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Focuses on the launch of a new elevator product in Germany. In 1996, global construction slumps and low differentiation among competitive offerings has led to significant price competition and margin erosion in the elevator industry. In these circumstances, KONE, one of the global players in this industry, has developed the Monospace elevator product that uses revolutionary technologies. This new product is expected to have a significant impact on the current product lines of KONE and its competitors. The firm has test marketed the product in three European country markets to varying degrees of success. The firm is now planning to launch the new product in Germany, the largest country market in Europe and vital to KONE's overall success. With little room for error and the future of the firm at stake, KONE's German subsidiary needs to develop a detailed launch plan for Monospace in Germany.

The managing director and director of overseas marketing of Midea Group, China's largest air conditioner manufacturer, had concerns about the company's domestic and global competitive position. They felt the company needed to develop a strategy to defend its home market in the wake of more liberalized imports, and simultaneously, develop the resources and skills required to play in a global market where its cost advantages had been nullified because international players were also exporting from China. To do so, they needed to review the company's current international strategy and examine both branding and private label options.

In 1992, the Harlem Globetrotters were headed toward extinction, but Honeywell executive and former Globetrotter Mannie Jackson believed the brand still had value after 75 years in the public eye. He bought the organization in order to translate this widespread brand recognition into financial results. Jackson describes how he took over the Globetrotters in August 1993, intending to fold the team and replace it with an organization that would sell Globetrotters merchandise. But those plans changed when he met with the team for the first time and looked into the eyes of some of the great ones from the Globetrotters' past. Instead of shutting things down for good, Jackson started preaching to the squad about building a competitive team, about the team being well known for its contributions to charities, about the players working more with kids, and about rebuilding the quality of the organization. The players believed--and slowly but surely, audiences and arena managers did, too. By focusing on providing quality basketball, forging good business relationships, and insisting on accountability in the business, Jackson helped the Globetrotters dramatically increase revenue, profit, and attendance.

Many companies have become adept at the art of customer relationship management. They've collected mountains of data on preferences and behavior, divided buyers into ever-finer segments, and refined their products, services, and marketing pitches. But all too often those efforts are too narrow--they concentrate only on the points where the customer comes into contact with the company. Few businesses have bothered to look at what the author calls the customer scenario--the broad context in which customers select, buy, and use products and services. As a result, consultant Patricia Seybold maintains, they've routinely missed chances to deepen loyalty and expand sales. In this article, the author shows how effective three very different companies have been at using customer scenarios as the centerpiece of their marketing plans. Chip maker National Semiconductor looked beyond the purchasing agents that buy in bulk to find ways to make it easier for engineers to design National's components into their specifications for mobile telephones. By developing a customer scenario that describes how people actually shop for groceries, Tesco learned the importance of decentralizing its Web shopping site and how the extra costs of decentralization could be outweighed by the higher profit margins on-line customers generate. And Buzzsaw.com used customer scenarios as the basis for its entire business.

Most companies seemingly do their best to alienate customers by making them feel like faceless targets of marketing campaigns. The director of Hallmark's Loyalty Marketing Group describes three ways to forge emotional bonds with clients.

The case focuses on the launch of McDowell's Vintage Premium Indian Whisky in the mid-1980's (the dates used in the case are later and exchange rates and prices have been adjusted accordingly. The essence of the marketing challenge faced by the marketing manager is unaffected by the later dates). McDowell must deal with a common dilemma faced by domestic firms in developing economies where growth frequently produces a greater concentration of wealth at the upper end of the market. Frequently domestic products in developing nations are perceived to be of poor quality and do not have the cachet of well-known international trademarks. As a result, the growing affluence of the middle class in these nations can lead to increasing consumption of high price, high margin imports while domestic products are restricted to the low price/high volume business where it is difficult to be profitable. To address this problem, McDowell has developed a product that compares favourably in taste tests with imported products however; it does carry the baggage of being a domestic brand. The case considers the problem of the marketing manager for McDowell's Vintage PIW who must choose a positioning and marketing strategy for his product. An important decision is whether the new product should be positioned as an acceptable alternative to imported scotch or whether it should be positioned as the best tasting domestic product. A further problem for the manager is to choose an appropriate marketing strategy for the product given the size of the country and the difficulty of reaching the target market. The timing of the case is 6 months before the scheduled launch for the product. The manager needs to finalize the positioning for the new product. In addition, the manager is considering several alternative strategies for the product that involve difficult decisions in terms of distribution, promotion and packaging.

Supplements the case. Designed as an in-class handout.

Supplements the (A) case.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO), a branded and integrated content and media company dedicated to "elevating the role of the homemaker," went public on October 19, 1999, creating a company with a market value of $1.73 billion, and a stake for Stewart worth $1.2 billion. Aretha Jackson, president of a private investment firm, must counsel a client on whether to invest in MSLO--a precarious prospect in light of the steady downward plunge in MSLO stock performance since the IPO. Risks outlined in the company's S-1 filing also highlighted special concerns specific to the management of the "Person-Brand." Could the company outlive Stewart? What if Stewart's reputation or image was tarnished? How, exactly, did the reputation of Stewart affect the value of the brand? Jackson must understand what meanings Martha Stewart claimed, and for whom, while also coming to grips with the meaning-management principles that applied in "managing Martha," the person and the brand. From a cultural meaning-management point of view, the person-brand context is unique in that it must consider two significant sources of meaning, both of which must be managed: 1) the public (the brand face) and 2) the private (the person face). Also considers the special meaning-management issues involved with multivocality of the brand proposition: i.e., the embodiment of multiple, and perhaps conflicting, meanings within one brand for various consumer audiences. This is an important meaning-management theme as it involves MSLO's engagements with K-Mart and the formulation of future line extension ideas.

A study indicates that on-line shoppers would rather customize Web site information themselves than have personalization software do it for them. But the best customer-retention strategy may be a combination of both approaches.

Despite the harsh realities of retailing, the illusion persists that magical tools can help companies overcome the problems of fickle consumers, price-slashing competitors, and mood swings in the economy. Such wishful thinking holds that retailers will thrive if only they communicate better with customers through e-mail, employ hidden cameras to learn how customers make purchase decisions, and analyze scanner data to tailor special offers and manage inventory. But the truth is, there are no quick fixes. In the course of his extensive research on dozens of retailers, Leonard Berry found that the best companies create value for their customers in five interlocking ways. Whether you're running a physical store, a catalog business, an e-commerce site, or a combination of the three, you have to offer your customers superior solutions to their needs, treat them with respect, and connect with them on an emotional level. You also have to set prices fairly and make it easy for people to find what they need, pay for it quickly, and then move on. None of these pillars is new, and each sounds exceedingly simple, but don't be fooled--implementing these axioms in the real world is surprisingly difficult. The author illustrates how some retailers have built successful operations by attending to these commonsense ways of dealing with their customers and how others have failed to do so.

Two-year-old start-up Color Kinetics has developed unique colored lighting technology using digitally controlled LEDs, and has developed that technology into a successful line of products for its first targeted market of "retailtainment." Now in November 1999, the management team is evaluating how to best extend this success into other markets and/or strategic initiatives and achieve the growth it has targeted internally and with investors.

Supplements the (A) case.

Since the late 1980s, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company has maintained a strong position in the nonstandard auto-insurance market (auto insurance for high-risk drivers). Progressive's goals in the 1990s are to expand its insurance coverage to include standard and preferred customers (drivers with clean driving records and no accidents). The company never advertised before 1994; as a result, consumer awareness has been very low. Progressive faces strong competition in a varied insurance industry. Companies like Allstate, the nation's largest underwriter of nonstandard auto insurance, and State Farm, with 21.1% total market share, present a challenge to Progressive as the company strives to make its products available to all drivers. The case focuses on building the company's brand through advertising and enhancing product differentiation through technology.

Among marketing mix variables, price alone directly affects a firm's revenue. The advent of a new medium for buyer-seller interaction, the Internet, is changing the issue of price for both customers and suppliers in an unprecedented way. On the one hand, there are Internet dynamics that flatten the customer value pyramid (defined by the value of the customer to the firm) because of technology that facilitates customer search, customer control over transactions, the provision of means by which the customer can make rather than take the price, a return to one-on-one negotiation, and commoditization of markets. Countervailing dynamics of the Internet enable the firm in some instances to differentiate pricing all the time, to create customer switching barriers, to "de-menu" pricing, to differentiate on other dimensions of the purchase decision, and to reduce transactions costs. A conceptual model is proposed for identifying Internet-based pricing dynamics and market forms according to the relative strengths of buyer and seller. These dynamics suggest that pricing decisions can be as creative as those made about the development of new products and services or advertising campaigns. Indeed, pricing may be the last frontier for marketing creativity. In the hands of the wise, the Internet might be the digital wagon that carries pricing pioneers to the edge of the digital frontier.

While business-to-consumer e-commerce (B2C) has garnered the most public attention of any online business sector, business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce is proving to account for a much larger slice of the economic pie. A significant portion of B2B e-commerce transactions will occur through online marketplaces called B2B exchanges. The objective of this technical note is to provide an understanding of these exchanges, including their organizational and revenue models.

There is a growing awareness among corporations that the quality of the customer experience they provide directly affects their bottom line. Many are turning to high-flying software maker Siebel Systems for help in managing those relationships. The young company holds a leadership position in an explosive market--enterprise application software. But customer satisfaction, not dot-com chic, is foremost on the mind of Siebel Systems' founder, chairman, and CEO, Tom Siebel. The buttoned-down Siebel rejects the freewheeling management style and culture that characterize many Silicon Valley companies. As the former CEO of Gain Technology and a former executive at Oracle, Siebel believes in putting customers ahead of technology, discipline ahead of inspiration. In this interview, conducted at the company's San Mateo, California, headquarters, Siebel describes how this obsessive focus on customer satisfaction has been the driving force behind the company's success. He talks about how the organization remains true to its core values: a deep commitment to providing customer satisfaction; responsible fiscal practices that have created a cash-positive business amid today's cash-negative dot-coms; and general professionalism. Siebel Systems rejects the concept of going to war with rivals; instead, the CEO says, the company has forged an ecosystem of partnerships that allows it to support and integrate its own systems with other companies' software products and ultimately ease the customer's software installations. Indeed, Siebel says, the CEO's most important job is to understand what customers need and deliver that.

Dell Computer describes the Dell business model and its adaptation to the Web in detail. This second case provides an update through March 2001 and contains a summary of some of the company's more important events since the first case was written.

Merrill Lynch, a full-service brokerage firm with $1.5 trillion in client assets, is under attack from both discount and electronic brokerage firms. It responds with Integrated Choice, a suite of products designed to capture clients, from the do-it-yourself investor who doesn't want to use a broker to clients who want to rely completely on a broker. The strategy is high risk and requires a sea change in the company. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Since 1995, Nortel Networks' Optical Networks (ON) division has been incorporating customer satisfaction and loyalty measures into its business practices to increase customer value. Over the years, key process owners in various parts of the organization have become accustomed to receiving such information in the format with which they are familiar. Recent initiatives by the Customer Value Measurement (CVM) team have shown that the current methodology does not provide all the insights required to achieve the full potential of customer value measurement. The CVM team now needs to present Nortel's senior management with the optimal combination of the many choices for soliciting customer perceptions that would make the best use of available resources, minimize the intrusion on customers' time, and add value for the business and customers alike.