個案總覽

In May 2021, the founder of Yardstick Educational Initiatives Private Limited, a provider of experiential learning programs in India and the United Arab Emirates, was facing various business challenges. The company was started in India in 2008 but had been increasingly focused on the more profitable Middle East market since 2012. Attempting to stay current with technology advancements in educational products, it made considerable investments to develop new products and enhance its flagship learning product, the Yardstick Experiential Learning Program. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 caused a major setback for the company. Cash flow issues and reduced working capital were forcing the founder to decide which client segment to continue serving and which products to support. With only three months left in the peak sales season before the next academic year, the founder had to make important decisions.

In August 2021, uTrade Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (uTrade) was considering various options for its future. The financial technologies (fintech) company was founded in 2011 and based in Mohali, India. By 2021, uTrade had become a trusted state-of-the-art technology solutions provider to India’s major stockbrokerage firms. However, the changing market landscape, declining brokerage margins, and market disruption by discount brokers were creating challenges for uTrade’s business model, forcing the company to consider alternative growth strategies that were more aligned with the new market requirements. Although vertical integration could help uTrade capture a larger share of the value chain, it could also create a potential conflict of interest with existing clients. Horizontal expansion through a new banking, insurance, or digital payment venture could also have benefits and potential challenges in terms of resource deployment and compatibility with the existing business model. Another issue was a push from uTrade stakeholders to sell the company and enter another segment of the fintech industry. The founder had to make a decision.

The dematerialization and servitization of products being brought about by the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) is making it imperative for platform businesses to look at consumers and suppliers from a lifetime value perspective. This technical note compares two fundamental strategic marketing perspectives: the push strategy and the pull strategy, using simple systems-dynamics and agent-based models. The models, developed using Vensim and NetLogo software, illustrate the efficacies of push and pull marketing strategies at the individual customer level. Specifically, they demonstrate the possibilities of market failure due to excessive pushing and consumer community formation.

Supplement for product W25455.

As one of the largest banks in Hong Kong and worldwide, HSBC faced unprecedented challenges from mobile payment platforms (e.g., Alipay and WeChat Pay). In response, HSBC quickly launched its first e-wallet PayMe, a fee-free, user-friendly mobile app that targeted people and businesses in Hong Kong. Within five years of launch, PayMe had 2.6 million users in Hong Kong. The success of PayMe is attributed to its user-friendly design and its initial targeting of the peer-to-peer (P2P) market. Unlike its competitors, PayMe focused on the P2P market by solving consumers' difficulty in transferring money among friends without cash or the many steps of online transfer. As the payment between friends naturally had a social network effect, PayMe's customer base grew exponentially with only minimum marketing expenses. However, when expanding to the fee-charging P2M market, PayMe experienced more challenges as merchants were reluctant to pay for an additional payment method. With 2.6 million users and their HKD8mn in the e-wallet, PayMe's executives were exploring ways to trigger a virtuous cycle in the two-sided market, i.e., P2P and P2M markets. How can PayMe expand its customer base while becoming a profitable payment platform?

This case provides an overview of "Franz for Life," an advertising campaign that independent advertising agency Mekansim created and executed to revitalize the brand image of Franzia, a low-cost boxed wine. For several years, Franzia's popularity declined among Millennial consumers, many of whom abandoned the brand for higher-priced wines as they grew older. In 2018, executives at The Wine Group (TWG), Franzia's parent company, recruited Mekanism to change younger audiences' perception of the brand. Mekanism developed the "Franz for Life" campaign based on the insight that Franzia was a brand meant to be enjoyed with friends throughout all stages of the post-college journey. In 2020, TWG decided to renew its relationship with Mekanism and launch "Franz for Life 2.0," a second stage of the campaign that would build on the original campaign's momentum, as well as focus on Generation Z consumers. The case describes how Mekanism developed the 1.0 campaign's creative strategy, media budget allocation, influencer marketing efforts, and brand merchandising. At the conclusion of the case, the TWG team must respond to storyboards that Mekanism pitched to inform the creative direction for Franz for Life 2.0. Which, if any, of the storyboard represents the best path forward for Franzia? Should TWG executives request Mekanism to create additional options? Depending on the creative direction ultimately selected, how should Mekanism propose to allocate the 2.0 marketing budget across media options? More broadly, could Mekanism and the "Franz for Life" campaign help Franzia become an iconic brand?

This case reveals the events that took place after the conclusion of the case "Thinking Outside the Wine Box (A): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign." After reviewing Mekanism's pitches for the Franz for Life 2.0 campaign, TWG executives felt that the proposed storyboards were not the right direction for the campaign, and requested that Mekanism develop a second round of storyboards. At the conclusion of the (B) case, TWG leaders must decide whether to choose one of the new storyboard sets, revisit one of the previous ideas, or request yet another iteration of the pitch.

This case reveals the events that took place after the conclusion of the cases "Thinking Outside the Wine Box (A-B): Mekanism and the Franz for Life Campaign." After selecting a creative direction for the Franz for Life 2.0 campaign, independent advertising agency Mekanism must decide the campaign's influencer marketing strategy as part of the media plan. Mekanism Chief Social Officer Brendan Gahan must review a proposed roster of social media influencers and decide which are likely to be the best ambassadors for the Franzia brand. Gahan also needs to decide how many influencers to contract, how much to pay them, how many pieces of content to commission, and what guidelines to provide.

"Borusan Cat is an international distributor of Caterpillar heavy machines. In 2021, it had been three years since Ozgur Gunaydin (CEO) and Esra Durgun (Director of Strategy, Digitization, and Innovation) started working on Muneccim, the company's predictive AI tool. While the prediction accuracy of the tool was on the rise, the sales team remained resistant to incorporating it into their sales approach. Gunaydin and Durgun knew that, to get the most out of Borusan Cat's AI technology and help its customers adopt Muneccim's predictions, a shift in employee mindset was essential. Growing impatient with the speed at which middle management was integrating Muneccim into their processes, they began weighing options for effecting cultural change. Should they continue to employ soft tactics to get buy-in from sales reps or had the time for that passed? Would it perhaps be better to add Muneccim-based sales into the metrics for calculating bonus payments? Durgun and Gunaydin knew that, without proper implementation, even the best technology would not create much value and time was of the essence if they aimed to stay ahead of the competition.

Razorpay, a payments solution providing company in India, has recently achieved Unicorn status. They had entered the payments industry with the goal of democratising digital payments. However, they diversified their services and started offering capital support and neo-banking services to their customers. Demonetization had accelerated digital payments adoption in India and COVID-19 gave a fresh boost to the digital payments. With this, Razorpay's revenue had grown 3X in Financial Year (FY) 21 and were expected to increase by 2X in FY 22. They were evaluating their approach as they were planning to expand into other markets. The case revolves around the salesforce management and product development processes followed by Razorpay. The crux of the case is how a payments company diversifies its business and changes its organisational structure and processes as it evolves, and how they can keep growing going forward.

In 2021, the chief executive officer of Cocoa Luxury SA moved back to Switzerland and founded his premium chocolate brand, SwissOne, after spending two decades in Australia manufacturing confectionery products. Growing up in Bern, Switzerland—the location of the original Toblerone factory—had inspired his unique chocolate recipe and the first three chocolate bars he intended to sell. In January 2022, once he had finished his prototypes, to finalize his marketing plan, the CEO had to consider three questions: First, what was his overall marketing strategy? Second, what was the Swiss business environment like, and how competitive was the Swiss chocolate industry? And third, how could he best position his SwissOne brand, and what should the marketing mix look like?

In 2021, the chief executive officer of Cocoa Luxury SA moved back to Switzerland and founded his premium chocolate brand, SwissOne, after spending two decades in Australia manufacturing confectionery products. Growing up in Bern, Switzerland-the location of the original Toblerone factory-had inspired his unique chocolate recipe and the first three chocolate bars he intended to sell. In January 2022, once he had finished his prototypes, to finalize his marketing plan, the CEO had to consider three questions: First, what was his overall marketing strategy? Second, what was the Swiss business environment like, and how competitive was the Swiss chocolate industry? And third, how could he best position his SwissOne brand, and what should the marketing mix look like?

New opportunities, challenges, and decisions arose for a pub owner and his business partners when celebrity Halle Berry raved on social media about the hot wings served at the pub. Berry's post sparked an unprecedented 28-day sellout and a firestorm of news coverage that kept the business going at a time when the restaurant industry was suffering from government-imposed restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pub owner and his partners wonder whether to seize momentum and enter the fiercely competitive packaged goods industry, bottling and selling their signature wing sauces.

John Henry and Carey Anne Nadeau, co-founders and co-CEOs of LOOP, an insurtech startup based in Austin, Texas, were on a mission to modernize the archaic $250 billion automobile insurance market. They sought to create equitably priced insurance by eliminating pricing factors that disproportionally affected people of color, such as credit score, income, and education. The company used sophisticated AI algorithms to analyze which roads were more prone to accidents and employed proprietary technology to track driving behavior. Moreover, the founders believed in providing a sense of community and in building a mission-driven brand that people loved, thereby altering the antagonist and distant relationship that existed between an insurance company and its customers. By the September 2021 Texas launch, the company had developed a waitlist of over 30,000 people. In March 2022, as the first policy term expired, the co-founders had to figure out which policyholders to renew and at what price to renew them. They also wondered if they could motivate drivers to become safer on the roads by investing in rewards and gamification. Going forward, by the end of 2022 Loop had plans to enter nine additional states with its revolutionary car insurance model, and contemplated removing several other pricing criteria that could be discriminatory, while incorporating metrics that might provide discounts to customers. Longer-term, the company needed to decide which strategic direction to pursue-whether to expand their fledgling company vertically by adding complementary insurance lines, like homeowners insurance, or expand horizontally to other financial services, like auto lending, that were plagued by structural biases against minorities. Given the recent lackluster performance of several high-profile insurtechs, Henry and Nadeau knew that, to achieve their goal of unseating the entrenched incumbents, they had to get these decisions right.

Recent years had witnessed the social phenomenon of the rise of Internet brands. Looking at Internet fitness unicorn brand Keep’s brand commercialization process, Keep demonstrated the path of creation, product adjustment and upgrade, and brand extension logic of Internet app brands. Keep started as a single-tool app providing exercise content and data records, and gradually developed into a one-stop fitness and exercise platform by actively adjusting its brand goal, surpassing similar products to become the largest social platform for exercise in China. Keep then went through a bottleneck period where it had huge traffic but could not monetize it. Finally, Keep pursued commercialization, transforming into a comprehensive ecological fitness chain. Now, in April 2021, how would Keep respond to the competition and continue its strategic vision of providing a fitness ecosystem? Should its strategic focus continue to shift from online to offline? What should Keep’s next steps be?

Hisense Group Co. Ltd. (Hisense) was a leading manufacturing enterprise in the Chinese household appliance industry. In 2010, Hisense began to lay out its online channels. At that time, the same products had different prices in different channels, which caused fierce channel conflicts. To solve this problem, Hisense segmented online and off-line products and took a series of actions to help off-line channels improve efficiency and reduce prices. Therefore, Hisense successfully changed from having different prices for the same products to having different prices for different products. However, in early 2020 the new model was challenged again, and channel conflicts soon reappeared. How would Hisense break the recurring channel conflict this time?

Benny Chung-Ying Zee was a professor at a prestigious university in Hong Kong and founder of Health View Bioanalytic Limited (Health View). Health View offered fast, inexpensive, non-invasive assessments of the risk of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease by using artificial intelligence and automatic retinal image analysis (ARIA) of pictures of patients’ retinas using fundus cameras. While Health View was breaking even, Zee realized that it was not yet a success. Thus, Zee was considering how to scale up the company to realize the impact of its technology. Zee had to assess the current business model—its value proposition, target market, sales channels, and strategic partners—and determine how he could scale up and redirect Health View.

Recent years had witnessed the social phenomenon of the rise of Internet brands. Looking at Internet fitness unicorn brand Keep's brand commercialization process, Keep demonstrated the path of creation, product adjustment and upgrade, and brand extension logic of Internet app brands. Keep started as a single-tool app providing exercise content and data records, and gradually developed into a one-stop fitness and exercise platform by actively adjusting its brand goal, surpassing similar products to become the largest social platform for exercise in China. Keep then went through a bottleneck period where it had huge traffic but could not monetize it. Finally, Keep pursued commercialization, transforming into a comprehensive ecological fitness chain. Now, in April 2021, how would Keep respond to the competition and continue its strategic vision of providing a fitness ecosystem? Should its strategic focus continue to shift from online to offline? What should Keep's next steps be?

Hisense Group Co. Ltd. (Hisense) was a leading manufacturing enterprise in the Chinese household appliance industry. In 2010, Hisense began to lay out its online channels. At that time, the same products had different prices in different channels, which caused fierce channel conflicts. To solve this problem, Hisense segmented online and off-line products and took a series of actions to help off-line channels improve efficiency and reduce prices. Therefore, Hisense successfully changed from having different prices for the same products to having different prices for different products. However, in early 2020 the new model was challenged again, and channel conflicts soon reappeared. How would Hisense break the recurring channel conflict this time?

Social media influencers have been at the peak of pop culture for the past few years, everyday people suddenly becoming celebrities and influencers for Millennials and Generation Z. Calling themselves creators, influencers now exist in every industry and have widespread, highly engaged followings; many companies are eager to work with them to build their brands. This text offers an overview of influencer marketing, focusing on collaboration between organizations and influencers. Brand managers, agency professionals, new influencers, and students will particularly benefit from this book, gaining practical advice and learning from examples in areas such as the Creator Economy, typology of influencers, and considerations for campaign design. A valuable introduction to the influencer marketing ecosystem and the influencer marketing relationships framework, Celebrity 2.0 shows how content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing can effectively come together. Chapter 1 explores how marketing has shifted over time, moving from traditional advertising to digital advertising. Reasons for this shift are discussed, including the need to move from "push" to "pull" strategies, the explosion of social media platforms, and the fact that people trust people more than they do organizations. The influencer marketing relationship framework is introduced, which shows how content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing can converge and create changes in consumer behavior. Content marketing focuses on the creation and distribution of content in order to gain and retain a specific audience; native advertising is another way of distributing content, mainly purchasing ad space; influencer marketing uses social media influencers as brand advocates-influencers who fit the target audience will probably be the most effective. Carefully integrating these three types of marketing can yield impressive results.