Case studies

This short case challenges students to review an array of corporate financial metrics and to match them to one of 13 listed industries. As such, students must use their intuition and common sense pertaining to the distinctive characteristics of, and the key differences between, the 13 named industries, and then identify the financial metrics that are most indicative of those traits.

The case study aims to provide students with an understanding of the challenges a business faces when operating in India. In conclusion of this study, students should be able to know why franchising is such a common way of delivering services to end users, describe the “place” decisions of physical channels, and be familiar with the strategic and tactical location considerations and devise a growth strategy to expand the business.

Situated at Tito’s Lane in North Goa, Tito’s was the discotheque founded by Tito Henry D’Souza in 1971. The company offered restaurant, concert space and nightclub services to music and party lovers from diverse locations. Ricardo D’Souza and David D’Souza (both brothers) spearheaded the business. Ricardo understood the growth of markets and the factors driving the growth in India. The key factors driving the Tito’s and pub, bar, café and lounge business in India were rising disposable incomes among Indians, nightlife parties by young individuals and preference for quality food and alcoholic beverages among the customers. By seeing the opportunities in 2022, Ricardo considered expanding its business across India. How should Ricardo move to expand its business and offerings? What strategies should they devise for the growth of the business?

This case study is designed for use in undergraduate programs like Bachelor of Business Administration. It is ideal for strategy and services marketing. Theoretical frameworks like the Ansoff matrix are suitable for analyzing the case study to understand the growth of the business.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

This case studies the growth of OYO Hotels (OYO) to illustrate the operational processes necessary to succeed in the service sector. The case allows for a discussion of employee- and customer-management systems, tech-driven solutions, and profit drivers. The material unfolds OYO's growth and its solution for making economy hotels discoverable and bookable online.

The case raises a series of questions around OYO's business model, its ability to translate across global markets, and growth potential. It has been successfully taught in a second-year MBA class on the management of service operations.

This case is used in Darden's required first-year course, “Strategic Thinking and Action.”

In 2015, Steve and Heidi Crandall, the founders of Devils Backbone Brewing, LLC (DBB), were looking back on eight years of unanticipated success and significant growth. DBB had created a destination, a brand, and beer that drew people from all over, and it was the largest craft brewery in its region. The entire community, not just loyal beer drinkers, had supported DBB. In addition to funding and zoning accommodations, so many local residents had built their own economic lives around what had been their “little brewery that could.”

But the success had brought challenges, specifically in terms of growth. DBB was consistently not meeting demand in its existing markets and was receiving complaints about out-of-stocks. The Crandalls and their team had to figure out how to grow with, or preferably ahead of, demand for DBB's product. Should DBB build further capacity despite an already exhausted line of credit? Should it employ a contract brewer despite the local authenticity concerns such a move might stir up? Or should it just keep trying to manage business within its existing footprint, comfortably serving its loyal customer base?

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.

The learning outcomes of this study are to identify and discuss ways in which energy consumption in a residential educational institute can be reduced by improving demand-side energy management for sustainable development; summarise the challenges that an institute faces in transitioning to a more environmentally friendly mode of operations concerning energy management; illustrate the difference between operating expense and capital expenditure methods used for solar rooftop projects from the perspective of Goa Institute of Management (GIM); and analyse different project proposals for solar rooftop power generation energy using capital budgeting techniques.

Dr Ajit Parulekar, director at GIM, was evaluating the steps taken over the past few years for sustainable energy management to understand their impact and consider ways in which to take the environmental sustainability agenda forward. One of the projects that he was considering was the rooftop solar power plant. GIM had received proposals from several different vendors and evaluated three proposals out of these. He needed to decide on the capacity of the rooftop solar power generation and the type of contract that he should get into for the implementation of the project. This case study describes the differences and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of all the mentioned models with respect to GIM.

This case study is suitable for post-graduate level management students, as well as for undergraduate-level finance and management students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS4: Environmental management.

The expected learning outcomes are to understand key frameworks and tools for global leaders through the application of widely used theoretical frameworks on a written business case, understand the role of the leader in a team, apply theories of change to situations to anticipate courses of events and evaluate and apply relevant theory to assess a leader’s character and personality.

Hassan Allam Holding (HAH) was a family-owned Egyptian engineering, construction and infrastructure company managed by co-Chief Executive Officers and brothers Amr and Hassan Allam. HAH experienced significant growth and success, but eventually, it reached a point where its family governance structure could no longer sustain further growth. Amr and Hassan realized this and started planning to transition toward a corporate governance structure. In 2016, they managed to get the International Finance Corporation on board as an equity partner, and this helped propel the governance transition, but they still needed to find a way to convince the family to step back. This case study can help students understand the issues that may occur during a change within an established organization of any size. The case study considers the implications the change may have on the leader, his personality and his character and how it shapes the leader in question as an outcome. This case study has been designed to be used in one or two sessions and can be offered in management or leadership courses at an undergraduate or graduate level.

This case study is intended for graduate and undergraduate students studying a leadership or management course. It can help students comprehend the challenges of a family-owned business and how change is associated with such businesses. The case also considers how leaders are shaped by effectively managing conflict. This case can be considered as Level 1 on a 1–3 scale, as the full description of the situation is given in the case and the task of the students is to analyze the leader and his decisions using various academic concepts and theories (Erskin et al., 2003).

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

Few cases allow the student to understand the relationship between brand strategy, marketing strategy, implementation, and analysis. While some conceive of the process as being sequential, this case demonstrates that in fact, this process is more fluid, and that implementation and analysis impact subsequent strategy.

This field-based case provides a rare glimpse into the turnaround of a brand that was all but dead. After Buick suffered more than five decades of declining business results and an inferior brand image versus all rivals, few thought that the brand could be resuscitated. This case provides a valuable under-the-hood look at how the Buick team, over time, progresses through a series of marketing improvements all anchored on an evolved strategy. Specifically, Buick introduced a shift in brand strategy behind an evolved brand essence statement (i.e., brand positioning), improved product lineup, new-to-the-world innovation, enhanced dealership service, and more compelling advertising. The results led to a record number of product awards, significantly improved advertising measures, improved service ratings, and better business results.

Despite significant improvement across multiple dimensions of the business, Buick still trailed key competitors on one of the most important measures Buick tracked—the brand momentum rating—suggesting that there was still more work needed to complete the brand turnaround. The case introduces Molly Peck, the new marketing director on Buick, who is wondering what more, if anything, Buick should do. The material allows for instruction around marketing strategy and the process of converting it into implementation through the use of a creative brief.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to identify and discuss competition using Porter’s five forces, analyse and understand the enablers and challenges that impacted Rocky Brands’ growth and recommend a solution in relation to Rocky Brands’ growth strategy.

This case study investigates Rocky Brands, a South African manufacturer and distributor of cleaning products in the retail market. The case was set in November 2022 and highlights the important events ranging from the company’s founding in 2011 up until 2022. This case aims to study strategy in the South African fast moving consumer goods industry. At the time of writing the case study, Rocky Brands was operating across South Africa, with their main manufacturing warehouse in Johannesburg and a subsidiary manufacturing warehouse in Durban. They were changing the Durban warehouse to a distribution warehouse, as they planned to manufacture primarily from a bigger warehouse in Johannesburg. Rishav Juglall, the main protagonist, is the founder and managing director of Rocky Brands. Rocky Brands imports and redistributes several of the brands that the company sells, including Weiman’s, Wright’s and Goo Gone. They also manufacture their own line of products in South Africa under the Oakmont brand. Juglall acknowledges that their sales and revenue have grown yearly, but they have recently saturated the market and reached a plateau. Juglall needs to determine whether he should diversify into Africa, expand his product range or enter the market for private label cleaning products.

The case study’s primary focus is on strategy in an emerging market. This case study is suited to undergraduate students studying Porter’s five competitive forces, SWOT analysis (see teaching note exhibit) or the Ansoff matrix in the fields of strategy, marketing or macroeconomics. This case study can be taught in courses such as decision-making, environment of business, leadership or strategic implementation. The case study will teach students how to apply the frameworks to a business and assist students in determining which option is best for the business.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

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.