個案總覽

In November 2018, Dolce & Gabbana S.R.L. (D&G) faced a serious brand crisis following the release of three short videos on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as well as Sina Weibo in China to promote its first-ever fashion show in mainland China. The brand crisis was further exacerbated by derogatory comments alleged to have been made by the cofounder, Stefano Gabbana, on Instagram. The failure of D&G to take swift action to quell the controversy triggered by the videos had resulted in cancellation of the Shanghai catwalk event and a public relations disaster. This case summarises the reputational damage caused by the crisis and initial marketing efforts made by D&G to rebuild its image in China from the end of 2018 up to May 2019. It is the third case of a three-part case series and should be used in conjunction with Case A (D&G's Marketing Missteps in China (A): How to Balance Fashion Brand Strategy and Cultural Sensitivity?) and Case B (D&G's marketing missteps in china (B)-The Deepening crisis).

In November 2018, Five Guys, a fast-casual restaurant chain based in the United States, faced an important decision related to its future promotion strategy. Five Guys had started in 1986 as a small company with limited resources. The company had always avoided traditional advertising media, such as television, radio, print, and billboard advertisements. As a result of the company's success over the years, the founder and chief executive officer had a significantly larger promotional budget than ever before; he needed to develop a promotional strategy for the future. In particular, he needed to determine how to allocate the company's promotional budget. In which promotional media should he invest the company's promotional funds?

"Barcelona backs out of proposed LaLiga match in Miami." It is December 2018, and Daniel Sillman, chief executive officer of sports and entertainment company Relevent, is tasked with finding a way forward after a significant setback. Relevent had found success by convincing some of Europe's highest-profile soccer clubs to play pre-season matches in North America as part of its annual International Champions Cup (ICC), held during the summer months. Building on that success, Relevent is now seeking to bring at least one official LaLiga match to the U.S, each season-an effort that is a key pillar of Relevent's new, fifteen-year partnership with the Spanish soccer league, aimed at promoting the LaLiga brand in North America. However, the match that Relevent had selected to take place in Miami in January 2019, between FC Barcelona and Girona FC, had become a source of tension, drawing protests from the Spanish football federation, the Spanish players' association, and the president of worldwide governing body FIFA. Today, FC Barcelona's leadership team had announced the club would withdraw. Would Relevent find success in bringing a LaLiga match to the U.S.? And, more generally, did Relevent have the right approach to growing the LaLiga brand in North America?

The Indian environment has experienced pronounced changes with respect to snacking and fitness in the recent times, especially among the middle-aged consumers, who are experiencing the pleasures of Western lifestyles along with the pains of fitness-related issues. The radical changes in lifestyles of consumers have led to unhealthy eating habits and snacking is a natural fall out of such a scenario. Soulfull Smoothix is a brand that is making an attempt to revive the healthy habit by getting back to the goodness of ethnic grains that are the ingredients of this "on the go" drink. The major challenge of the brand is not just creating and nurturing the attitude of consumers in an environment that has a plethora of snacking choices; the brand's immediate task is to develop a sharp positioning plank for the brand .Positioning on health and fitness had become clichéd due to several competing propositions of a similar nature and enjoyable indulgence is the other extreme. Consumer psyche also seems to be fixated on "health or indulgent consumption" to the extent that one of the leading brands of biscuits has come out with the positioning of a trade-off between being healthy and tasting good. Soulfull Smoothix's options for positioning the brand indicate a dilemma full of tempting choices. Should the brand position itself as a new concept drink? Should it reposition the category of snacking? Should the brand get into a frontal attack on leading brands in the category based on unhealthy indulgence? Which category of snacking should the brand compete with respect to point of parity? Should the brand create a digital advertising trial for the sake of achieving awareness? Consumer behavior with its conceptual underpinnings are considered and the case exposes students to learning how consumer behavior can be applied to branding in a market like India that has an appealing combination of snacking choices full of branded titbits and ethnic delicacies.

This case allows instructors to lay out the challenges of providing universal access to safe drinking water in some developing and emerging countries-one of the current UN development goals. The challenge across developing countries is to find long-lasting and sustainable solutions, and to realize that present answers to the challenge may be a far cry from these criteria. The discussion aims to address the complex and multifaceted nature of water supply in developing countries, and to emphasize that many of the assumptions made in advanced economies may not apply. The aim is to search for the best (long-lasting and sustainable) solutions, admitting there is no silver bullet, even though some alternatives are clearly better than others.

Drums Food International Pvt. Ltd. (Drums Food) launched India's first Greek yogurt brand, Epigamia, in 2015. Experiencing initial success with Greek yogurt, Drums Food went on to add another unique offering, lactose-free artisanal curd, targeting consumers with lactose intolerance. With these launches, Drums Food was building a well-differentiated, healthy brand to successfully tap the value-added dairy products market. However, in 2018, the road ahead was not without hurdles. To succeed, Drums Food needed to change the consumer mindset to ensure constant patronage of Epigamia. It also needed to defend itself against competitors who could launch similar products at competitive price points, leveraging the scale of their existing dairy businesses. Could Drums Food sustain the brand and build strong brand equity, enough that it could extend the Epigamia brand to more categories?

Faced with the challenge of continuing to differentiate the Wellness Institute from traditional fitness facilities, the executive director at the non-profit organization was considering undertaking a thoughtful and comprehensive internal and external branding exercise to improve and refresh its brand. The executive director found the inconsistencies of the current brand troublesome. She was faced with some potential opportunities she would like to explore by better understanding the organization's brand. But would her many stakeholders support spending money on a branding exercise and investing resources in an effort to impact a broader community? Could she justify the expense to her board? How would her staff react to the rebranding? Was branding the best place to invest resources to impact the broader community?

Faced with the challenge of continuing to differentiate the Wellness Institute from traditional fitness facilities, the executive director at the non-profit organization was considering undertaking a thoughtful and comprehensive internal and external branding exercise to improve and refresh its brand. The executive director found the inconsistencies of the current brand troublesome. She was faced with some potential opportunities she would like to explore by better understanding the organization’s brand. But would her many stakeholders support spending money on a branding exercise and investing resources in an effort to impact a broader community? Could she justify the expense to her board? How would her staff react to the rebranding? Was branding the best place to invest resources to impact the broader community?

In 2016 (A case), the founder of Tokyo Smoke, a cannabis retailing enterprise based in Toronto, needed to attract investors. The former Google Inc. employee had taken advantage of public policy changes in Canada and was modelling his retail business on Starbucks Corporation, which had educated North American consumers about coffee and captured a huge share of the coffee market. He needed investment capital in order to build his brand and needed to determine an appropriate valuation as part of his pitch for investment capital. By 2018 (B case), he had to address new challenges in his role as chief retail officer of Canopy Growth Corporation (Canopy), the Canadian licensed producer of cannabis that had taken over the company he founded. How could he position Canopy as a world leader in retail cannabis?

In 2016 (A case), the founder of Tokyo Smoke, a cannabis retailing enterprise based in Toronto, needed to attract investors. The former Google Inc. employee had taken advantage of public policy changes in Canada and was modelling his retail business on Starbucks Corporation, which had educated North American consumers about coffee and captured a huge share of the coffee market. He needed investment capital in order to build his brand and needed to determine an appropriate valuation as part of his pitch for investment capital. By 2018 (B case), he had to address new challenges in his role as chief retail officer of Canopy Growth Corporation (Canopy), the Canadian licensed producer of cannabis that had taken over the company he founded. How could he position Canopy as a world leader in retail cannabis?

Pitch deck prepared by case protagonist and is for instructors to display in class only, not for print or electronic distribution to students.

In 2016 (A case), the founder of Tokyo Smoke, a cannabis retailing enterprise based in Toronto, needed to attract investors. The former Google Inc. employee had taken advantage of public policy changes in Canada and was modelling his retail business on Starbucks Corporation, which had educated North American consumers about coffee and captured a huge share of the coffee market. He needed investment capital in order to build his brand and needed to determine an appropriate valuation as part of his pitch for investment capital. By 2018 (B case), he had to address new challenges in his role as chief retail officer of Canopy Growth Corporation (Canopy), the Canadian licensed producer of cannabis that had taken over the company he founded. How could he position Canopy as a world leader in retail cannabis?

Supplement to case W19534 In 2016 (A case), the founder of Tokyo Smoke, a cannabis retailing enterprise based in Toronto, needed to attract investors. The former Google Inc. employee had taken advantage of public policy changes in Canada and was modelling his retail business on Starbucks Corporation, which had educated North American consumers about coffee and captured a huge share of the coffee market. He needed investment capital in order to build his brand and needed to determine an appropriate valuation as part of his pitch for investment capital. By 2018 (B case), he had to address new challenges in his role as chief retail officer of Canopy Growth Corporation (Canopy), the Canadian licensed producer of cannabis that had taken over the company he founded. How could he position Canopy as a world leader in retail cannabis?

Even as Parachute oil is the clear brand leader in the branded regular coconut oil market, having rapidly taken away share from the loose oil market, there is a threat emerging. The fastest growing segment in this category is the Value Added Hair Oil (VAHO) market which is further divided into four sub-segments - perfumed, cooling, Coconut Oil + and non-coconut oil. In each of these four categories, Marico's offerings are laggards. Not only are their shares a lot lower than the individual brand leaders in these four categories, some of these brands are actually directly comparing themselves (in television advertisements) to the flagship Parachute coconut oil brand. Shome thus has to balance maintenance of the leading position in the coconut oil market, to minimise cannibalisation in promoting the various VAHO offerings of Marico, and to gain on the leaders in these other categories. At Kobe, Leong and her team provided end-to-end influencer marketing services for clients including consultation on marketing strategies for realising brand objectives, assisting clients in identifying KPIs, execution and monitoring of campaigns, analysis of campaign results and providing recommendations. In addition, Kobe's AI driven influencer platform allowed clients to choose the most suitable influencers from a database of over 5000 influencers. Millennials in Singapore were social media savvy and often-brought products based on recommendations of influencers they trusted. Targeting this customer segment through social media was therefore a viable option. However, the Jia Jia campaign had a few limitations including a small budget and a short timeframe. Another constraint was that herbal tea was not popular with millennials.

In 2018, founder and chief executive officer of Zarr Tech Canada Inc. (Zarr Tech), understood the need for his young business to continue along its impressive growth trajectory. However, he was unsure how this goal could best be achieved. Given the increasingly competitive information technology consulting sector, he questioned whether Zarr Tech was well positioned to take advantage of further industry growth, and he wondered how best to promote his business to achieve the growth it needed. He considered various options, such as attending trade shows; hiring a sales representative; using online advertising mediums, such as Google Ads or LinkedIn; and employing an email marketing campaign. Additionally, Zarrillo was considering expanding his operations to the Vancouver area but wondered if now was the right time to do so.

In January 2019, the low-cost brokerage house Zerodha emerged as India's largest broker by number of customers. From 2014 to 2018, Zerodha's client addition had grown by 200-300 per cent annually; however, the company now needed a strategy to maintain and defend its leadership position. It needed to tap India's retail broking segment for continued growth. And in a market swamped with nearly identical products, Zerodha needed a strategy to avoid being confused with similar firms and to consistently be consumers' first choice. Could it stay ahead of its rivals with product innovation?

In 2018, the founder and chief executive officer of Zarr Tech Canada Inc. (Zarr Tech), understood the need for his young business to continue along its impressive growth trajectory. However, he was unsure how this goal could best be achieved. Given the increasingly competitive information technology consulting sector, he questioned whether Zarr Tech was well positioned to take advantage of further industry growth, and he wondered how best to promote his business to achieve the growth it needed. He considered various options, such as attending trade shows; hiring a sales representative; using online advertising mediums, such as Google Ads or LinkedIn; and employing an email marketing campaign. Additionally, the business' young founder was considering expanding his operations to the Vancouver area but wondered if now was the right time to do so.

In January 2019, the low-cost brokerage house Zerodha emerged as India’s largest broker by number of customers. From 2014 to 2018, Zerodha's client addition had grown by 200–300 per cent annually; however, the company now needed a strategy to maintain and defend its leadership position. It needed to tap India’s retail broking segment for continued growth. And in a market swamped with nearly identical products, Zerodha needed a strategy to avoid being confused with similar firms and to consistently be consumers’ first choice. Could it stay ahead of its rivals with product innovation?

With the acquisition of Rustan Supercenters Inc. (Rustan’s) in November 2018, Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc. (Robinsons) had become one of the top retailers in the Philippines, with over 1,800 stores. Although the acquisition brought Rustan’s network of more than 80 stores, located largely in Metropolitan Manila, under the Robinsons umbrella, the multiformat retail giant could not use the trademark and trade name “Rustan’s” without the Tantoco family’s approval. This case assesses the Robinsons brand and the retailer’s possible post-acquisition growth strategies. It also discusses the benefits and risks associated with this acquisition, the possible brand-transition options available to Robinsons, and whether this trend-reversal strategy will provide the retailer with a competitive edge.