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First Class Trading Corporation, a Montreal-based company, had two partners: Jeff Morahan, the founder of the company, and David Sciacca. After evaluating the school supplies industry, Morahan had identified an opportunity to market a fully stocked school bag to schools and parents. The bag was filled with various items that a child needed as determined by a given teacher’s requirements. The strategy of the company was to target elementary and secondary private schools in the greater Montreal area, with elementary schools as the initial target. To date, the partners had generated a disappointing level of sales through cold calls and sales visits to schools. They had drawn up a strategic plan with objectives, positioning, and a marketing mix and were now wondering if they were on the right track. Had they missed something? Should they seek additional advice? Should they move ahead? The situation was complicated because of the stakeholders (school directors, teachers, parents, and students) involved in the marketing process.

Bruce Ballantyne had recently joined C.R.P. Products (CRP), a furniture manufacturer in Stratford, Ontario, to help review the company’s operations and assess what changes were necessary to keep up with demand. Although it was early 2011 and the peak season was still four months away, Ballantyne knew that he would have to determine what equipment was needed over the next three weeks to ensure it was delivered and installed before the peak season. Jamie Bailey, the owner of CRP, had also concluded that CRP did not have the financing available for both the new equipment needed to make its unique design of outdoor furniture and the seasonal working capital required to support inventory and accounts receivable. He had turned to Ballantyne to develop a solution that would keep up with demand, keep inventory low, and work within the available financing.

It was August 2011 and Martin Cartier, senior board member of Drowling Mountain, was beginning to feel the pressure of Drowling Mountain Ski Resort’s 2010 general meeting that was coming up in two months. Drowling Mountain had historically been the ski resort of choice for the local residents of Syracuse, New York. However, the company had recorded losses for the past two years. At last year’s annual general meeting, Cartier explicitly stated that he would bring the company to sustainable operations. He felt personally responsible for the company’s struggles, since he was the longest-serving member on the board. Management had been keen on developing a new marketing plan focused on new pricing schemes and increasing sales, but Cartier thought an advance meeting to discuss the plan with select board members would be advantageous. He held significant influence in the forthcoming meeting in October, and any recommendations that he made were likely to determine the future success of the company.

An entrepreneur is at a crossroads. He has successfully executed a pilot event in Las Vegas for THUNDERBALL!, his long-drive golf media property that includes live events, television production, and sports wagering. He has also secured a prime-time airing commitment with The Golf Channel for three episodes. However, he must cover the costs of hosting a live event and producing it as a television show. The business model would combine sponsorship from television, event tickets, commissions for players, merchandise, and a partnership with a licensed casino for wagering. This case exposes readers to the world of television/media production and financing and the challenges entrepreneurs can face in spite of a successful initial effort.

The president and chief executive officer (CEO) of an established Toronto-based boutique consulting firm is in the process of expanding his company’s core competency from the largely mature tech sector to the new and rapidly growing field of clean technology. During this time, the CEO is introduced to an inventor and an entrepreneur who have developed a waveform technology that they claim will instantaneously reduce electricity consumption by 30 per cent or more, when applied to a fluorescent lighting ballast. The two of them present the CEO and his partners with a rough prototype, a handful of patents on the verge of expiring, and mere verbal confirmation that the technology can be proven and certified. The CEO is intrigued by the potential of this radical new technology and must decide whether he and his firm will back the partners.

The managing director of Apollo Health Street (AHS), a health care business process outsourcing (BPO) company headquartered in Pennsylvania, United States, was pondering two dilemmas: achieving short-term growth for his company, and finding new ways to compete in a changing industry. AHS was itself a subsidiary of Apollo Health Enterprises Ltd., an integrated health care company located in Hyderabad, India. AHS had been growing at an 80 per cent compound annual growth rate since 2005 and aimed to reach $100 million in sales by March 2010. Its target was to increase annual sales to $500 million within three years in a highly competitive space, which if successful would move AHS into the top three BPO companies in the health care sector. How should it secure short-term growth? The second dilemma was how to plan for the future. Industry analysts had predicted that over the next five to ten years, health care BPO would become unrecognizable from its current form. The managing director believed that although scaling up would strengthen the company’s position for the short term, the company should also be looking for solutions to stay relevant to the customer. How should AHS influence the shape of health care BPO in the future? What new ways of competing could the company pursue?

Tommy Li was a designer and brand consultant renowned for his black humour and bold visual impact. With business spanning Hong Kong, China, Macau, Japan, and Italy, Tommy Li was one of the few Hong Kong designers to have entered the international market. In his ten years of experience as a design staff member, Li learned that getting the right clients was the key to a successful design consultancy business. Therefore, Li set up his own company to have full freedom in choosing his own clients, and his strategic selection of clients brought him great success. Consequently, he became a famous Hong Kong designer and brand consultant with reputable local and overseas clients. With international firms many times bigger than Li’s firm entering China, Li saw mounting competitive pressure. Was his stardom an adequate defence against firms composed of multidisciplinary teams that had innovation-driven design thinking and processes? Was scale a critical issue in staying competitive? Was proximity to the market an important advantage?<br><br><br><br>The brand consulting industry also faced intense competition from international business consultancies, advertising, and public relations agencies. Each camp used a different approach to target the same group of brand-conscious clients. Could Li cope with these challenges?

Nitya was preparing for a meeting with an Indian company that manufactured hair oil and fairness cream. She wanted to make use of past research in order to offer her client insights on consumer values. Were emerging markets significantly different from developed markets in terms of consumer values? Were existing brands connecting with Indian consumers? Could values become associated with different socio-economic classes of consumers? With radical changes in the lifestyles of consumers and the proliferation of categories and brands, the Indian context offers unique marketing challenges to marketers.

The case deals with poor acceptance of Aravind’s eye care service by the rural population in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. One of the factors causing poor acceptance is the lack of awareness among the rural population that many cases of blindness are curable. Fear of surgery and cost are the other major barriers to acceptance by these consumers. Aravind is the largest eye care provider in the world and has pioneered many process innovations that have reduced the cost of eye treatment substantially. The company has a culture that encourages responsive service by a trained and motivated staff. It has experimented with a number of options to educate and provide eye care service to rural consumers. The manager must examine options in the areas of promotion and service delivery to enhance the acceptance of eye care service by rural consumers.

Nokia, headquartered in Finland, was a global telecommunications equipment manufacturer. It operated Vertu, a luxury mobile phone brand that had pioneered the luxury mobile phone market in the late 1990s by using precious materials such as diamonds, sapphires, titanium, and exotic leather for phone production. The company had enjoyed impressive growth in almost 70 countries and had sold hundreds of thousands of phones in the eight years since its launch. On February 11, 2011, Stephen Elop, the new CEO of Nokia, announced a new mobile strategy to adopt Microsoft’s new but unproven Windows Phone as its primary smartphone operating system. The market reacted poorly, and the company’s share price took a 14 per cent dive on the day of announcement. How should Vertu respond to this new Nokia mobile strategy? Was Vertu well positioned to take the brand forward under the new Nokia? Should this U.K.-based wholly owned subsidiary be left alone and continue to be managed at arm’s length from Nokia? Changes to Vertu were inevitable — it was not a matter of if, but when.

This case focuses on Black Canyon Coffee, as it begins to develop its strategy for the firm’s second decade. Founded in 1993, Black Canyon had grown to become the largest chain of coffee houses in Thailand in 2003. Over its first decade, it grew from a single location to 78 retail outlets, serving a mix of hot and cold coffee beverages, as well as Asian cuisine. Thus far, the company had been profitable, and had managed the threat posed by local and foreign competitors, including Starbucks. The coffee house market in Thailand was an emerging industry segment that was expected to grow rapidly. While the company was in a strong position in 2003, competition in the industry was expected to become more intense. One key issue was determining what goals and markets the company should pursue in coming years. Managing director Pravit C. Pong believed that the company should strive for a total of 200 stores in the next decade, while business consultant Michael Holland suggested a more ambitious goal of 1,000 locations. Additionally, the company needed to consider the relative emphasis of domestic versus international expansion, as well as the potential to diversify into other markets. Access to capital and supply chain infrastructure were both tied to the growth targets that the firm pursued.

William Cheung owned an apparel wholesaler and a boutique shop that sold his clothing designs in Hong Kong. After attending a fashion exhibition in France, he realized his products were lacking compared to European brands. This experience motivated him to improve his jeans designs, and he soon registered “Koyo” as an independent company. He went on to become the first Hong Kong designer embraced by the French department store Galeries Lafayette. While Cheung had had commendable success, including many franchises in mainland China, he faced challenges related to expansion and funding as Koyo Jeans strove for international success.

In April 2011, the management team at Expatica Communications B.V. was reviewing the progress of the company and the opportunities for future growth. The management team had to take stock: the external environment was rapidly changing, and threats from competitors were on the rise. Expatica had been founded 11 years earlier to provide English-language information and news to the expatriate community in Europe, delivering its services primarily over the Internet. One of the central issues Expatica faced was how to make its core business model effective across multiple markets. Recent launches of the online platform in new countries were not as successful as hoped and the performance of traditional “bricks and mortar” offerings was also mixed. The company had made tremendous progress over the years but needed to re-evaluate its position and decide which new opportunities for growth, if any, should be pursued.

Ocimum Biosolutions, a start-up Indian bioinformatics venture in 2000, had established a presence in Europe and the United States by 2010. The contract research outsourcing industry was expected to continue to grow, as large pharmaceutical companies in industrialized countries were outsourcing work at all stages of the drug development lifecycle — from discovery research to clinical trials designed to accelerate drug development as established drugs came off patent. The current challenges for Ocimum were continued growth and the ability to manage expansion while balancing risk. Anu Acharya, Ocimum’s CEO, was considering possible solutions.

CardSwap was an online service that provided consumers with the opportunity to convert unwanted gift cards into hard cash. The co-founder felt convinced that his small Canadian company created great value for its customers. After all, there were around a billion dollars of unwanted gift cards entering circulation every year. People who owned these unwanted gift cards would surely want to use the CardSwap service. CardSwap could offer a strong value proposition to consumers while ensuring a healthy return through commissions on every transaction. Problems remained, however, as CardSwap was a relatively small company and had no access to the multi-million-dollar advertising budgets that might be needed to get a message out to consumers through an extensive multi-media strategy. How much should the company be willing to spend to acquire a customer? How best could this new company use its limited resources to communicate to customers the benefits of CardSwap?

Established in 1945, MGT Group was headquartered in France. Its LSD factory was a well-known global engineering provider specializing in the design and manufacture of high-precision valves. At the end of 2007, MGT decided to close the LSD factory in France and relocate it to Fuzhou, China. Two people were put in charge of this project: Kevin Lurton, vice chief operations officer of MGT Control Systems Division, and Jian Li, the general manager of MGT Fuzhou Company. Lurton and Li faced a series of challenges, ranging from the need for strategic planning to the need for an implementation policy for supply chain reconstruction during the cross-border factory relocation.

The case describes the situation faced by the vice president of A-CAT Corp. The company was a mid-sized manufacturer and distributor of domestic electrical appliances, largely catering to the price-sensitive rural population. The firm operated two medium-sized facilities in a remote district in Vidarbha, India. A-CAT manufactured a wide range of electrical appliances including TV signal boosters, transformers, FM radio kits, electronic ballasts, battery chargers, and voltage regulators. The focus was on its flagship product, the VR500 voltage regulator. The team planned to identify potential suppliers/vendors with their attendant strengths and weaknesses and to do so in a well-documented and structured manner. Analytical hierarchy process was a technique that could be used to meet this challenge.

The manager of Visitor Services with Saskatchewan Park Services was thinking ahead to next year, even though 2011 was still four months away. Park Services had experienced a number of turbulent years around the provincial park campground reservation system. While the problems experienced were largely invisible to the public, over the years the behind-the-scenes actions required to process campground reservations had placed an onerous burden on Park Services staff, both in Regina (in Saskatchewan, Canada) and in the local provincial parks. Additionally, the present system severely limited the type of services that could be developed for tourists and campers due to the lack of quality data on campers. <br><br>While steps had been taken in 2009 and 2010 to address some of the major problems surrounding the campground reservation system, serious issues remained that required action. This was particularly true when the system in place in Saskatchewan was compared to new campground reservation systems recently employed in Alberta, Manitoba, and the federal national park system. The manager reflected on the turbulent 2008 season, the relative calm in 2009 due to the success of temporary fixes, and the new issues that had arisen in 2010. She needed to decide on a more permanent solution that resolved the operational problems of the present reservation system while also laying the foundation for improved services for campers.

In 2006, Mudra Communications, the third-largest advertising agency in India, is in the middle of an organizational transformation in which information technology (IT) is seen by the top management as pivotal. The IT setup is undergoing a transition at Mudra from manual systems to an Enterprise System (ES) which has been developed internally by the eight-member IT team led by executive vice president for technology Sebastian Joseph. As he gets ready to implement the first module of ES, known as Mudra Business Operations Support System (mBoss), covering 70 per cent of the activities of the agency, Joseph is facing some managerial dilemmas related to planning the roll-out, training the end users, and managing the change that the new system will bring to the agency. He is also facing choices between outsourcing the ES architecture or owning it, and between outsourcing the development of the remaining seven modules or developing them internally, as before.

The president and CEO of a provincial auto club is assessing opportunities to grow his organization at the same time as industry consolidation and changes in the allocation of national operating costs. The auto club has diversified from automobile towing and travel services into insurance, package travel, automobile sales, and service. However, the president's vision for the upcoming board of directors' meeting calls for a 300 per cent increase in operating revenues over the next 10 years. Without more members, the auto club cannot support its allocated costs of branded national and international products. The CEO's challenge is to find growth opportunities.