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This case can be used in marketing management as well as consumer behaviour courses.

This case is suitable to use in advanced undergraduate levels, MBA and MSc in marketing courses that cover topics related to market segmentation and marketing mix strategies.

This case highlights the dilemma of an entrepreneur and a manager of a restaurant who were to take a decision about the sustainability of their restaurant business. Balqis Restaurant was owned by Danny who was a retiree from Telekom Malaysia. He wanted to open a restaurant business after he came back from his long holiday trip. He conducted market research to find a suitable place to open his Arabic restaurant. He assigned Waleed Masood Abdullah as the manager of Balqis Restaurant. Finally, in June 2010, he opened his long awaited restaurant at Gombak, Kuala Lumpur. The restaurant was known as Qasar before the name was changed to Balqis in 2015 because of copyright issues related to Saba’ restaurant at Cyberjaya. The restaurant was well managed under Danny’s supervision for 4 years and successfully won customers’ hearts and loyalty before he decided to give full responsibility to Waleed in March 2014. Danny trusted Waleed because he taught and trained him. However, under Waleed’s management, Balqis started to lose its customers. Waleed also started to branch out the restaurant to different places in different states; one in Ipoh, and the other in Perak. He invested much money on renovation for all three branches, but one of the restaurants closed down in September 2014. This is because of the fact that they could no longer bear the cost of operations for the restaurant. However, he failed to learn from the mistake; they set up another restaurant, which was in Kuantan, in the same month. The sales were not that encouraging but it did show gradual improvement; yet, they once again sold it to another Arab businessman. Waleed realized his failure in managing the restaurant business in August 2015. He again opted to open another new branch which was questioned by Danny. He was in a rush to open it by the end of December 2015 to ensure that the additional profits from the current restaurants could cover the variables costs if the new restaurants were launched. Based on that, the owner had to make a decision about whether a new branch should be opened or whether they should just retain their restaurant in Gombak.

The learning objectives of using this case are as follows. 1. Knowledge enhancement: to help students in understanding the problems faced by a restaurant in expanding its market; to make students aware that a properly blended marketing mix is the key to business success and to broaden students’ views and understanding in targeting the proper market segment in formulating an effective marketing strategy. 2. Skills building: to be able to identify the best marketing strategic decisions to manage the restaurant business for its survival and to develop students’ ability to analyse the existing situation to come up with a viable and effective solution. 3. Attitudinal: to help the students to have intellectual openness in accepting different ways of finding solutions for a particular problem and to assist students in making the right move at the right time.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 8: Marketing.

area E-Business; Corporate Strategy; Strategic Management; Operation Management.

level/applicability Senior undergraduate; MBA; EMBA.

overview After development for 10 years, JD was now China’s second largest business-to-customer (B2C) e-retailer and the largest in self-operated sector. It was September 2015 when Liu Qiangdong was deciding whether to persist with JD’s self-operated model and the heavy investment in the self-built logistics system. JD’s business model had been functioning well. However, as JD grew bigger and bigger, it became too expensive to expand its logistics system. JD had not made a profit since it raised funds from investors. Liu had to come up with a good proposal before the next monthly meeting to convince them that JD would finally overtake its biggest rival, Alibaba which ran on a different business model. In addition, JD was exploiting the rural and the global markets, as well as a new business in internet finance. Facing challenges and dilemmas, should JD persist with its model? How could Liu align short-term profitability with long-run development? How could JD overcome attacks from Alibaba and other competitors?

learning outcomes This case is appropriate for courses in e-business and strategy, particularly those with a strong focus on doing e-business in emerging markets (e.g. China). After studying the case, students should be able to: understand the e-commerce market in China; understand business models and key strategies of e-retailers; identify and analyse the pros and cons of the self-operated business model and self-built logistics system in e-commerce; learn how to evaluate performance, strategies and business models of e-commerce companies; and extract key trends in the market and compare different strategies.

materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Business strategy.

This case study is appropriate for MBA and EMBA courses, especially for courses oriented to emerging markets such as China. It can be used in Business Strategic Management or similar courses, combined with the methodology lectures of Managing Entry Modes and Competitive Strategy.

This case study provides material for understanding/studying the development of a large Chinese software enterprise.

As a result of Chinese ITO and BPO market in the face of re-structuring in 2012, Huawei invested in ChinaSoft in May and Vance info merged with HiSoft in August, both of which make ChinaSoft the third largest market-share owner. However, ChinaSoft has a dilemma in its strategic planning for the next three years. If it cannot break through the suppression from the first and the second placed companies, it may lag behind very soon. If it strives for the No. 2 position in market share, is organic growth or M&A strategy the right approach to adopt? Thus, ChinaSoft is now in need of strategic reform and restructuring. The case study analyzes the approaches that Chinese enterprises can adopt in order to sustain overall cost leadership strategies and avoid the related risks in the ITO and BPO industry.

This case study intends to encourage students to learn and use methodologies such as Porter's competitive strategy framework; Rugman and Collinson's theory, selecting and managing entry modes; four basic global strategies, by Hill and Jones.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

1. Understand how the corporate lifecycle could trigger a necessity of making a tough decision to develop new business ventures based on the corporate lifecycle theory; and how changes in the external environment could hasten such a decision.

2. Analyze how a company can leverage its internal organizational structure to share and utilize cross-departmental resources and capabilities to support new venture businesses according to the synergy effect perspective.

3. Undertake a resource-based view analysis to evaluate the external and internal resources needed for corporate new venture development.

4. Identify the best course of action for the decision-maker by comparing, contrasting, applying and evaluating the two different models of corporate new venture development in the e-commerce business: the centralized organizational model and the decentralized organizational model and evaluate the pros and cons associated with each mode in the context of Dahan’s external and internal environments.

Since its inception in 2003, Dahan’s traditional business in SMS (Short Message Services) and data had gained thousands of customers across China and won top rankings in the industry. Despite its achievements, Dahan encountered difficulties when it entered the new e-commerce market, as the domain knowledge about the new business was very different from the domain knowledge in its traditional business. Furthermore, the emerging B2B e-commerce industry was very different from the traditional business in that the former mainly targeted corporate clients and the latter targeted individual customers in the B2C industry. This case examined the critical decisions that Xiaofen Huang, the CEO of Dahan E-Commerce Corporation and Co-Founder of Dahan Tricom Group, had to make and external, especially Internal, resources the Dahan Group needed in developing its new venture.

Specifically, this case explored how Huang would go through the mental process to make the best possible decision to help the company not only to survive, but also thrive in the rapidly-changing and competitive digital environment: it urgently needed to finalize an organizational incubation model to support the further development of its e-commerce and future new venture activities with two options to choose from: the centralized organizational model or the decentralized organizational model. A key challenge facing Huang was to decide which option was best suited to motivate salespeople in different departments to help one another, especially in the new B2B e-commerce business and to grow that new business.

In the case, Dahan’s growth aspirations and its motivation to transform its traditional business into a new e-commerce business were discussed. Second, when external challenges were examined, how Dahan explored the B2B e-commerce business using a trial-and-error learning process was explained. Third, when internal challenges were examined, how Dahan incubated its new B2B e-commerce business and its practices for leveraging and sharing resources/capabilities, as well as cross-departmental and cross-divisional collaboration through a resource-based lens, were illustrated. Last, the most critical learning in the case presented an immediate decision-making dilemma on which organizational incubation models to choose from for further new business development, where students learn to analyze both external and internal factors and consider Dahan’s available resource and founder’s aspiration, available strategic options to derive a best possible decision to suit the stage of the company’s lifecycle and founders’ vision.

This case was designed for use in undergraduate courses on corporate innovation, new venture development, corporate innovation, corporate entrepreneurship, e-commerce and growth.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

– It is related to managerial accounting including style of management, evaluation method, risk management, responsibility accounting and reporting.

– It is suitable for both Bachelor's degree and Master's degree students to apply their comprehensive knowledge of managerial accounting on the case with relevance for the courses including managerial accounting, cost accounting, cost analysis and managerial accounting seminars.

– Information given by the case informs about the decentralized management structure and style of a data communication company, Data Communication Company Limited. The delegation of authorization is used as the main control of the company to monitor the performance of each department. The case study describes the company's specific methods as well as the monitoring procedures and the reports. In addition, it also addresses the management's concerns regarding risks as it relates to the current market situation.

– To study managerial accounting courses by using this case, it certainly enhances effectiveness and efficiency of accounting curriculum. This case specifically provides a realistic perspective, comprehensive information and solution capability relevant to real world challenges, which can be applied to managerial accounting.

– Teaching note.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to recall the fundamental concepts of group arrival and the check-in process within the hotel industry; explain the various operational procedures used to enhance a smooth group check-in in hotels; use the steps defined in group check-in procedure to improve service efficiency in hotel operations; and examine and evaluate the optimal solution for a smooth group check-in for hotels.

“The Big Fat Indian Wedding” delves into the challenges faced by Hotel Plaza Blu, a business hotel in Pune, Maharashtra, in 2023. A big wedding group was arriving at the hotel, which comprised almost 350 adults and 120 children. Mr Parag Patil, the front office manager, had done all the preparations for group arrival but just one hour before the arrival Mr Suresh Menon, the group coordinator, came and informed that 150 additional guests would be arriving, as the other hotel, where arrangements for these guests were made, had a major electricity generator breakdown and the hotel was in complete blackout. Patil had the challenge of formulating an action plan to achieve a smooth group check-in with the last-minute changes.

Executive development programmes and graduate-level courses in non-profit hospitality and tourism management might benefit from this case study. The operational management courses in the BBA, UG management programmes might all benefit from using this case study.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and Logistics.