Case studies

Three months into his first job as an IT consultant, newly minted MBA Phil Lee was wondering whether he had made a horrible mistake. Initially, he had been thrilled with his employer, Orion Information Technology Consulting, and the prospects for his professional future. He had specifically requested to work on projects in emerging markets, and his bosses had responded by flying him halfway around the world to New Delhi to meet with the head of procurement of a luxury property developer, Kirat Housing Development Society (KHDS). Lee thought the reason for the meeting was slightly unusual: Orion was planning to make a bid to supply building management software for KHDS's newest luxury tower, and this meeting would be the “pre-bid” negotiation. Lee wasn't totally sure what they'd even be discussing, as the tender already provided full details on exactly what modules would be required and even included specific penalty clauses for delays.

The meeting at KHDS seemed ordinary at first, but quickly took a turn when the assistant to the head of procurement explained that Orion would win the bid if it offered him a $200,000 contract as an “independent consultant.” Lee was stunned. To make matters worse, when he returned to his hotel room he found a gift waiting for him: an expensive-looking diamond pendant.

On his sleepless flight home, Lee's mind raced. Had his bosses known this would happen? Were bribes standard operating procedure? Now that he'd accepted a gift, was he complicit in wrongdoing? Lee didn't want to get fired, but he wasn't sure he could go along with this.

Markus Steuer, director of real estate at Drechtal Pharmaceuticals, must decide where his firm should locate in the immediate future. Drechtal was currently leasing space in seven different buildings, yet the company anticipated a dramatic increase in headcount should its first oncology drug, Trianoline, be approved by Swissmedic. The potential increased demand for space initiated Steuer's investigation of whether it was optimal to continue to lease space or whether or not it should invest in its own corporate headquarters. With its current leases set to expire over the coming 24 months, it was an opportune time to consider Drechtal's options.

In this case, students step into the shoes of a brand manager at UK-based online peer-to-peer lending company Zopa as she decides whether or not to recommend that the company undertake a brand redesign. Students are provided a brand design worksheet to help them understand the component parts of brand strategy and brand design and to help structure their assessment of Zopa's current brand. They are then challenged to consider if, to what extent, and how Zopa's brand design should change as a function of the company's brand strategy. Finally, they will learn a set of best practices, or guidelines, for approaching brand redesigns.

This case, along with its B case (UVA-QA-0865), is an effective vehicle for introducing students to the use of machine-learning techniques for classification. The specific context is predicting customer retention based on a wide range of customer attributes/features. The specific techniques could include (but are not limited to): regressions (linear and logistic), variable selection (forward/backward and stepwise), regularizations (e.g., LASSO), classification and regression trees (CART), random forests, graduate boosted trees (xgboost), neural networks, and support vector machines (SVM).

The case is suitable for an advanced data analysis (data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence) class at all levels: upper-level business undergraduate, MBA, EMBA, as well as specialized graduate or undergraduate programs in analytics (e.g., masters of science in business analytics [MSBA] and masters of management analytics [MMA]) and/or in management (e.g., masters of science in management [MScM] and masters in management [MiM, MM]).

The teaching note for the case contains the pedagogy and the analyses, alongside the detailed explanations of the various techniques and their implementations in R (code provided in Exhibits and supplementary files). Python code, as well as the spreadsheet implementation in XLMiner, are available upon request.

Uber China is a strategy pricing case that examines the role of customer acquisition tactics and brand positioning in entering the tantalizingly large Chinese market. The case adopts the perspective of an outside observer looking at Uber's efforts to compete in China from its entry in 2013 to its exit through its acquisition by Didi Chuxing, the highly dominant industry leader in China's ride-sharing market. After laying out the market opportunity, consumer and competitive landscape, and the various acquisition-related moves of Uber and the other major players, the case asks students to conduct a postmortem on Uber's failure in China. Specifically, they must consider what drew Uber to the opportunity in China and what it might have done differently in terms of positioning and customer acquisition to compete more effectively. First and foremost a pricing-related discussion, the case illustrates the relationship between pricing and acquisition tactics and brand positioning and the use of both in market entry and penetration.

After a successful run for many years as a resilient consumer electronics giant, Best Buy was under intense pressure at the end of 2014. Even as competitors like Circuit City melted away, Best Buy had been able to withstand the onslaught of online behemoth Amazon and discount retailers like Target and Walmart. However, its competitive position was threatened as online shopping became more popular, particularly among millennial customers.

With a new leadership team, Best Buy had recently undertaken bold initiatives to expand and refine its online presence and position itself for success. These initiatives had produced encouraging results, but Best Buy needed to do more to stem the loss of market share to Amazon and to become more relevant to millennial customers. To address these challenges, Best Buy approached the Kellogg School of Management to solicit ideas from student teams by sponsoring a Business Challenge competition. The teams came up with several strategic initiatives. Best Buy needed to evaluate these initiatives on two criteria: First, how well did these initiatives leverage Best Buy's privileged physical assets (stores, salespeople, and Geek Squad services staff) to create a winning customer experience? Second, how effective would these initiatives be in attracting and retaining millennial customers?

This case features Lucas Lopez Lince, a rising leader in Colombian consumer goods company Grupo Familia. Lopez Lince had inherited a digital marketing program built around a newly identified customer persona–a young low-income mother. The program represented a significant shift in Familia's target customer as well as a shift in the way marketing funds were spent. The program appeared to be working, so he increased the digital spend even as he had to reduce his overall marketing budget in the face of challenging economic headwinds. Activity metrics such as page views, social media “likes,” and video views rose dramatically, and at the same time sales began to rise again. By the beginning of 2017, Lopez Lince faced a deeper set of questions. How could he be certain that the rising sales were due to the digital efforts? Would the existing digital programs and tactics continue to deliver against chosen metrics? And what could he do next in order to continue driving growth of revenue and margin through digital efforts? Students assume the role of Lopez Lince and are asked to apply concepts such as customer personas, micro-moments, and customer journey mapping to develop their own point of view on what they would do next.

This case features Stripe, a startup that enables merchants to accept payments from customers on the web, on mobile devices, and at the point of sale (POS). Stripe was launched in 2011 by the Collison brothers and quickly gained traction with e-commerce startups, particularly software and platform developers who needed help building their payment processing infrastructures. Stripe incurred high fixed costs in developing its platform and had low margins per transaction, so the company needed to reach high processing volumes (i.e., scale) to survive. This was challenging, as Stripe competed with large payment processors and traditional banks that had high processing volumes and were able to offer merchants significantly lower rates than Stripe. Still, merchants valued Stripe#x0027;s solution because it was simple and versatile. Students assume the role of the Collisons to think about possible strategies Stripe could pursue to process higher volumes of transactions. Students are challenged to think about the potential response of the incumbents to Stripe's different growth alternatives. The teaching note presents the Value Net framework and discusses the importance of considering complementors and their effect on a firm's strategy. Finally, a discussion about Stripe's potential entry into the Indian market allows students to apply the concepts they learned in the discussion of a new market.

It is January 2017, and Nikki Tyler, market access advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development's Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact, must recommend an actionable strategy for how to use the $10 million contributed by global donors and foundations to scale up the use of chlorhexidine in Nigeria. It was clear that chlorhexidine, a substance applied to newborns' umbilical cord stumps to prevent infection, could reduce infant mortality significantly. However, changing behavior would be an enormous challenge. This case gives students an appreciation for the importance and complexity of global health issues, along with an understanding of key analytic techniques for approaching a complex market situation. Students quickly learn that there are no easy answers to encouraging chlorhexidine's greater use. To develop a plan, it is essential to complete detailed analyses, study insights and motivations, and ultimately compare different possible solutions, considering efficiency and efficacy.

This case asks students to step into the role of Adalberto Flores, co-founder and CEO of Kueski, one of the first companies to develop a proprietary algorithm for online loan approval in Mexico. Mexico lacks a standardized credit scoring system, making it difficult for many Mexicans to get approved for a loan or credit card. This, together with the fact that Mexicans generally do not trust traditional banks, makes Mexico an attractive opportunity for fintech companies. Growth, however, could require fintech companies to partner with traditional banks. Students assume the role of Flores to think about the benefits and risks associated with a partnership between Kueski and traditional banks. Students are also challenged to compare the structure of U.S. financial services markets with the Mexican structure and consider the implications on the sustainability of fintech companies in the two markets. The teaching note analyzes the Mexican financial market and the benefits and threats it holds for fintech companies, and outlines a framework for evaluating the risk associated with partnerships.