個案總覽

Provides the context and hard copy material to accompany a video sales presentation. Participants are asked to develop criteria for evaluating a sales presentation and then to apply the criteria to the video presentation.

Paula Ellis, assistant to the publisher, believes an Internet edition of South Carolina's largest newspaper, The State, is critical to the future of the $90 million State-Record Co., a subsidiary of Knight-Ridder, Inc. Ellis supported the creation of an experimental electronic edition covering the Susan Smith murder trial. The experimental edition has evolved into a daily electronic edition called The CyberState. However, lack of advertiser interest and recent financial pressures from increasing newsprint costs have generated internal pressure to scale back or eliminate The CyberState. Ellis must determine the appropriate level of funding and establish various performance goals for fiscal year 1996.

The management of three U.S. multinationals have to decide whether to enter the Vietnam market and, if so, how.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 597020.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 597009.

The country manager of Gillette Indonesia is reviewing his 1996 marketing plan and considering whether the pace of market development and mix of product sales can be impacted by the level and type of Gillette expenditures in the market.

Managers have recently begun to think of good marketing as good conversation, as a process of drawing customers into progressively more satisfying relationships with a company. And just as the art of conversation follows two steps--first striking up a conversation with a likely partner and then maintaining the flow--so the new marketing naturally divides itself into the work of customer acquisition and the work of customer retention. But how can managers determine the optimal balance between spending on acquisition and spending on retention? The authors use decision calculus to approach the large, complex problem through several smaller, more manageable questions on the same topic.

No matter how much inventory a wholesaler carries, when a customer places a rush order, the essential item is often out of stock. No matter how many services a dealer provides, what a customer needs is often one that the dealer has never supplied. And no matter how hard a distributor tries to beef up its capabilities, when a customer has an emergency, the distributor often lacks the skills to respond. A number of companies are experimenting with ways to make their distribution channels more flexible and responsive. They have realized that by sharing resources in novel ways, they can take advantage of opportunities that they could not exploit alone. Business dynamics and emerging technologies make this new approach both essential and feasible.

ETrade pioneered the electronic deep-discount brokerage business and experienced phenomenal growth by making extensive use of technology to achieve significant cost advantages over traditional firms. ETrade's strategy has been to pass these cost savings from automation on to its customers as it amortized its fixed costs over a greater number of accounts. By 1996, a flood of new competitors are establishing Internet sites and ETrade has been dethroned as the price leader. While some executives within ETrade believe they should continue to lower prices and go head-to-head with eBroker, others believe the company faces a larger challenge from Charles Schwab's entry into the market. Defending against Schwab would require focusing resources on enhancing its product/service offering, which might jeopardize ETrade's low-cost position. ETrade must decide where it can create a profitable and sustainable position along the price/quality (service) trade-off.

Describes the television advertising and presents examples of the comparable print ads, then documents new measurement tools and presents the results of key surveys that address audience awareness. Also includes other relevant activities to support Siemens USA's corporate identity. These include umbrella activities, such as a presence in Atlanta for the Summer Olympics, joint trade activities, work with colleagues in Munich to support major projects in China, and the introduction of a Web page.

The chief financial officer of Sunshine Juice Company needs to finalize the company's marketing strategy for the upcoming year. Initial results for the launch of the company's product, a four-litre bag-in-a-box orange juice product, had been favourable. The case touches on all aspects of developing a marketing strategy, with emphasis on price setting and distribution.

SaleSoft, a start-up firm, markets Comprehensive Sales Automation Solutions (CSAS) that automate a firm's sales, marketing, and service functions. Even though the product has received very favorable responses from prospects, product complexity and a long buying cycle have made it difficult for the firm to convert interest into sales orders. SaleSoft now has an opportunity to sell a part of the total CSAS solution as a stand-alone product. This "Trojan Horse" (TH) product offers an easy way for the firm to enter new customer accounts, gain quick sales, and generate much needed revenues. However, it could potentially distract the firm from its primary objective and cannibalize CSAS sales. SaleSoft needs to decide whether to continue selling CSAS or launch TH. And, the firm needs to develop a detailed marketing strategy to implement this decision.

David Martin, chief operating officer of Lexington Labs, was apprehensive about the upcoming meeting with his senior sales executives. Just a few years earlier, when the pharmaceutical company enjoyed extraordinary success, gatherings with the sales force had seemed like celebrations. But in the past 18 months, sales had begun to fall, as had earnings. And most of the top sales personnel had begun to focus on their own businesses as major changes swept through the health care industry. Martin sensed that the solution was a system to facilitate the flow of knowledge across borders. Sales executives needed to share vital information about products, customers, competitors, and selling techniques. But what kind of system would work best? Unfortunately, Martin's apprehensions were justified. The meeting only emphasized how fragmented the company had become. How can Martin get Lexington to function as one global company? In 96302 and 96302Z, Louise Goeser, Thomas H. Davenport, Barry Harrington, George Goldsmith, and G. Kelly O'Dea offer advice on this fictional case study.

David Martin, chief operating officer of Lexington Labs, was apprehensive about the upcoming meeting with his senior sales executives. Just a few years earlier, when the pharmaceutical company enjoyed extraordinary success, gatherings with the sales force had seemed like celebrations. But in the past 18 months, sales had begun to fall, as had earnings. And most of the top sales personnel had begun to focus on their own businesses as major changes swept through the health care industry. Martin sensed that the solution was a system to facilitate the flow of knowledge across borders. Sales executives needed to share vital information about products, customers, competitors, and selling techniques. But what kind of system would work best? Unfortunately, Martin's apprehensions were justified. The meeting only emphasized how fragmented the company had become. How can Martin get Lexington to function as one global company? In 96302 and 96302Z, Louise Goeser, Thomas H. Davenport, Barry Harrington, George Goldsmith, and G. Kelly O'Dea offer advice on this fictional case study.

David Martin, chief operating officer of Lexington Labs, was apprehensive about the upcoming meeting with his senior sales executives. Just a few years earlier, when the pharmaceutical company enjoyed extraordinary success, gatherings with the sales force had seemed like celebrations. But in the past 18 months, sales had begun to fall, as had earnings. And most of the top sales personnel had begun to focus on their own businesses as major changes swept through the health care industry. Martin sensed that the solution was a system to facilitate the flow of knowledge across borders. Sales executives needed to share vital information about products, customers, competitors, and selling techniques. But what kind of system would work best? Unfortunately, Martin's apprehensions were justified. The meeting only emphasized how fragmented the company had become. How can Martin get Lexington to function as one global company? In 96302 and 96302Z, Louise Goeser, Thomas H. Davenport, Barry Harrington, George Goldsmith, and G. Kelly O'Dea offer advice on this fictional case study.

A successful strategy for selling your products or services depends on your ability to get into the minds of your targeted customers. But sometimes the customers themselves do not know what is in their minds. A simple tool called the ACE (Attribute Categorization and Evaluation) Matrix can help managers understand customers' behavior and bring hidden product attributes to the surface. It helps companies see that a product may have different salient attributes for different customer segments. The matrix gives companies an iterative process for validating assumptions about product attributes and for monitoring changes that occur because of competition.

In spite of top-notch efforts, many social-change initiatives fail. What goes wrong? How can the initiatives be presented more effectively? Analyzing the costs and benefits of the proposed change from the perspective of the targeted community can help marketers answer those questions. The authors present a framework to facilitate such an analysis and to help form effective marketing plans. When the proposed behavior change involves little cost to the targeted community and provides a significant personal benefit, conventional marketing methods--such as those used for marketing consumer goods--can be effective. When the proposed change involves a high cost, in terms of either money or some other measure (difficulty, for instance, in quitting smoking), the social marketer's job becomes harder. Social marketers face their greatest challenge in cases where the cost is high and the personal benefit is intangible.

Companies that compete effectively over the long run in technology-intensive fields exhibit an ability for both continuous (or incremental) innovations and discontinuous (or radical) innovations. The latter, which lead to the creation of entirely new businesses and product lines, pose a unique set of challenges for management. They typically require a long, investment-intensive process, marked by pervasive uncertainty, unpleasant surprises, and no guarantee of success. Conventional approaches to new product development, while appropriate for continuous innovation, are inappropriate and sometimes even detrimental when applied to the more discontinuous regime of innovations. For instance, the familiar admonition to be customer-driven is of little value when it is not at all clear who the customer is or will be, or when the product class itself does not yet exist. This article presents four discontinuous innovations--CAT scanners (by GE), optical fibers (by Corning), cellular phones (by Motorola), and NutraSweet (by Searle, now Monsanto)--which explore the process of developing discontinuous innovations and demonstrate how they are different from incremental innovation.

The case covers all major aspects of Benetton's successful corporate strategy and innovative business system from its creation till the present. It also provides a complete overview of Benetton's unique communication philosophy and the controversy generated by it, along with a wealth of independent market research data from many countries.

Reports the strategic choices made by Dewar's and briefly describes the implementation of the campaign from its launch in September 1993 through September 1995.