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EC-Creamery is an Eau Claire, WI based dairy processor selling yogurt products throughout the Midwest region of the U.S. Inaccurate forecasts have wreaked havoc in the company, leading to frequent stockouts and creating operational challenges. Your task is to draw on the information you obtain from your colleagues to develop sales forecasts, document your choices and procedures and share your thoughts and insights on issues related to forecasting and sales & operations planning.

The learning outcomes of this paper is as follows: to strategically evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, threats and resulting opportunities that face an entrepreneurial startup. To apply the academic principle of competitiveness and evaluate the competitive advantage of the business and its competitors through the application of the Porter’s five forces model. To evaluate the contextual tensions that entrepreneurial ventures face, and how these affect the growth of a sustainable business. To develop the skills to create a target market analysis by using segmentation, targeting and positioning principles. To evaluate the best strategic actions to grow a business through the lens of sustainable entrepreneurship, by using principles such as the triple bottom line and people, opportunity, context and deal and framework.

The case look at business challenges faced by an entrepreneur, Renshia Manuel, the CEO of GrowBox, as she attempts to balance the profitability and social impact of her venture in Cape Town, South Africa. GrowBox sells customisable self-contained wooden boxes equipped with all materials to grow a variety of vegetables and herbs for consumers. Large volumes of boxes are often purchased by corporate clients who donated these to lower-income communities as part of their social responsibility projects. Additional landscaping and food-scaping services make up another revenue stream of the business. The case study documents the conception of GrowBox in 2016 and the growth of the business in the first four years of operation. The theft of equipment, and difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff due to the volatile social climate of where the business was situated, have put the business under great financial pressure and reduced the efficiency of business processes. The case highlights a number of the harsh realities of sustainable entrepreneurship where both profitability and social impact are vitally important to ensure business sustainability. The case dilemma involves the choices faced by Renshia at the beginning of 2020 regarding the future, sustainable growth of the business.

The target audience for this teaching case is primarily business students at a postgraduate level, particularly those studying in the fields of sustainable entrepreneurship and social development, as well as marketing in emerging markets. This teaching case is intended to be used as a case study in postgraduate business programmes such as postgraduate diplomas in management, specialist Masters programmes such as those focussed on entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship or social development, as well as those studying a Master of Business Administration or related executive education programme.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to understand the changing landscape of media and entertainment industry, to understand the difference between display advertising and native advertising, to know the standing of BuzzFeed in the industry and to know the strategic actions of BuzzFeed under the current competitive business environment.

Founded in 2006 as a viral lab, by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson, with the aim of tracking viral content, it caused disruption in the market with its entry and grew very rapidly. It was valued at $1.5bn in 2015, having raised money from numerous investors. The revenue of BuzzFeed was driven by the concept of native advertising. Catchy headlined articles conveyed the sense that BuzzFeed might be charging advertisers on basis of clicks, but this was not entirely true. Instead, BuzzFeed charged a fee from its clients for creating custom content targeting the customer base of the client. However, the year 2015 went tough for BuzzFeed when, as per the reports by Financial Times, it fell short of achieving its targeted revenue of US$250m by US$80m. It forced the company to revise and lower its target revenues for the year 2016 as well. The combined worldwide traffic to BuzzFeed saw a decline of up to 14 per cent. As Claire marketing head looked out of the window and pondered over the slashed revenue projections and the content related issues, the question on her mind was would native advertising sustain BuzzFeed in the longer run? BuzzFeed was known for its viral content and native advertising would involve finding a balance between what is good for the advertisers' brand and what will become viral. Buzzfeed ran a risk of losing brands to other modes of advertisement if they felt that native advertisement, which disguises the product within the content, was not meeting their expectations.

The case is targeted at students of post-graduation and under-graduation programs in Business Administration.

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

Marketing