer management and an effective implementation of global account management programs.

Discusses sustaining brand equity after a highly successful commodity-product branding ad campaign.

Henkel has to decide whether to replace its strong local detergent brands in Italy and Spain with its leading international brand, Persil. It faces pressure from retailers for international brand standardization. Its competitors, including P&G and Unilever, are consolidating their portfolios around a few global "power brands."

The case describes Procter & Gamble's adoption of value pricing, Wal-Mart's introduction of premium store brands, and the evolution of Wal-Mart's relations with its major vendors. In early 1994, Kimberly-Clark agreed to manufacture private-label training pants for Wal-Mart. Students must decide how Procter & Gamble should respond to Wal-Mart's decision to sell private-label diapers manufactured by Kimberly-Clark.

In 1999, Procter & Gamble (P&G) witnessed its first share increase against rival Kimberly-Clark (K-C) in the U.S. disposable diaper sector in five years. However, Sam's Club de-listed P&G's Pampers from most of its stores that August, limiting its diaper offerings to K-C's Huggies and its own private label brand White Cloud, introduced that same year. By mid-2000, P&G's stock had lost more than half its value, and the nature of the company's "special relationship" with Wal-Mart was being called into question.This case is a supplement to UV4013.