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CenturyPly India Limited (CPIL), a large wood panel products company with a supply network spread across India, had four main product lines, including laminates. In April 2020, the company's laminates range was a growth focus for management on account of its profitability and expected growth. Despite the availability of capacity, good demand, a range of designs, and inventory at the distribution centres, CPIL's order fill rates were less than satisfactory. The management team decided to look at its supply chain and identify solutions that could help. Based on the available data on sales, inventory, and lost sales, the management team needed to identify crucial insights that would help them take the best decisions. One important question was, How could the company adjust its current make-to-order supply chain to ensure it could meet order demands in a timely fashion and avoid losing potential sales?

In November 2023, top of mind for Kristen Siemen, chief sustainability officer at General Motors (GM), was how to increase consumer adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). After committing to be carbon neutral by 2040, the automotive giant has its work cut out for it: while EV purchases increased to 14% in 2022, consumer concerns, such as range anxiety and cost sensitivity, are limiting adoption. Kristen Siemen must consider how the marketing, sustainability, and communication teams should continue to work collaboratively to address this slowdown in market penetration and how to optimally position GM to reach its goal of carbon neutrality.

Three payoffs stand out in the use of AI in marketing: increased sales productivity, increased customer satisfaction, and lower marketing overhead costs. That’s according to data from The CMO Survey of U.S. marketing leaders. The amount gained depends on how long companies have been using the tools, their digital transformation stage, and their level of experimentation. The most common uses of AI (content personalization and creation) do not have the biggest payoffs.

Bryan Gilvesy, CEO of ALUS, must create a proposal to spend ALUS' $100,000 marketing budget for their brand "New Acre Project". The brand had experienced good growth in previous years, but sales had stagnated for the past two, creating concerns about the survival of New Acre Project. Gilvesy must invigorate growth and reach sales of $6 million by choosing a target market, whether he should offer carbon credits or not, and at what price. He also had to choose a promotional channel and the messaging New Acre Project would use going forward.

BoAt Lifestyle (boAt), a digital-first consumer products company founded in New Delhi, India, by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta in 2014, had launched its first products (wired earphones and headphones) two years after a thorough market study. Over time, the company had entered various high-growth consumer lifestyle–focused product categories, offering its products online at affordable prices. It then attempted to move into the offline market, adopting an omnichannel strategy to engage with a larger customer base and increase its profitability. Despite tough competition from similar brands, it managed to build a reputation among its customers. However, customers and investors were less than happy with its strategy to procure most of its products from China and questioned the high valuation in its initial public offering. To add to the company’s woes, sales its own online and offline channels were not satisfactory. At the end of January 2022, the company was facing an important question: What should boAt do to maintain its growth momentum, appease investor’s patriotic sentiments, and expand sales from its own channels? Which of these challenges should be its priority in the short-run?

Five years after the debut of his Netflix series - and on the eve of the launch of its sequel - fashion designer Santiago Navarro finds himself and his brand, Artemis, at a critical juncture. Unless he develops a sustainable growth strategy for the business, Artemis is in danger of languishing as an Argentinian niche brand, lacking economies of scale and scope. The case outlines several potential paths for growth in terms of target audiences, price points and product mixes, with each strategic alternative requiring a different business model and all requiring the brand to be more clearly defined and codified.

In June 2023, the director of corporate communication and digital services for Khalil Fattal et Fils SAL (a subsidiary of Fattal Group) was tasked with presenting a strategy for the company’s online activities. The family business was a fourth-generation diversified distributor of a large variety of products and many other items by well-known brands headquartered near Beirut, Lebanon. The director had started to explore online sales platforms after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, which was soon followed by a major political and economic crisis in Lebanon. The director was wondering which of two potential strategies she should present to the board of directors. She could recommend a B2C strategy to strengthen the company’s retail business or a B2B strategy to avoid potential conflicts among the company’s various independent retailers. The director had to make a decision before the next board meeting.

In June 2023, the director of corporate communication and digital services for Khalil Fattal et Fils SAL (a subsidiary of Fattal Group) was tasked with presenting a strategy for the company's online activities. The family business was a fourth-generation diversified distributor of a large variety of products and many other items by well-known brands headquartered near Beirut, Lebanon. The director had started to explore online sales platforms after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, which was soon followed by a major political and economic crisis in Lebanon. The director was wondering which of two potential strategies she should present to the board of directors. She could recommend a B2C strategy to strengthen the company's retail business or a B2B strategy to avoid potential conflicts among the company's various independent retailers. The director had to make a decision before the next board meeting.

On July 10, 2023, a Snow Valley Resorts co-owner was reviewing his organization’s first quarter financials for fiscal year 2022–23. Snow Valley Resorts was founded in 1993 in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, when the first of the group’s four resorts, Snow Valley Resorts Manali, was built among the Himalayan mountain range with panoramic views and pleasant weather. The co-owner had set a goal to increase the organization’s revenue growth rate to nearly twice the previous year’s rate, but he realized several issues had to be addressed first. Technology and operations at the four resorts needed to be integrated. Communications and transactions had to be smoothened. Actions had to be taken to address various issues raised in the customer feedback. Service quality had to be improved at each of the four resorts. Overall, the ripples of customer complaints had to be converted into guest satisfaction by taking appropriate measures.

The case centres on the pricing and business model challenges facing Peloton Interactive Inc.’s new CEO, Barry McCarthy. With the decline in demand post-pandemic, McCarthy must make pricing and product decisions that balance revenue, profitability, and changing consumer dynamics. The case prompts students to assess McCarthy's options through a behavioural lens, considering the importance of behavioural biases in consumer decision-making and the alignment of the business model and marketing efforts with the target consumer’s decision-making process.

This exercise is designed to take students through the steps of creating a project scope document for a course project. The students have the opportunity to practice defining a project scope using a scenario with Friendship Coffee. The project scope document is often used in the workplace, and defines the project requirements, deliverables, and process at the onset of the project. It sets the project up for success and ensures all team members understand the important milestones and due dates, as well as the final deliverable.

In October 2022, Licious, the market leader in India’s meat industry, launched its new brand UnCrave in the plant-based meat market segment. The launch was aligned with the company’s portfolio diversification strategy, leveraging its strong core brand equity. Unlike typical plant-meat brands that sold to vegan and vegetarian customers, Licious wanted to offer UnCrave to its core meat-consuming customers as an occasional alternative to meat options. However, several new competitors soon entered the market, while some people questioned the health benefits of plant-based meat. Was it a mistake for Licious to enter the plant-based industry at a time when a sizable portion of the organized meat business was still unexplored. Was the consumer segment Licious had targeted the right choice? Was it a good decision to increase the company’s product mix by including plant-based meat?

Hopeworks Camden (Hopeworks), a small non-profit organization based in Camden, New Jersey, with a $4.7 million annual budget in 2022, was looking ahead to 2024. It was mid-July 2023, and the board of directors tasked Don Rhoton, Hopeworks’ chief executive officer, and Onome Pela-Emore, their chief operating officer, to develop an expansion plan that is financially viable and increases their geographic reach, beginning as early as the second quarter 2024. Rhoton and Pela-Emore believed in their mission and knew that to grow they would need to increase in spatial geography, obtain new business opportunities, increase recruitment and training, and be competitive in the marketplace. They also knew that to make this all happen they would have to question how they market, determine who they would market to, and how the market will recognize them as a competitor.

Avocados from Mexico (AFM) is a marketing organization that exists to 1) build brand equity for avocados exported from Mexico to the United States and 2) increase category consumption. In preparing for 2022, after several years of successful advertising campaigns, the AFM decided to develop its next omnichannel strategy. A critical part of this decision was whether the company should continue to tout its product in Super Bowl advertisements. Although the organization had advertised in the Super Bowl from 2015 through 2020 as a media channel, the Super Bowl was growing in expense. Moreover, in 2021, AFM did not advertise in the Super Bowl yet achieved considerable success, calling into question the importance of Super Bowl advertising's role in the brand's omnichannel strategy.

In October 2022, Licious, the market leader in India's meat industry, launched its new brand UnCrave in the plant-based meat market segment. The launch was aligned with the company's portfolio diversification strategy, leveraging its strong core brand equity. Unlike typical plant-meat brands that sold to vegan and vegetarian customers, Licious wanted to offer UnCrave to its core meat-consuming customers as an occasional alternative to meat options. However, several new competitors soon entered the market, while some people questioned the health benefits of plant-based meat. Was it a mistake for Licious to enter the plant-based industry at a time when a sizable portion of the organized meat business was still unexplored. Was the consumer segment Licious had targeted the right choice? Was it a good decision to increase the company's product mix by including plant-based meat?

This case presents the branding challenge for Junior Achievement (JA) Worldwide, a very large and impactful social impact organization with limiting brand awareness. Reaching over 10 million students in over 100 countries, there is a great story to be told. The case provides students with the opportunity to lean in on a high impact branding challenge.

In the summer of 2023, Amperity management was facing a critical decision on its future direction. Given the dramatic changes occurring within the digital advertising ecosystem, as concerns over consumer privacy placed limits on the ability to engage in third-party tracking, Amperity had to decide whether to pivot and develop a dedicated solution for advertisers based on first-party data. Such a pivot would require shifting resources from improving the company's core product, the customer data platform (CDP), which helped firms unify all their data sources and properly identify customers; as well as take targeted marketing actions mainly on their existing customers (i.e., development and retention efforts). A shift to serve digital advertising players not only had far reaching product development implications, but also strategic and go-to-market consequences. In particular, Amperity was considered a leader in the CDP category and a pivot could risk that position. Furthermore, the move would likely require changing the company's communications approach-who its salesforce targeted and how-and could imply partnering with digital ad agencies as well as ad platforms, like Meta and Google Ads. The monetization structure going forward also required careful consideration. Specifically, to date Amperity's pricing was contracted upfront and largely based on the number of customer profiles its CDP was expected to identify and the amount of data to be ingested. However, in the paid advertising domain, players typically took a percentage cut of the overall campaign spend. Not lost on Amperity co-founder and CTO Derek Slager's mind was that many clients, existing and prospective, were looking for concrete ways to leverage generative AI tools to improve their customer relationship management efforts.

Sheng Sheng F&B Industries Pte Ltd (SSFB) was set up in 1985 as a wholesaler. Based in Singapore, it produced and distributed food and beverage products. At the start of the 21st century, SSFB ventured into sweet spreads with their new brand, Golden Light. When the COVID-19 pandemic subsided, SSFB renewed efforts for Golden Light in a new direction - premium sweet spreads. Business Development Manager, Wayne Chua, was cognizant of the changed global and local market conditions and sentiments. Within Singapore, SSFB faced a number of challenges such as competition against new and established brands - both foreign and local, and increasing consumer desire for more healthy options and reduced sugar consumption. Furthermore, as a wholesaler with no online or physical retail presence, it was dependent on retailers such as supermarkets as well as smaller shops and e-commerce outlets to distribute its products. The existing supermarket landscape was dominated by NTUC FairPrice, which had its own house-branded sweet spreads. In the online arena, grocery apps and search engines' algorithms favoured established brands over small, homegrown labels like Golden Light. This case can support discussion topics like impact of operating environment, market disruption, changing consumer behavior, product development and channel strategies.

Spreadsheet supplement for case W36239

Amid rising online content, modern consumers want a personalized online shopping experience and to be presented with products, services, and deals that are relevant and specific to them. Anil Bains launched Attryb to create a hyper-personalization stack to deliver a meaningful experience to each website user. Using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistical models, Attryb's predictive intelligence model could assess thousands of customer signals to create meaningful segments that increased acquisition, engagement, and sales for online sellers. However, small and medium companies establishing direct-to-consumer websites often lacked strong technological capabilities and were preoccupied with starting their businesses. How could Attryb convince these prospective clients about the economic benefits of its solution and communicate the value without being overly technical?