Case studies

The case can be used in the subject areas of marketing, strategy, business model innovation, and general business growth, particularly those with a focus on emerging markets.

This case can be used in postgraduate and post-experience business courses such as Master's degrees in Business Administration, postgraduate diplomas, executive education, or specialist Master's degrees.

This case looks at craft beer business Jack Black's Brewing Co. started in 2006 in Cape Town. After humble beginnings, protagonist McCulloch grew the company rapidly with a focus on the strategic “tap” market across the country. After systematically working with a number of contract brewers the company finally invested in their own, industrial-scale brewery and brewpub. The dilemma facing McCulloch and Jack Black's Brewing Co. is one of cash flow. In order to generate cash flow, the management team needs to drive sales so that the brewery operates at full capacity. While it strives to attain this goal, there are considerable cash flow and liquidity challenges.

The development of an understanding of an effective marketing mix to position a niche and young brand.

An understanding of the concept “co-opetition” and how it works in a growing market.

The ability to assess the various growth stages of a business.

The case can be used in the subject areas of marketing, strategy, business model innovation in an emerging market. The case introduces a practical example of brand extension as a growth strategy employed by an existing brand to secure additional revenue channels and customer touch points.

This teaching case is aimed at postgraduate business students such as Master's degrees in Business Administration degrees, postgraduate diplomas, executive education, or specialist Master's degrees.

Kauai is a health restaurant with 150 stores across South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, more than 50% of which are franchise-owned. An acquisition of the original Kauai quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain by Real Foods in 2015 leads to a complete rebrand and overhaul of its product offering and store experience. Since the acquisition, the business operates as a startup with few formal processes and KPIs in place to drive performance. Despite the obvious success the team is battling with the factors that need to be considered to ensure that they can scale adequately to realise full potential. Plus how should they position the existing brand effectively within the FMCG space to maximise the contribution of brand equity to its success?

–The understanding around the business model of a strong, existing brand entering a highly competitive and price-sensitive FMCG.

–Analysing the marketing strategy and brand identity approaches that could be used.

–An understanding of the brand extension strategy that could be implemented in light of various challenges.

–Understanding how retail marketing works in an emerging market context.

Srikumar Misra founded Milk Mantra as a milk producing and selling company in the state of Odisha, India in 2010. The company subsequently diversified into milk-based products such as yogurt and cottage cheese and spread its foray into the neighboring states. In 2014, the company had to overcome a few challenges from the macro environment as well as think of a marketing and communication strategy to gain competitive advantage.

The case is based on the primary research and has been developed using interviews of the company representatives and documents made available from the company. Wherever required, written permission has been obtained from the company representatives.

This case could be a part of the Marketing Management course in a graduate/undergraduate program in Business Management. The case could also be a part of a Brand Management or Integrated Marketing Communications course in the same program for specialized subjects such as branding a generic product or brand communications. This case could also be used for a short discussion in a distribution and logistics course.

The specific topics, which could be facilitated through this case, are the 4 Ps of marketing, distribution and marketing strategy. The case also relies on the theories of branding and marketing communication.

This case involves the March of Dimes (MOD) Foundation, the “leading nonprofit organization for pregnancy and baby health.” MOD’s mission was to support medical research, organize volunteer workers, and provide community services and education to save babies’ lives (www.marchofdimes.org). The strategic issue in the case involves creating awareness of both the mission and services of MOD and the critical issue driving that mission – premature births. The organization must create a desire for various target markets to take action in response to the problem. The main protagonist is Doug Staples, Senior Vice President for Marketing and Communications.

Data were collected via personal interviews with the primary protagonists, Doug Staples, and Mike Swenson of the Barkley agency. The MOD provided quantitative Gallup studies they commissioned, as well as documents unveiling the roll-out in the San Jose, CA region. The Barkley Agency provided qualitative data from a study which consisted of eight focus groups conducted in two markets and ten personal interviews. Secondary research was used to provide a support for industry and market data, to supplement organizational facts provided by the MOD, and to identify and link marketing theory to the situations provided in the case. The organization, facts and characters in this case were not disguised. MOD was consulted throughout the case development process.

This case study is recommended for marketing courses at the undergraduate level. It is most appropriate for marketing management, introductory marketing, or marketing strategy classes. Additionally, this case is a good fit for courses focused upon not-for-profit marketing issues.

The strongest opportunities to apply theory using this case relate to branding (see De Chernatony and Dall’Olmo Riley, 1998 for a content analysis of the brand literature). These theories include brand image and personality (Aaker, 1997; Belk, 1998; Grohmann, 2009), brand awareness (Aaker, 2002), brand involvement and customer loyalty (Brakus et al., 2009), brand engagement (Sprott et al., 2009), brand relationships (Breivik and Thorbjornsen, 2008), and brand equity (Aaker, 2002, 2008). Specifically, question 2 addresses brand personality, and questions 3 and 4 explore relationships with the brand such as the emotional power of the brand and brand association. Question 6 focuses on positioning strategy.

Rob Griffin, senior vice president and U.S. director of search for Media Contacts, a communications consulting firm, is faced with the task of optimizing search engine marketing (SEM) for Air France. At the time of the case, SEM had become an advertising phenomenon, with North American advertisers spending $9.4 billion in the SEM channel, up 62% from 2005. Moving forward, Griffin wants to ensure that the team keeps its leading edge and delivers the results Air France requires for optimal Internet sales growth. The case centers upon Air France's and Media Contacts' efforts to find the ideal SEM campaign to provide an optimal amount of ticket sales in response to advertising dollars spent. This optimal search marketing campaign is based on choosing effective allocation of ad dollars across the various search engines, as well as selecting appropriate keywords and bid strategies for placement on the search result page for Internet users.

In determining the optimal strategy, the case presents background information on the airline industry as well as the Internet search options available at the time, including Google, Microsoft MSN, Yahoo!, and Kayak. Additionally, background information is provided on SEM and its associated costs and means of measuring the successfulness of each marketing effort. The case illustrates how one must first determine the key performance indicators for the project to guide analysis and enable comparison of various SEM campaigns. Cost per click and probability to produce a sale differ among publishers. Therefore, using a portfolio application model's quadrant positions can be used to determine optimal publisher strategies. Additionally, pivot tables help illustrate campaigns and strategies that have historically been most successful in meeting Air France's target Internet sales. Multiple recommendations on how Media Contacts can assist Air France in improving its SEM strategy can be derived from the data provided.

Students learn how to optimally leverage the Internet in generating customer sales in a cost-effective manner. Students will analyze and manipulate a variety of data using pivot tables to determine optimal strategies for obtaining maximum total online bookings through the various online channels available. Using a portfolio application model, students can determine an optimal publisher strategy and complete copy improvement analysis.

In late 2012 Adeline Herzog Memorial Hospital in Castle Rock, Colorado, was facing a problem with patient satisfaction. The Press-Ganey scores for the third-floor nursing unit–the primary destination (70 percent) for patients admitted through the emergency department–were at the 15th percentile, and the key HCAHPS score for inpatients was well below the Colorado average. Over the past six months Jeri Tinsley, director of medical, surgical, and intensive care services, had made various changes to try to improve the patient satisfaction scores for her 32-bed unit, but the scores seemed stuck at an unacceptably low level.

Tinsley worried that if improvements were not made soon, patients would start “voting with their feet” and take their business to competing hospitals. As a registered nurse, Tinsley's expertise was helping people heal; it was not analyzing data. In particular, she was overwhelmed by the patient comments included in the surveys; she had no idea how to analyze them and could not decide which issues to address first.

After analyzing the case, students should be able to:

• Organize and analyze qualitative data using affinity diagrams

• Identify priorities using Pareto diagrams

• Identify which aspects of a problem are (1) within their control to solve, (2) within their influence to solve, or (3) outside their control to solve

Organize and analyze qualitative data using affinity diagrams

Identify priorities using Pareto diagrams

Identify which aspects of a problem are (1) within their control to solve, (2) within their influence to solve, or (3) outside their control to solve

Focuses on Apple Computer's launch of iTunes and iPod as a way to give Wintel users a relationship with Apple. Deals with issues of brand equity, corporate and brand goal setting, target selection, and matching product and service characteristics with goals and targets. Also allows for a discussion of channel partners, their interests, and their impact on the likely success or failure of a strategy.

Tom McKillop, CEO of AstraZeneca, faced the classic quandary of large pharmaceutical firms. The firm's patent for Prilosec (active ingredient omeprazole) was expiring. Severe cost-based competition from generic drug manufacturers was inevitable. Patent expirations were nothing new for the US$15.8 billion in revenues drug firm, but Prilosec was the firm's most successful drug franchise, with global sales of US$6.2 billion. How could the company innovate its way around the generic cost-based competition and avoid the drop in revenues associated with generic drug market entry? AstraZeneca had other follow-on drugs in the pipeline—namely Nexium, an improvement on the original Prilosec molecule. Additionally, the company had the opportunity to introduce its own version of generic omeprazole, hence becoming the first mover in the generic segment, and/or introduce an OTC version of omeprazole that might tap into other markets. Ideally, AstraZeneca would like to move brand-loyal Prilosec customers to Nexium. In this market, direct-to-consumer advertising has remarkable efficacy. Classical marketing challenges of pricing and promotion need to be resolved for the Nexium launch as well as possible product and place challenges for the generic or OTC opportunity. Which combination of marketing options will allow the firm to best sustain the value of the original omeprazole innovation?

The central objective of the case is to teach students how marketing variables can be used by first movers with diverse product portfolios to fend off severe price competition. These variables include pricing, promotion, product, and place (distribution) options as considered in the context of branded, generic, and OTC pharmaceutical market segments.

Bruce-Alfred Technologies (BAT) has built a successful business selling packaged software. Its marketing has long promised free technical support to all customers, a key point of differentiation from BAT's competitors. However, the call center providing tech support is now in crisis. Wait times for callers are unacceptably high, leading to low customer satisfaction and negative press. BAT managers are evaluating the Fast Track Proposal, which would create two classes of calls. Fast Track calls would be promised a one-minute wait but pay for service. Standard calls would still be free but be given lower priority and have no wait time guarantee. Considers both the operational impact of this change and the strategic considerations of backing away from free tech support.

To emphasize the impact of priorities and alternative ways of managing capacity, discuss different ways of pricing services--i.e., pay-per-transaction vs. subscription, and demonstrate the basics of the relation between utilization and delay.

This case features Bel-Brand's efforts to position its flagship brand The Laughing Cow in the United States. The challenges in this case are twofold. First, choose a viable position for a brand after a period of high growth following the South Beach Craze. The difficulty here is that the initial driver of the brand's position, the South Beach Craze, an environmental factor, is dwindling and is not sustainable. Second, the brand was receiving pressure from global stakeholders to try to unify the positioning in the United States with the global brand positioning. These are both challenges that were faced by the marketing team and raised in the case.

This case can be used to teach the following topics: 1) Developing a sustainable positioning. This case gives students the valuable experience of making a positioning choice and supporting the rationale for the positioning chosen. Furthermore, it demonstrates how a brand maintained a position after the initial support/argument for that position has dwindled or disappeared. 2) Managing global versus local positioning. The case also showcases a real life example of where positioning in the United States was extremely misaligned from the global positioning of the brand, and how the brand responded to this. 3) Write a positioning statement. One important exercise that students could be asked to do is write a positioning statement and become more familiar with concepts such as point-of-parity (POP), point-of-difference (POD), and reason-to-believe (RTB).