個案總覽

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.

Demarketing is a way for managers to cope with excess and/or undesirable demand for their products or services. In this article, we revisit the original framework and modify the classification scheme of demarketing concepts introduced by Kotler and Levy to reflect more contemporary issues. Previously, general demarketing topics addressed ways to curb excess demand due to temporary shortages, chronic overpopularity, and product elimination-all from a microenvironmental perspective.Herein, we add macroenvironmental concepts of protective demarketing and preventive demarketing. Formerly, selective demarketing addressed either undesirable or unprofitable consumption of the legitimate product/service; today, however, many firms across several sectors are fighting against the undesirable consumption of illegitimate products/services, such as pirated and counterfeit goods. We thus introduce the notion of combative demarketing. We conducted personal interviews with several industry experts to provide insight regarding current demarketing tools. Our discussions highlighted various measures that managers can employ to manage consumer demand, including using smaller packaging to reduce sugar/fat content, increasing the price of water, limiting visitor access to national parks, and educating consumers to identify counterfeit goods.

As one of China’s top three major state-owned air transportation companies, China Eastern Airlines Corporation Limited (China Eastern) had built an international brand image with a global influence. With the airline’s unique Shanghai-based globalization, China Eastern’s strategy remained focused on expanding its global footprint. In the face of growing competition from domestic and international rivals, China Eastern strove to carry out cross-border business, strengthen its co-operation with partners in the aviation industry, and accelerate its globalization process. Over the past three years, China Eastern had introduced its “Pacific Plan” and made concerted efforts in expanding its route network and optimizing transit opportunities in the North American market. With the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese government), what strategy should China Eastern use to continue to expand its Shanghai-based globalization?

In the summer of 2019, Yu Sasaki, Head of the Game Division of DeNA, a Japanese mobile gaming company, is evaluating various growth strategies for its recent game Othellonia. Sasaki needs to decide if he should focus on customer acquisition, retention, or monetization.

Discusses the link between marketing and operations, which, when combined, constitute a way to "manage" customers. Also links these activities to other processes, such as management control.

When do consumers decide to buy something? Why and how do they shop in the first place? Over the past 20 years, a number of macro shifts have drastically altered shopping patterns and buying decisions - presenting new opportunities and challenges for marketers to persuade consumers to spend money and encourage repeat purchases. The author describes her recent research, indicating 12 particular shopper archetypes. She also introduces The Needs Adaptive Shopper Journey Model, which integrates firm actions, technology, peer-to-peer/social and shopper psychology to address shopper well-being.

Future Retail Limited (Future Retail) had a unique business model and an aggressive growth strategy that helped to make it India's largest retailing organization. In 2017, Future Retail was expanding its network of stores, but a new retail landscape was emerging, as customers were shifting to e-commerce for large purchases, due to changing lifestyles and customer preferences, while continuing to shop at small mom-and-pop stores for smaller, quick purchases. Amid such changes, how would Future Retail be able to maintain its leadership position? As it sought a larger share of the retail pie, how would it deal with an increasing customer preference toward the convenience of online ordering? How would it handle the competition from omnipresent neighbourhood stores and cart vendors?

The Indian luxury leather brand Nappa Dori, founded in 2010 in Delhi, had a product range that included a luxury line of trunks, bags, accessories, and bespoke projects for its prestigious clients, which included international luxury hotels and airlines. The brand had earned worldwide recognition from global luxury clients, and by 2017, it had seven stores, a design studio, and two cafés in India as well as one destination store at a luxury resort in the Maldives. The company’s self-taught designer-owner wanted his brand to be globally recognized as an affordable luxury brand from India by 2020. However, he often wondered whether his brand story was on the right track. For instance, was it a good idea to expand into related categories while creating a unique user experience? Should Nappa Dori focus on setting up shops in luxury destinations around the world? Did the young brand have the right story to resonate with globe-trotting luxury connoisseurs? To build a global luxury brand, the firm needed to craft a unique experience that resonated with luxury connoisseurs. The founder knew that what had started as an organic exploration into luxury now needed a well-crafted blueprint as it entered the next phase of sustainable growth toward achieving global recognition.

The Indian luxury leather brand Nappa Dori, founded in 2010 in Delhi, had a product range that included a luxury line of trunks, bags, accessories, and bespoke projects for its prestigious clients, which included international luxury hotels and airlines. The brand had earned worldwide recognition from global luxury clients, and by 2017, it had seven stores, a design studio, and two cafés in India as well as one destination store at a luxury resort in the Maldives. The company's self-taught designer-owner wanted his brand to be globally recognized as an affordable luxury brand from India by 2020. However, he often wondered whether his brand story was on the right track. For instance, was it a good idea to expand into related categories while creating a unique user experience? Should Nappa Dori focus on setting up shops in luxury destinations around the world? Did the young brand have the right story to resonate with globe-trotting luxury connoisseurs? To build a global luxury brand, the firm needed to craft a unique experience that resonated with luxury connoisseurs. The founder knew that what had started as an organic exploration into luxury now needed a well-crafted blueprint as it entered the next phase of sustainable growth toward achieving global recognition.

Apex Ski Boots has introduced a new ski boot that, due to its radical design, is meeting resistance in the marketplace from many retailers, ski experts, and consumers. The company must decide how best to drive sales in the face of this resistance.

Launched as a private brand in 1980 to counter the increasingly brand-conscious consumer in Japan, MUJI offered beautifully designed, fairly priced, no-frills quality goods. The once modest private label brand with 40 products had expanded significantly by 2019 to more than 7,000 products with more than half its 975 stores outside its home market in Japan. It had even expanded into the service industry, opening hotels. President Matsuzaki of Ryohin Keikaku, MUJI's operating company, was charged with reorganizing the product portfolio and prioritizing new initiatives, tasks complicated by the absence of a clear definition of "MUJI-ness," the meaning of which had always been intentionally left open.

Maryland-based Nexercise App Inc.'s fitness application (app) Sworkit provided app-based workout routines that required no equipment. In October 2017, the app was available in a free version with advertising, or via subscriptions that included additional features and no advertising-a classic example of freemium pricing. While 1.5 million people made use of Sworkit each month, the large majority of these were free users, and only a small portion converted to paid subscriptions. The Sworkit leadership team faced several challenges related to their reliance on advertising revenue, including unpredictability and low value per customer; this led them to re-evaluate their pricing model. Would eliminating or reducing Sworkit's free access better enable management to capture value from the popular app?

Netflix Top Picks, Amazon recommendations, the iTunes Genius button. They all have one thing in common: they are driven by clever algorithms that use a technique known as collaborative filtering. Often used in machine learning operations, collaborative filtering is the process by which a firm like Netflix generates predictions about a single user's preferences using data taken from a large number of users. This technical note offers an overview of three of the main collaborative filtering methods: slope one, a purely predictive nonparametric model; ordinal logit, a parametric regression model; and alternative least squares, a matrix factorization technique.

In 2017, Disney announced that in 2019 it would launch Disney Plus, a subscription-based streaming video service that promised to rival Netflix, the dominant player in the market. This was the latest advancement in the history of movie rentals, which had first exploded in the 1980s with the advent of videotape and had gone through several technological transformations before reaching the age of streaming in the 2010s. At the time of Disney's announcement, Netflix dominated the market due to its ever-improving algorithmic recommendation system and its investment in original content. How would Netflix withstand the competition from Disney? What would be an appropriate measure of relative strength for a streaming service? This case offers a way in to discussions of customer lifetime value, market capitalization, and discounted cash flows, as well as the role of technological change in business models and firm valuation techniques.

As he seeks to place the division he leads on a firm footing for the future, Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, is considering a range of investments designed to either upgrade the guest experience in the company's existing parks or to expand access to "the Disney magic" beyond the company's current efforts. The case invites students to reflect on the "job to be done" that the parks perform for their guests, as well as on how far Disney can go to accommodate those for whom the parks are out of reach while still maintaining a premium experience.

Maryland-based Nexercise App Inc.’s fitness application (app) Sworkit provided app-based workout routines that required no equipment. In October 2017, the app was available in a free version with advertising, or via subscriptions that included additional features and no advertising—a classic example of freemium pricing. While 1.5 million people made use of Sworkit each month, the large majority of these were free users, and only a small portion converted to paid subscriptions. The Sworkit leadership team faced several challenges related to their reliance on advertising revenue, including unpredictability and low value per customer; this led them to re-evaluate their pricing model. Would eliminating or reducing Sworkit’s free access better enable management to capture value from the popular app?

The chief executive officer (CEO) of the government-owned Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) is setting the marketing policy for the incubation program at HKSTP, Hong Kong’s leading incubator of high-technology companies. Seeing marketing as a driving force to convey the strategy of HKSTP, the CEO must analyze the key services through which HKSTP can increase an incubatee’s chances of success; analyze the advantages and disadvantages that HKSTP presents for a start-up’s location; analyze how HKSTP positions itself in the competitive market for incubation services; discern how successful it is; and determine what marketing ideas HKSTP should use to convey its competitive advantages. The task is complicated by the global nature of the incubatee servicing market, the position of Hong Kong within the Greater Bay Area of the People’s Republic of China, and the CEO’s belief that a company has to be on its own, not relying on government programs. Not only did the CEO have to give HKSTP’s incubatees the resources to help them survive and prosper, but he also had to attract the best tech start-ups to join the program.

Between 2010 and 2015, Opera Philadelphia experienced a steep decline in household subscribers and single-ticket buyers, coupled with severe revenue fluctuations. At that time, market behaviours had changed along with growth in more sophisticated use of digital media for entertainment and social interaction.<br><br>The general director’s critical objective for the Opera was to develop a fresh strategy that specifically targeted evolving tastes for opera performance in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. The Opera had to determine whether it needed to revise its segmentation and positioning strategy, as well as make adjustments to its product. This new strategy also had to provide protection for and prevent further loss of the Opera’s existing subscription audience, many of whom were loyal donors.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B19A039.

The chief executive officer (CEO) of the government-owned Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) is setting the marketing policy for the incubation program at HKSTP, Hong Kong's leading incubator of high-technology companies. Seeing marketing as a driving force to convey the strategy of HKSTP, the CEO must analyze the key services through which HKSTP can increase an incubatee's chances of success; analyze the advantages and disadvantages that HKSTP presents for a start-up's location; analyze how HKSTP positions itself in the competitive market for incubation services; discern how successful it is; and determine what marketing ideas HKSTP should use to convey its competitive advantages. The task is complicated by the global nature of the incubatee servicing market, the position of Hong Kong within the Greater Bay Area of the People's Republic of China, and the CEO's belief that a company has to be on its own, not relying on government programs. Not only did the CEO have to give HKSTP's incubatees the resources to help them survive and prosper, but he also had to attract the best tech start-ups to join the program.