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In 2005, Cabo San Viejo, a premier health and fitness spa resort located in Palm Springs, California, is debating whether to introduce a Customer Rewards Program. Describes the customer management challenges the firm is facing and outlines the various ways in which a rewards program might be structured to help address those challenges.

In Maseru, the capital of the Kingdom of Lesotho, the stirrings of industrialization and modernization were promising, and more than 50,000 workers, mostly women, were employed in the textile sector; the figure reflected more than a threefold increase in just a few years. Just outside Maseru, however, life was pastoral. Of Lesotho's 1.9 million citizens, 86% were engaged in subsistence agriculture. The country's hopes for progress rested with the jobs created by Taiwanese and Chinese firms. In early 2006, however, the survival of the nascent industry hung in the balance. The appreciation of Lesotho's currency, the loti, made life difficult for the apparel firm, which exported almost all of their production to the United States. Although the firms enjoyed duty-free access to an otherwise protected U.S. clothing market through the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the provisions that most benefited Lesotho would expire in 2007. A few large buyers would be making sourcing decisions that could make or break Lesotho's industry. Local union leaders were upset with the government's handling of the textile boom and its putatively impending bust. Certainly the government would play an important role in formulating a strategy and adjusting the institutional context, but decisions made by the unions, foreign investors, foreign buyers, and the American government would also be critical. How would posterity judge Lesotho's first encounter with world markets--as a triumph or a disaster?

Charles "Ed" Haldeman Jr. is promoted CEO of Putnam Investments after the firm was badly damaged by a series of improper trading practices. He is charged with the task of managing the crisis, repairing the company culture, and putting the firm back into a pattern of growth. Haldeman realizes that nothing less than a radical change in the culture of Putnam Investments would be enough to win back the trust of clients and employees who felt betrayed by the firm's apparent misconduct. He must confront some tough decisions about recently uncovered questions concerning the handling of certain accounting transactions three years earlier and about the continued lagging performance of Voyager, the firm's flagship equity fund.

Matt Harris, general partner and founder of Village Ventures, a nationwide umbrella organization for VC firms in secondary cities, is about to negotiate with the general partner of one of the organization's most successful funds. Describes the costs and benefits of the relationship from the perspectives of both parties and examines how it might evolve in the future.

In early 2005, Nestle is in the midst of a decision: whether or not the Fairtrade mark should be applied on Partners' Blend, a new instant coffee product to be marketed in the growing UK 'ethical' coffee segment. Application of the Fairtrade mark on the Partners Blend product means that Nestle must go against its historical position of not offering minimum guaranteed prices to coffee farmers. As part of their deliberations, Nestle executives must consider their coffee sourcing program at large, their corporate social responsibility framework, Nescafe and corporate Nestle branding, the UK market, and the potential consumer benefit or backlash that could result from releasing such a product.

The chairman and chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems Inc., is struggling to take the company he co-founded in a profitable direction. There is strong evidence that a new strategy is necessary. Segments of Sun's business are growing but "open source" solutions and commoditization of products are driving revenues toward zero. Decisions involve market focus, pricing, and investment in new technologies. Illustrates the role of management preferences and the limits to an executive's span of attention/control. Both the chairman's and Sun's success is contingent upon an accurate assessment of the industry and the relative position of partners as well as the ability to generate creative solutions.

Euronex.liffe, a derivatives trading exchange, launches matching, clearing, and confirmation services for the over-the-counter market. This combination of services creates a new platform for a market that potentially cannibalizes its current exchange-based services. Is this good idea? Does the design of this new combination of services make sense? Is it the best positioned among other exchanges and services to the derivatives trading market to launch this new platform?

On July 21, 2005 China revalued its decade-long quasi-fixed exchange rate of approximately 8.28 yuan per U.S. dollar by 2.1% to 8.11% and, at the same time, introduced a more market-based exchange rate system. Many analysts and economists were disappointed with what they considered too small a change and called for more flexibility in the U.S. dollar/yuan exchange rate. Modification to China's exchange rate regime had been eagerly anticipated and much debated in the preceding months as China's trade surplus against the United States reached record highs and as friction intensified with Europe and Japan. Also, analysts argued that the tightly managed exchange rate put a strain on China's own economy. Not only was the exchange rate expensive to sustain, but it contributed to--as well as limited China's flexibility in responding to--a potentially overheating economy. Although China's extensive controls on the movement of capital into the country helped to counteract some inflationary pressure, controls were becoming more porous as China increasingly integrated with the world economy. It remained to be seen what China would ultimately choose to do with its exchange rate regime.

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Highlights issues that a multidivision firm faces as it moves from managing products for profit to managing customers for profit.

As students watch the full length feature film Crash, written and directed by Paul Haggis, they may find the character guide helpful in keeping track of who's who and what the characters' main connections are.

Crisis as a source of opportunity and change? How does that happen? This case describes the difficult situation the new dean of the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana faced after Hurricane Katrina hit the city in the late summer of 2005. With a state of emergency declared statewide, in a city with only a shell of their former infrastructure intact, in a university that suffered water damage, and in a community of students and faculty scattered and separated throughout several different cities and states, how was Dean DeNisi supposed to lead-let alone implement his vision? The A case challenges students to think about how DeNisi should proceed in the immediate months to ensure both the return of current students and the survival of the business school. What would all this mean to attracting future Freeman students? The B case describes how DeNisi seized opportunity while in a time of great crisis. The material offers a rich discussion that should evolve into the recognition that leaders who are able to frame crises as potential opportunities will likely manage organizations in a way that will make them more resilient and sometimes better off after the crises.

One of the key problems in marketing decision making is how to measure the effectiveness of marketing actions, for example, the effect of temporary price promotions on sales. Many outcomes of marketing decisions are multiply determined and involve both short- and long-term effects that are hard to pin down. So marketing managers are often unable to specify the precise effects of what they are doing, and instead rely on intuitive estimates of the effects of their decision making or, worse, on commonsensical arguments to complement ill-conceived cost-plus pricing approaches. Scanner data-based records of customer purchase decisions provide a wealth of data that managers could use, but how can they get useful input for their decision making out of thousands and thousands of purchase transactions?

The case presents the IPO of Neopost SA, manufacturer of document handling and postage meter equipment on the Paris Stock Exchange. This IPO constitutes the exit for the buyout specialist, BCPartners, who invested in the company during its spin-off from Alcatel, and subsequently took over the majority of the equity in a secondary buyout.

The Katelyn Neilson, MBA case follows the personal and professional development of a young "high-potential" within an intensive one-year, full-time MBA programme. Katelyn's background and resume, significant excerpts from her diary, and an evocative picture drawn to visualize her major dilemmas, provide vivid illustrations of the unfolding of a major life transition.

MAS Holdings is a family-owned manufacturer of women's apparel, founded by three brothers who have built the firm into a US$570 million business. Clients include the biggest brands in lingerie and sportswear. The textile industry makes up 50% of Sri Lankan exports, especially from China. The case is about using corporate social responsibility as a strategic tool in global competition.

A retail bank is considering a strategy to improve branch performance. Central to the strategy is a recent study of profitability of three retail products: current accounts, credit cards, and mortgages. The strategy involves giving branch managers incentives to sell profitable products. A senior bank manager evaluates the product-profitability-based strategy in the light of recent statistics on major variations in profitability of customers (these statistics are included in the database provided with the case).

The objective of the CIM (Credit Insurance Management) project was the complete restructuring of the IT systems that supported the management and marketing of the Credit Insurance products offered by CanLife, a major Canadian life insurance company. The project was scheduled to run over a period of two years. During the development phase, two new sub-projects were added without apparent difficulty. The system was finally delivered in October 1998, on time and on budget. It was not long, however, before flaws began to surface: system overloading, innumerable defects, inadequate architecture, and an inaccurate estimation of processing and storage capacities. Added to all these problems was the complete absence of a global system overview due to an ill-conceived decentralization policy that resulted in a system that was managed by an assortment of independent modules. Confronted with an imminent catastrophe, the company was forced to rapidly diagnose the situation and come up with appropriate solutions.

The objective of this case is to allow students to: determine the main characteristics (from a project management point of view) of a large-scale ERP implementation project; identify the criteria that should inform the selection of a project leader (in relation to the nature and characteristics of the project); better understand the role and potential contribution of consultants in this context, and; define solutions to overcome difficulties that arise with respect to project management. This case will help students better understand the challenges associated with choosing a project leader. It will also allow them to explore the roles of the various actors in this process, particularly that of external consultants in relation to the management approach chosen for the project. An analysis of this case makes it possible to introduce students to theoretical concepts related to the choice of a project leader.

TransInsurance Inc. is an individual insurance company, covering all of Canada. In the midst of an industry amalgamation, the RECS project came to be in fall 2002, following the merger of two group insurance companies - one from Quebec City and another from Montreal. The reality of operations, particularly at the level of customer service, was proving to be difficult, however. Senior management thus envisaged a bold project based on a fundamental transformation of the company's methods of operation. Specifically, the project was aimed at completely restructuring its customer service department as well as the marketing of its insurance products. The project was launched on April 1, 2003, but many obstacles were encountered along the way: the firing of the first two consulting firms to which the project had been outsourced, followed by the resumption of project leadership by TransInsurance to achieve, in the end, moderate success.