個案總覽

Daily Crunch was a sprouted-nut brand that launched in March 2020 during the beginning of a global pandemic. The co-founder and chief executive officer of Daily Crunch was responsible for determining the company’s marketing and business strategy in 2021. In this pivotal time for a new company, a multitude of avenues needed to be explored, such as deciding whether to focus on a digital or an in-person marketing strategy; examining new marketing opportunities in a new shopping environment; launching new products, flavours, or sizes; and deciding whether to focus primarily on direct-to-consumer sales through e-commerce. Daily Crunch had several key objectives—namely, increasing brand awareness and sales, and expanding distribution. However, its key objective was to survive as a start-up during a global pandemic.

In January 2018, an account manager at a Canadian advertising agency was tasked with making a recommendation regarding a potential workplace safety marketing campaign in Manitoba, Canada, that aimed to lower the number of work-related injuries and deaths. The account manager had previously been involved with a 2016 advertising campaign that had used an innovative approach to expose the attitudes and opinions that young people had about workplace safety. Cleverly utilized hidden-camera footage of inexperienced young people eagerly agreeing to dangerous working practices caught the attention of the public and media, and ultimately helped raise awareness and reduce workplace injuries in Manitoba. The account manager felt strongly that more needed to be done to improve workplace safety, but he needed to analyze the 2016 results to determine whether a new marketing campaign was the best solution. He would be working with and ultimately pitching his recommendation to a multi-faceted team made up of members who each had a stake in improving workplace safety in Manitoba. With the team already formed and time of the essence, he knew he must analyze and address the potential opportunities of a behavioural marketing campaign in order to make a recommendation on a course of action that could potentially save young Manitobans’ lives.

In fall 2021, André Bolduc was contemplating retirement and passing down his maple syrup farm, or “sugar bush,” to his children. David Bolduc, the youngest in the family of three siblings, was the only family member who wanted to continue the generational tradition of the family’s maple sugar farm, which was located in Saint-Jacques-de-Leeds, a municipality close to Montreal and Quebec City. David and his wife had three children under the age of ten. David was evaluating the option of expanding the family’s maple syrup business in order to reach greater profits from production so that he could continue his family’s traditional legacy and also be able to support his family. While the 2021 maple syrup season was over, David would have to make a decision well before spring 2022.

Jennie O’Keefe and Chris Johnson, owners of Rough Waters Brewing Company, were deliberating how to make further inroads into an increasingly competitive provincial craft beer market. The new entrepreneurs were at a crossroads as they considered several possibilities for business growth in the face of a highly uncertain environment that included an unfavourable economic outlook and a global pandemic. They knew there were many things to consider in weighing their options, and that they did not have all the information they wanted or needed to confidently decide. O’Keefe and Johnson needed a framework to guide their decision-making in charting the best course for the brewery in the midst of so many unknowns. 

The Green Monday Group was co-founded in 2012 by Hong Kong entrepreneur David Yeung. Capitalizing on the developing global sustainability movement and the market opportunity from growth in flexitarianism, Yeung acquired a research and development company to innovate a plant-based pig meat product, OmniPork. Through product innovation, global distribution, and celebrity endorsement, Yeung was determined to bring OmniPork to global markets. He announced in 2020 that Green Monday Holdings had raised US$70 million of equity investment, the largest funding of its kind in Asia. In 2021, the question left was how those funds could be used to expand flexitarianism globally and capture new consumers of OmniPork.

The owner of Physio2U, the largest provider of in-home physical rehabilitation services in Western Canada, was forced to rapidly transition to telehealth amid the growing threat of COVID-19 in early 2020. While the Physio2U team and its patients were pleasantly surprised by their success with telehealth, as vaccination rates increased and the threat of COVID-19 infection became less significant, she had some tough decisions to make. She wondered if telehealth was (a) just a temporary solution to survive the pandemic; or (b) an opportunity for her business going forward. Before she invested any more resources in telehealth, including marketing funds, the owner needed to make sure she had both a strong business case and a comprehensive strategy for offering telehealth post-pandemic.

Stemina Lubricants (Stemina) was an automotive lubricant manufacturer in Udupi, Karnataka, India. All Stemina products were a blend of high-class base oil and imported branded additives. Stemina competed with leading brands—one that was strong in the market and at mechanics’ locations, having leveraged its consumer brand equity and strong advertising support to win over mechanics and dealers, and another that had a strong presence in the forecourts of gas stations in India. Customers looking for oil changes at gas stations were likely to purchase these company brands rather than a local brand, and Stemina faced an uphill battle to establish itself in a market with such entrenched distribution. How could this small business, with few resources for branding and distribution, successfully establish itself in the market?

壹、王品集團的初創；貳、王品集團的多品牌發展 ；參、王品原會員系統；肆、其他台灣餐飲業的會員經營及App的發展；伍、數位轉型方案的啟動；陸、合併各品牌會員系統為單一集團會員系統

On March 17, 2018, the founder and owner of Memon Lubricants, a Shell Pakistan Limited distributor located in Sukkur, Pakistan, was trying to find the best recruitment process to hire a new sales team. Memon Lubricants had just opened a second location in Khairpur, approximately 30 kilometres south of Sukkur. Several constraints that affected the process included a tight budget, limited availability of skilled and qualified candidates, and pressure to complete the recruitment quickly, Therefore, the founder wanted to adopt a more efficient recruitment process than the one he had used to hire a sales force at his first branch in Sukkur. He first had to identify the required knowledge, skills, and attitudes of ideal sales representatives. He then had to encourage appropriate candidates to apply for the positions. Generally, he had to improve the current recruitment process.

Bengaluru Airport began an expansion project worth US$2 billion in 2018, but by mid-2020 COVID-19 had severely impacted the aviation industry and reduced passenger volume at the airport by half. Although the airport’s leadership team had detected the crisis early and taken swift action, with no cure for the virus in sight business continuity and staff safety were in jeopardy. The next board meeting was in August 2020, less than seven weeks away, and the pandemic threatened to derail the expansion plans. Among other pressing questions the leadership team had to address—including whether to continue with the expansion plan, reduce its scope, or delay it—was whether they had done enough throughout the crisis to inspire confidence.

The India-based company Baobab Clean Technologies was founded in September 2011 with a business model based on the premise of safety and sustainability for electronic waste. The company facilitated the disposal of computers and electronic products for consumer and trade channels. It refurbished and sold products with a bundle of services like point-to-point delivery, installation, warranty, and support. Sales had started improving during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the protagonist was considering the way forward into the next level of growth. The case revolves around the application of various concepts related to business-to-business marketing, including value creation, value delivery, channel positioning, and marketplace equity.

In December 2019, the founder and chief executive officer of Nnergix, a struggling Barcelona-based renewable energy analytics provider, came home from work excited. He had just finished a very successful meeting with Holaluz Clidom SA about the potential of a new product idea: Sentinel Solar. Nnergix had been in business for almost seven years but had only recently become profitable. This new business idea could generate increasing recurrent revenues and make the company highly scalable. Nnergix could develop a new product that could deal with geographically dispersed and typically small assets in order to offer specialized services to new types of stakeholders. Was Sentinel Solar the right path for Nnergix to finally scale up, and if so, could the founder and his team convince investors and get the money they needed?

Belinda Oliveri, managing director of Mercedes-Benz Starlight, reflected on the events of the past couple of years. At a 2021 meeting of its fifty-two Australian dealers, Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific Pty Ltd announced a new sales model through which customers would buy vehicles at a fixed price directly from the company and only step inside a dealership to collect their purchase. Oliveri knew that as a respected industry leader and significant player in Australia’s high-volume automotive business landscape, she had to develop an informed opinion on the matter. She also knew change was coming, but that there were also a lot of unanswered questions. Would the change be a good one? How would it affect customers? Should she support it or oppose it by joining the $650 million lawsuit 80 per cent of dealers filed against Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific?

In early 2020, the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the world led the most highly affected countries, such as the United States and India, to focus on rapid testing and contact tracing to break the chain of transmission. By August 25, 2020, India had tested nearly 37 million cumulative COVID-19 samples as part of the government’s “Test, Track, Treat” initiative. The efficient allocation of collected swabs with saliva samples to appropriate testing labs had become an urgent operational requirement. The senior consultant of GD Labs was appointed officer on special duty by the State Government of Chhattisgarh to devise a plan for the optimal allocation of swabs to government and private labs across the state. He decided to roll out a pilot study for two districts that had six labs—both government and private. The task required access to extensive data on the collection of swabs with saliva samples, previous backlogs, locations of labs, and the maximum capacity per lab. The goal of the project was to maximize the allocation of swabs for testing within budget constraints.

Desi Hangover, an Indian company empowering artisans to manufacture handcrafted leather footwear, was a finalist at Lakmé Fashion Week in 2020 in the category of Circular Changemakers. The chief executive officer had a dream of establishing his company as a leading circular economy fashion brand, and now he had a chance to pitch his vision of the future. But his core team had reservations and worried about the cost and risk of transitioning fully to a circular model. Considering the journey Desi Hangover had taken since its inception, the changing needs of the market, and the unpredictability of the business economy, Desi Hangover had to come up with the right pitch for the event—one that would continue on the path to conscious fashion while ensuring growth in revenues to sustain operations.

The Edmonton Opera Association (Edmonton Opera) was founded in 1963 as a not-for-profit arts organization with the aim of providing audiences with compelling productions that combined music, song, and theatre. Over the years, Edmonton Opera had been successful in providing its services, but, in 2020, it was challenged. Just when it had almost recovered from a deficit, reported in 2012, the global COVID-19 pandemic occurred, and an economic slowdown followed. The board of directors knew that many organizations, in addition to Edmonton Opera, had had to suspend their operations temporarily due to COVID-19 restrictions, and they wanted to know how the pandemic had affected Edmonton Opera’s operations. A newly minted board member with a background in finance and accounting was assigned the task of conducting a financial statement analysis. Because not all members of the board had the necessary skills to provide oversight of the association’s accounting matters, this new board member was also asked to address Edmonton Opera’s specific accounting issues.

In February 2019, Tim Hortons, Canada’s iconic coffee franchise, opened its first coffee shop in China in Shanghai, thereby extending its international footprint to China. To accomplish this entry, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the parent company of Tim Hortons, formed a joint venture (JV) Tim Hortons (China) Holdings Co., Ltd. (Tims China) with Cartesian Capital, a private equity fund that had operated in China for more than twenty years. As the minority owner, RBI granted Tims China the master franchise rights, covering the use of trademarks, core products, store management procedures, and so on. Cartesian Capital, on the other hand, held majority ownership and would manage the strategy and daily operation of the joint enterprise. A veteran of Cartesian Capital was dispatched to the JV to be its chief executive officer. The fast-growing coffee market in China presented enormous opportunities, but Tim Hortons was a latecomer compared with foreign brands like Starbucks and numerous local coffee providers. In this situation, how should he best position and expand Tim Hortons in the new market?

Rain Industries Limited (Rain), through its wholly owned subsidiary Rain Carbon Inc., produced upcycled carbon products from the by-products of steel and petroleum and other industries. The demand- and supply-driven shifts and various sustainability initiatives by industries both downstream and upstream in Rain’s existing supply chain could prove to be disruptive, requiring strategizing and future-proofing. When the Government of India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry banned the import of green petroleum coke, also called petcoke, in 2018, Rain’s chief financial officer had to decide whether it was the right time to identify and implement different supply chain risk mitigation measures.

By early 2020, Mindee Barham, vice-president of development at the microfinancing organization Grameen America, which focused on empowering low-income female entrepreneurs by offering them microloans to develop and grow their own businesses, had overseen the successful implementation of the first year of Grameen America’s ten-year Lifting America campaign for strategic growth. This campaign was intended to increase membership to 400,000 people; to issue loans amounting to $12 billion; to raise $300 million, including $100 million in philanthropy and $200 million in debt capital; and to enter new locations. However, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly derailed the funding and implementation of the campaign, and given the pandemic's large impact on Grameen America’s vulnerable members, it threatened the existence of Grameen America itself. How should Grameen America respond to the pandemic? What would become of the Lifting America campaign? And what could Grameen America do to support its members through the COVID-19 pandemic without jeopardizing the organization’s future plans?

Green Monday Group (GMG) was founded in 2012 with a mission to “construct a multi-faceted global ecosystem of future food that combats climate change, food insecurity, public health crisis, planetary devastation, and animal suffering.” In 2020, GMG partnered with McDonald’s in Hong Kong and launched six dishes featuring OmniPork Luncheon Meat, a plant-based meat substitute that GMG had developed. In February 2021, the chief executive officer and co-founder of GMG had to figure out how GMG could expand its partnership with McDonald’s in Hong Kong to the rest of China. McDonald’s size and potential in the rest of China far exceeded that of McDonald’s Hong Kong, and while GMG had the resources and the determination to expand, it had to decide which marketing strategy to use.