Case studies

In 2007, Best Buy was the leading electronics retailer in the United States with more than 941 stores, revenue totaling $31 billion, and a market cap of $21 billion. In 2005, Best Buy had adopted a new business model, culture, and customer-segmentation template called Customer Centricity. This move created volatility in the price of Best Buy stock because of the higher-than-expected employee costs that went with this new way of doing business and the difficulty of executing the old and the new business models simultaneously while the new model was rolled out. Best Buy responded to Wall Street's short-term focus in a myriad of ways. It first asked for investor patience, and stressed the strong operating results achieved in Best Buy stores operating under the new model. But in June 2007, after the stock dropped again, the CEO knew he had to decide whether to open more Best Buy stores, increase the company's dividend, or increase the stock-repurchase program.

This short case could be handed out at the end of class discussion on “J&L Railroad” [UVA-F-1053] in preparation for the following class, or if students are more experienced with hedging and option pricing, the instructor may choose to cover both cases in a single class period. It is the companion case to “J&L Railroad” [UVA-F-1053], and presents more technical issues regarding the hedging problem by requiring students to understand option-pricing principles. The board likes the CFO's hedging recommendations, but it wants a more careful analysis of the bank's prices for its risk-management products: the caps and floors. Besides demanding an understanding of option pricing, this case puts particular emphasis on the calculation and use of implied volatility.

The learning outcomes of this study are to recall the fundamental concept of revenue management in the hotel industry (remembering); explain the various performance measures used to evaluate room revenue in hotels (understanding); use revenue management strategies to improve room revenue in hotel operations (applying); and examine and evaluate the optimal solution for revenue enhancement, considering factors such as capacity management, duration control and differential pricing (analyzing).

This case study delves into the challenges faced by Hotel King’s Cross, a business hotel located in Pune, Maharashtra, in the year 2022. A week before Christmas Eve, Soham Dande, the hotel’s revenue manager, sought a meeting with Rohan Chopra, the director of sales and marketing, to discuss “revenue optimization for the hotel.”

During their meeting, Dande mentioned that the hotel had fallen behind its budgeted room sales targets for 2022 across various metrics, such as room booking nights, occupancy percentage, average room rate and revenue per available room. Furthermore, the hotel was trailing behind its competitors. The situation was compounded by the management’s decision to raise the targets for 2023 by 5%–7%, factoring in upcoming events, competitive performance and pandemic-related losses over the past two years. Chopra faced the dilemma of formulating an action plan to achieve the ambitious 2023 targets and establish Hotel King’s Cross as a market leader.

Students undertaking executive development programs and graduate-level courses in non-profit hospitality and tourism management, as well as revenue management courses in the executive MBA, management development and graduate MBA programs, may all benefit from this case study.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS12: Tourism and hospitality.

The Home Depot case is a great story. It's about entrepreneurship, growth, CEO leadership, and the dramatic impact, good and bad, a CEO can have on a company's growth culture, strategy, and performance. Home Depot had faced market growth challenges for the last seven years as it tried in numerous ways to reignite its growth engine. The case explores the growth strategies of CEOs Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, and Blank's successor Bob Nardelli, a former GE executive. After examining Home Depot's growth history, the case challenges students to devise a growth strategy for the company under a new CEO.

Tiffany & Company was the leading U.S. luxury jewelry brand, generating more than $2.6 billion in revenue through 167 retail outlets globally and from catalogue and Internet sales. For nearly 170 years, Tiffany had managed its brand. In February 2007, a hedge fund, Trian Fund Management LP, announced that it had bought a 5.5% stake in Tiffany, and became its largest shareholder. Trian believed that Tiffany was undervalued and stated that it wanted to help the company “improve its earnings per share by addressing various operational and strategic issues.” In response, Tiffany began to consider different actions to increase shareholder value.

TourAmerica is negotiating a master contract with Voyager Inn International (Bethesda) for hotel rooms during the 1995 tourist season. Issues under consideration include number of rooms during peak, mid-, and off-periods, room rates, breakfast prices, and the cost of ancillary services. While the hotel manager is evaluated on the basis of several criteria, including adjusted daily rates, occupancy rates, and food and beverage profitability, and is also provided with a utility scheme to facilitate trade-offs among the criteria, TourAmerica uses an effective cost per registrant (adjusted for intangibles). These two approaches provide an opportunity to contrast measurement schemes and to justify the use of utility functions. This case is a role-play exercise and must be used in conjunction with “Voyager Inn International” (UVA-QA-0463).

Dialogue in Darkness (DID) is a global social enterprise, which provides products and services such as workshops, exhibitions and activities in the dark in China. The corporate workshops are designed for companies, institutions and government agencies to provide unique leadership training and some other training in teamwork, communication, innovation and change management. And education workshops are aimed at providing young people with unique leadership training and training in teamwork, innovation and empathy and so on for the educational institutions. Over the past five years, DID, headquartered in Shanghai, has expanded to Beijing, Chengdu and Shenzhen, realizing strategic coverage of East, West, North and South of China. DID achieved break-even within less than one year since its inception. Its sound and healthy development offers an innovative way for the sustainable development of social enterprises.

Anhui Winall Hi-Tech Seed Co., Ltd., a high-tech seed enterprise integrating crop seed research, production, processing and marketing at home and abroad, is the first seed company listed on GEM in China. Its main business is research and development, breeding and marketing of seeds of hybrid rice, edible rape, cotton, melon and vegetable, with hybrid rice as its leading product. In terms of business model, Winall Hi-tech is engaged in procurement, production, sales and promotion of modified varieties and after-sales service. However, Winall Hi-tech also has to face a few potential problems.

As an Internet fashion brand, HSTYLE has developed into an Internet enterprise with annual sales of 1.5 billion RMB within 10 years, establishing its position as the top industry performer in China. This case studies HSTYLES' innovation in business model and organizational management. HSTYLE's workgroups have achieved the balance of responsibilities and rights in a small team of three members at minimum, while mobilizing the enthusiasm and initiative of the line managers with the support of public service sector. At the same time, HSTYLE enriches its brand style, establishes a fashion cloud platform, and integrates individual and organizational consumers into its existing fashion design, manufacturing and sales system.

Against the backdrop of IBM Personal Computer Business's acquisition by Lenovo Group, this case introduces the remodeling process of Lenovo's HR organization and development team, during which the company's 5P principle, namely “Plan (think clearly before making promise), Perform (promise is to be fulfilled), Prioritize (company's interest is top priority), Practice (make progress every day in every year), Pioneering (venture any experiment to be a trailblazer), takes shape. After learning about Lenovo's recruitment of internationalized talents, cross-cultural coaches for senior leaders, cultural development in internationalization and risk aversion in international operations, we can understand what Lenovo's HR team does to avoid conflicts in corporate culture and ethnic culture in cross-border mergers and acquisitions and integration, and how to adjust and change the HR management system.

In China, the clothing industry, featured by labor-intensive operation and low added value, is facing a major challenge, namely how to change the pattern of China's clothing industry by means of technology, innovation, originality and so on, and mitigate inventory pressure. The Red Collar Group presented in this case not only realizes zero inventory, but also achieves a year-on-year growth of more than 150% of annual sales in 2015. All of this can be attributed to the Internet zero inventory and customization model which took 10 years to build up: Using new information technology, collect personalized and fragmented customer needs, and design a production module involving business process reengineering and IT/IS integration.

This case is about “Red”, a cross-border e-commerce platform developed from a community which was built to share overseas shopping experience. With sharp insights into the consumption behavior of urban white-collar women and riding on its community e-commerce advantage, “Red”, a cross-border e-commerce startup, pulled in three rounds of financing within just 16 months regardless of increasingly competitive market. On the other hand, well-established platforms such as T-mall International and Joybuy also stepped in, and their involvement will also speed up the industry integration and usher in a reshuffling period. Confronted with the “price war” started by those e-commerce giants, in what ways can “Red” adjust its shopping experience and after-sales services to enhance the brand value and sharpen its edge?

Suning Group launched Suning.com when its chain stores were developing at the highest speed, realizing the transformation to an Internet retailer. Suning continued to follow the growth strategy of “Technological transformation and Smart Services”, and was renamed Suning Commerce Co. Ltd. It launched a business model of “e-commerce + stores + retail service providers”. Riding on the brand new O2O business model, Suning is thinking and practicing from simple donation to actual implementation, from constructing public welfare network to extending CSR ecosystem in a bid to advance towards deeper and more extensive Internet economy, and to create greater social value.

T Education is a leading educational science and technology enterprise in China with technology-driven, talent intimacy and quality leadership as the core development objectives. Since its inception, it has been committed to creating better learning experience for children. As the predecessor of T-education, X-education was founded in Beijing in 2003. At first, it mainly provided after-school math counseling for school-age children. Over the past 10 years, its business has been expanding, covering almost every aspect of school-age education. This case studies accounting issues and business ethics challenges that firms may face when they transform from a single (traditional education) line of business to a multiple channel business.

In the increasingly competitive leisure food market, Lyfen has become a well-known leisure food brand in Shanghai after long-term independent operation. Insisting on chain retail specializing in various kinds of leisure food, Lyfen captures the consumption habits of consumers, timely launches new products in line with consumers' preferences, and leads the consumption trend. Its main competitors include other leading enterprises in China's leisure food chain industry, such as Three Squirrels, BESTORE and Baiweilin. The company's products are mainly divided into nine categories, totaling more than 900 special products. Some products under Lyfen's name have established good reputation in East China. Regarding business model, Lyfen has devoted its full energy to the construction of brand and channel, and created a unique asset-light model, which mainly involves sourcing and sales two chains.

As the operational entity of China Yiwu Commodity Market, Yiwugou is designed to integrate online and offline business to upgrade the physical market by relying on and serving the physical market. It aims to highlight Yiwu Market where every physical shop is related to an online shop, thus protecting honest trade. The strong support from more than 70,000 physical shops owned by Yiwugou ensures the first-hand supply that poses a problem for most e-commerce merchants, and equips Yiwugou with competitive advantage. In terms of marketing, Yiwugou is now aiming at commodity markets across the country through the “Center Plan”, and advertising in public space such as airports. Relying on physical market, Yiwugou Hall distributes commodities with Yiwu's features and superior sources of goods to other places, and connects local market players to Yiwu market, establishing an unobstructed supply channel.

In the light of the case study and the accompanying case study questions, the incumbent would be able to gain a comprehensive understanding on the theoretical underpinnings of retail store expansion, identify the challenges for expanding a brand into emerging markets such as India and apply various marketing strategies aimed at in-depth analysis retail expansion. Learners can further comprehend the importance of brand communication incorporated by the brand to attract its customer subset.

It was in December 2022, when Mason Chatterjee, the Indian brand head of Armani Exchange (A|X), was confronted with the managerial dilemma whether launching the second store in the city of Ahmedabad would be a right decision. Another issue that was troubling him was how to go about launching a second store in a city which was not a home to other luxury sublabels. The case study illustrates the decisional aspect of retail expansion adopted by Chatterjee, considering the distinct managerial perspectives. Chatterjee found potential in the city of Ahmedabad, owing to an increased number of high-net-worth individuals and other macro factors. The case study is primarily an outcome of research carried out at A|X store at Ahmedabad One mall, Ahmedabad, for over a fortnight in the month of February 2023. The expansion decision of Chatterjee proved to be a success in the city of Ahmedabad reaching a sales figure of INR 1 crore (US$130,344.11) in the very first month of its launch. However, he was confronted with the managerial dilemma of further expansion, just six months after the launch of the latest expansion.

The case study is intended for advanced undergraduates or postgraduate programs in management or electives such as marketing, retail management and strategic management. It has not only been specifically designed for teaching the concept of retail expansion but can also be used to integrate contexts on brand’s merchandise mix, retail positioning, visual merchandising and brand communication. The case study has an overview of each of these elements. The instructor may choose them into the context for a wider encompassing detailed lesson or particularly on the main aspect of the case.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS8: Marketing

Upon completion of the case study, the students will be able to apply business upscaling strategies to an upcycling social enterprise that is embracing a circular economy approach by using the Ansoff growth matrix; to analyze strategies for transition to circularity using the butterfly diagram tool for both business and personal use; to indulge in upcycling exercises for a used product of their choice, not only unleashing their creative potential but also contributing to an idea that might get them to win a contest; to analyze different operational problems and efficiency opportunities that arise when a company takes on social and environmental causes as a business opportunity; and to strategize how a social enterprise can be sustained and made for-profit by applying business strategies.

This case study covers the concepts of upcycling under the gamut of circular economy, a concept that has become more of a strategy to sustain and survive in today’s world. This case is about Rimagined, an upcycling company that could be a model for circular ideas and upcycling of stuff. This case study narrates the growth and the challenges faced in upcycling and encourages students to ideate a new design for any upcycling item of their choice. This case will also make students strategize the expansion plan for Rimagined. Shailaja Rangarajan is the protagonist of this case study who started this social enterprise to make a difference and do her bit. Sustaining a social enterprise requires business acumen and risk-bearing capacities like any other business. Rangarajan was facing the dilemma of expansion and was trying out several feasible options. Rimagined had been unable to attract investors because their expectations of quick returns could not be immediately fulfilled. Investors focused more on waste management as an industry and not on upcycling as a separate area of work.

This case study is suitable for students of MBA or executive MBA level. Specifically, this case study can be used in business strategies and circular economy courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 4: Environmental management.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to analyze the marketing mix strategy of a firm, discuss the importance of a generic strategy to gain a competitive advantage, analyze the basis of consumer segmentation in furniture and highlight the importance of positioning in influencing the overall marketing mix strategy of a firm.

It was April 18, 2022. Puneet Singh Seehra (Seehra), the owner and director of Shearling Skins Private Limited (Shearling), was visibly worried as he was looking at the recent sales report. Shearling was in the business of manufacturing premium-quality furniture for corporate clients. Seehra was happy about the growth of his company. However, he was lately concerned about the declining sales figures. Some important questions were troubling Seehra. Was competition eating into his business? How could he differentiate Shearling from competition? What was the right marketing strategy for a market dominated by unorganized competitors and a few major players? His head spinning, he leaned back on his chair as he looked out of his office window.

The case study can be taught in a graduate-level course in marketing or strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 8 Marketing

The case study has several objectives: to gauge the evaluation of the direct-to-consumer industry in the economy of India, to analyse the competition of the brands, to ascertain the evolution of smaller direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands on the purchasing capacity of consumers, to analyse challenges in branding in Tier 2 and 3 cities and to evaluate the strategic branding decisions of Mamaearth.

During her pregnancy, Ghazal Alagh and her husband Varun Alagh, the co-founders of Mamaearth, were looking for some good and natural products for their baby’s skincare. However, she could not find products that were 100% safe. Hence, as a concerned mother, she started using a few hands-on home remedies for her baby, which were 100% organic, and then the idea clicked to her to start a baby care brand named Mamaearth, which later also included personal care products. The company started as a DTC/internet-first brand in 2016, which only used to sell products online without any intermediaries when it was still trying to make its way in the market and was aware of the stiff competition by giants such as Hindustan Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, who were ruling the market for decades. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the market saw a shift in consumer buying patterns. There was greater use of e-commerce touch points for shopping, as various digital platforms such as the official site of products, social media and mobile platforms were used by consumers during the pandemic, leading to digitalization in buying and digitalization of consumer shopping journey. These technology platforms were expected to play a substantial role in reaching and creating consumer awareness, transaction and retention post-COVID according to reports by Deloitte 2020. Moreover, such a shift in behaviour amidst the COVID-19 pandemic shot up sales of this DTC brand and made itself the big shot it is today, where they were looking to get into an initial public offering in just seven years of its launch. They re-evaluated their strategy, which helped them become the biggest brand in no time.

This case study is suitable for Doctor of Philosophy students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.