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In 2013, ‘Fashion Destination’, a well-established clothing retailer considered setting up a clothing and accessories rental service. They hired a market research agency ‘Wright & Company’ to conduct a research on the sustainability and profitability of such a business model. The consultants collected primary data and did an extensive analysis for Fashion Destination. Based on the secondary research, expert interviews, extensive qualitative and quantitative research the consultants recommended the management to start a clothes and accessories rental service but suggested that the product offering be limited to formal clothes only and offer accessories. Vishal had doubts despite of the go-ahead signal from consultancy. He wondered what recommendations should he accept and which needed further verification.

‘Fashion Destination’ was a prominent one-stop shop of clothing retail in Ahmedabad which has faced business slowdown in the last 5 years. Vishal, who had recently taken over the management wondered, would renting of premium clothing be a good business model to get back to the business. While pondering over the issue Vishal did some secondary research had found that the Indian retail industry is growing at a fast rate and that the online rental service is an upcoming trend in Indian market. Vishal hired an external market research agency ‘Wright & Company’, before changing the business model, to clarify certain doubts regarding renting clothes as a social stigma, willingness of people to rent clothes, requirement of physical store, about target consumers and product assortment.

Since the concept of rental clothing business was new for Indian market and very few players were dealing in it, ‘Wright & Company’ consulting did an exploratory research to understand the model. Through two expert interviews and extensive survey of the business model of existing players across countries, they developed better understanding of kinds of business models, range of products offered, customer expectations and concerns regarding such service and business challenges. The research showed the purchase intention but further detailed primary research was required to validate the findings. To conduct the quantitative survey they designed a questionnaire but was not sure of the appropriateness of the questionnaire and thus wanted to pre-test it and construct a final detailed questionnaire. Vishal also wondered if he needed to do more extensive in-depth qualitative research.

This case was successfully taught in a second-year MBA marketing course on the science of behavior change. It would be suitable for first-year MBA and executive education programs. The material would work well on courses on women in business, women as leaders and women in data science. The female protagonist creates a tech platform and uses a data-driven model.

Marketing – it was used in a module around leveraging existing insights and creating new ones in marketing strategies. The course is structured around a “pathway to behavior change” framework. This case focuses on the analysis segment of the model, introduces targeted behavioral challenge(s) and lends itself to identifying consumer insights, biases and behaviors. It uses that analysis to learn about the market, competition and gaps to fill.

This case uses a startup in the retail industry to explore the leverage of behavioral science to enrich a business model and structure a marketing campaign. The material unfolds the testing of an innovative process and use of persuasion to align business practices with human behavior and scale. In addition, it gives the opportunity to discuss how a minimal tech solution could bring in market data and provide a test platform to larger clients.The founder of Rohvi, Sara Whiffen, created a platform that allowed shoppers to buy clothing items from local retail stores, use them and after a few wears, return the items for partial store credit. The business model was based on Whiffen’s experience in the automobile industry with used cars. Following her first few years in the business, Whiffen had to make some decisions around engaging clients on two sides – retailers and consumers. How can an innovative startup leverage behavioral science to persuade multiple stakeholders?

• Learn marketing concepts in material and a tech platform featuring a female protagonist and team; • practice evaluating a product and capturing value using behavioral science; • understand consumer/business biases and practice forming and delivering a persuasive message; • learn to leverage and create new insights to aid behavior change in business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) contexts; • analyze behavioral insights to identify new opportunities in a competitive marketplace; • unfold a framework to explore consumer motivation in recommerce; and • explore the use of experimentation in changing consumer behavior and improving decision-making.

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

Females need to be represented in core business education curriculum such as data analysis in addition to classes focused on social equity and business. This all female executive team pursued an innovative process built on a technology platform using a data-driven model to gain enterprise clients. The material offers an opportunity to explore sustainability.

CSS 8: Marketing

Wright & Company conducted a market research for ‘Fashion Destination’ to determine the consumer purchase intention for a clothing and accessories rental service. Based on secondary research and expert interviews, the consultants came up with a preliminary business model for the service. And through qualitative research they found that consumers indeed had a purchase intention for a clothing and accessories rental service. To validate the conclusion they conducted a primary research by administering a detailed questionnaire and prepared a codebook. The consultants now had the challenge to make an analysis plan to draw appropriate inferences vis-à-vis the objectives of the research.

Masayo Kodama, President, Reborn Kyoto NPO, believed foreign-aid food saved her and other Japanese from starvation after World War II. Kodama was determined to help others suffering in third world countries. After distributing emergency supplies in Cambodia, Kodama developed a new vision: teach impoverished people how to “fish” and they would feed themselves and their children for life. She decided to teach dressmaking skills to people in third-world countries. Kodama recruited volunteers in Japan and these women, in turn, collected and prepared silk from kimonos. Japanese volunteer seamstresses took the silk and supplies, traveled to such places as Vietnam and Yemen, and taught people how to create clothes suitable for sale in western markets of Japan and the US. Although the sale of products, along with small grants and private donations, yielded subsistent revenues for the nonprofit organization, Kodama wondered how to build her organization and to find a replacement for herself with so few resources.

The learning outcomes of this paper are as follows: to define the scope of digital customer experience, why it is important and how it can be used to create a competitive advantage, to evaluate the various challenges for traditional retail businesses that undertake a digital transformation strategy, to critically assess a chosen digital transformation strategy, to identify the key features of a successful digital transformation strategy and to develop a crisis communication strategy.

The Cape Union Mart Group is a typical apparel retail company faced with the challenge of improving the digital customer experience and accelerating digital transformation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic, the demand for e-commerce increased dramatically. However, strict lockdown regulations forbade the delivery of clothing. When the lockdown was lifted, there was an order backlog of four weeks. To add to this challenge, the Group was in the midst of a technology update. They moved their entire information technology (IT) backbone to three clouds and, just a week before the lockdown, launched five new websites for its five different retail chains. The ultimate goal with the technology update was to give the company a competitive advantage by improving the customer experience. However, having to do this at an accelerated pace due to the pandemic posed a number of challenges. The case provides a vivid description of how the crisis unfolded and how Grant De Waal-Dubla, the executive of e-commerce and IT at the Group and his team responded to the challenges, together with the marketing team. Based on the success of e-commerce during the lockdown, the owners of the business then tasked Grant with new, aggressive growth targets. Whilst dealing with the aftermath of the lockdown, Grant’s main challenge is to develop a strategy to reach those targets.

The primary target audience for this case are postgraduate students enrolled on programmes such as Master of Business Administration or specialist masters in a business field such as marketing or strategy and also for Executive Education courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

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.

Strategy

Strategic Management course in an undergraduate programme.

PKC Laundries started a technology-driven laundry service that would be just a click away for their customers and would provide a quick and satisfying cost-effective solution to the customers’ laundry needs. The business, conceived as a start-up, was based on the asset-light aggregation model which used existing vendors to provide the service. The business has been running for almost two years now but has encountered certain operational challenges of vendor management and in generating sufficient operating profits. At this juncture, the question that is bothering the owners is would it be right if PKC went in for backward integration by investing in an automatic laundry plant to manage the risk of dependency on their vendors or should they strengthen and scale-up the present business model? The owners seem to be in a muddle about their strengths and weaknesses and the foreseeable opportunities and threats and going forward what sort of challenges should they prepare themselves for? This case requires the reader to understand the scenario in which a small and medium enterprise (SME) operates within its micro and macro environment. It then makes the reader think and critically analyse the dilemma the young entrepreneurs are facing and identify the problems and possible strategies to overcome these problems. The case highlights the challenges faced by PKC as an aggregator business and the scope of what PKC can do in the future to strengthen its position. It also explores various marketing management issues such as segmenting, targeting and positioning. The case also helps in understanding strategic management issues such as analysis and formulation and implementation of the strategy.

The expected learning outcomes are as follows: To understand the micro and macro environmental factors affecting a firm; to understand the issues involved in formulating and implementing a strategy; to understand the challenges faced by a start-up (both operational and for scaling up); and to understand the strategies adopted by the company to develop their business.

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.