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Microsoft Office was facing an uphill task in engaging the undergraduate student community. Attracting this audience—the most tech-savvy generation ever—was critical to the future of the Microsoft Office franchise. Microsoft's past advertising efforts to reach this audience had proven lackluster, while its key competitors were gradually entrenching themselves among this demographic. Microsoft's challenge was to determine the best tactics that could successfully connect with this audience. The (A) case describes Microsoft's dilemma and briefly addresses what college students mostly care about: managing homework, creating great-looking schoolwork, preparing for the workplace, and collaborating with friends and classmates. It also provides competitive information, chiefly Google's increasing presence in universities and its focus on the higher education market and the growing influence of Facebook among students and its evolution into a productivity tool. The (B) case describes the qualitative research tools that Microsoft used to get a better understanding of college students: day diaries using Twitter, technology diaries using the Internet and smartphones, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews with students. The case helps students understand the value of ethnographic and qualitative research techniques, draw inferences from the data, and subsequently make recommendations. It illustrates how ethnographic and observational studies enrich research by generating deeper consumer insight than traditional methods.

Students will learn: - How online tools in ethnographic and observational research offer new insights not revealed by traditional survey research - How different qualitative market tools are used to collect data, as well as the pros and cons of different ethnographic research techniques - To interpret and synthesize data from qualitative and ethnographic research - How research can influence a firm's marketing and advertising tactics

Microsoft Office was facing an uphill task in engaging the undergraduate student community. Attracting this audience—the most tech-savvy generation ever—was critical to the future of the Microsoft Office franchise. Microsoft's past advertising efforts to reach this audience had proven lackluster, while its key competitors were gradually entrenching themselves among this demographic. Microsoft's challenge was to determine the best tactics that could successfully connect with this audience. The (A) case describes Microsoft's dilemma and briefly addresses what college students mostly care about: managing homework, creating great-looking schoolwork, preparing for the workplace, and collaborating with friends and classmates. It also provides competitive information, chiefly Google's increasing presence in universities and its focus on the higher education market and the growing influence of Facebook among students and its evolution into a productivity tool. The (B) case describes the qualitative research tools that Microsoft used to get a better understanding of college students: day diaries using Twitter, technology diaries using the Internet and smartphones, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews with students. The case helps students understand the value of ethnographic and qualitative research techniques, draw inferences from the data, and subsequently make recommendations. It illustrates how ethnographic and observational studies enrich research by generating deeper consumer insight than traditional methods.

Students will learn: - How online tools in ethnographic and observational research offer new insights not revealed by traditional survey research - How different qualitative market tools are used to collect data, as well as the pros and cons of different ethnographic research techniques - To interpret and synthesize data from qualitative and ethnographic research - How research can influence a firm's marketing and advertising tactics

Marketing strategy, retail/sales management and logistics.

Undergraduate and postgraduate.

Al Ain Dairy works is in one of the most highly competitive industries in the world – the food industry. In the dairy business, choice, freshness, safety standards, inventory management, supply chain and marketing are key to sustainability. Al Ain Diary explains some key challenges in this industry for managing and planning sales. This case builds on a previous case and can be used to teach marketing strategy, retail management and logistics. The case also gives an idea on the food industry especially the dairy market and some of the challenges associated with it.

Students can try forecasting and planning sales based on seasonal trends. Since the process complexity increases as the number of stock keeping units increase, the case provides a rich context of a company where inventory management is a key to success. Product portfolio management is another subject area of focus in this case. For market expansion, students can look at current organizational and market constraints, organizational competencies (and their transferability), and market synergies and similarities to recommend strategy.

Teaching notes.

On completion of this case study, students will be able to understand collaboration and synergy between farmers and organisations through value creation, like fundraising, based on the comprehension of the resource-based theory; understand the overview and concept of the value chain and supply chain management in the agribusiness to reduce costs of inventories; understand the concept of segmentation and positioning to increase revenue for organisations by leveraging existing resources – human and financial; and understand the branding strategy to create a sustainable competitive advantage for Suguna Foods.

Suguna was started by two brothers, B. Soundararajan and G.B. Sundararajan, to help other farmers. Suguna, with just 200 broilers in 1984, grew to be the number 1 poultry company across India. Soundararajan was a pioneer and innovator who started “contract farming” in India in 1991. This model helped both the farmers and the company to became successful. The farmers always struggled to pay the cost of feed and other materials, as credit was not readily and easily available from financial institutions. Suguna helped farmers by providing feed, medicines, etc., free of cost in return for the good rearing of chickens. Because of the success of this venture, they decided to continue with it. Today, Suguna is a successful company that sells chicken, eggs and processed meat. They modernised the retail chain to supply consumers with fresh, healthy and hygienic meat. Suguna’s vision was to “Energize rural India” by helping farmers succeed. They helped over 40,000 farmers from 15,000+ villages in 18+ Indian states. Although the growth helped both farmers and Suguna, the increased cost of raw materials for Suguna and increased input costs/power costs for farmers had to be tackled on a war footing so that both could have good income despite the increased inflation. Moreover, the retail price of live chicken was more or less stagnant in the past five years, especially after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This case can be used as the basis for a 90-min class discussion. This case study is suitable for use in an master of business administration course module or in an executive education program on developing an understanding of value creation in the business model in a rural market and also how the supply chain works. This case study can also be used to teach pricing, segmentation in marketing and supply chain perspectives and decision-making skills.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS8: Marketing.

This case study is designed to enable students to understand the reasons behind the launch of a beauty brand grounded on traditions and culture, understand the strategies adopted by Florasis to establish its presence in the C-beauty space and emerge successful, analyze the positioning of a C-beauty brand in a highly competitive beauty market, identify the issues and challenges faced by a C-beauty brand in its efforts to disrupt the C-beauty space and suggest strategies that Florasis can adopt to emerge as a market leader in the global beauty industry.

Set in 2021, the case study discusses about the emerging C-beauty brand Florasis innovative strategies to promote the brand. Florasis was founded in 2017 with a vision to become a century old national makeup brand of China. Florasis was successful in getting on board a story-telling experience that featured traditional Chinese culture, aesthetics and heritage. It sold cosmetic products with retro packaging, concepts derived from traditional Chinese style, promoting a sense of national pride and nostalgia. The case study highlights the innovative strategies Florasis adopted like influencer marketing through key opinion leaders and key opinion customers, celebrity endorsements, user co-creation programs, social content and network marketing, brand crossovers and collaborations, etc. In April 2021, Florasis became the No. 1 cosmetic company in China with a gross merchandise value of 218m yuan and further the total sales for second quarter of 2021 reached 830m yuan, endorsing its supremacy over other global and local beauty brands in China. However, with success came along a set of challenges. Some analysts pointed that the brand was slow in innovating its product line-up, it focused more on promotions and advertisements and the brand positioning with a single sales channel, the cost performance and quality of the products and excessive marketing campaigns targeting a niche segment. Going forward, what should Florasis do to conquer the global beauty space? Can Florasis aspire to become a digitally empowered global beauty brand? Has it got the momentum? Will its direct-to-consumer model and unprecedented marketing and promotion gimmicks, help it achieve the lead in the global beauty space?

This case study is suitable for students of the graduate and undergraduate programs in management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Marketing, Sports marketing and Social media marketing.

Graduate level.

This case, based on field research and multiple secondary sources, documents the 12-month period since early 2014 during which Cricket South Africa (CSA) developed the Protea Fire brand for their national men’s cricket team, known as the Proteas. In mid-2014, Marc Jury, the Commercial and Marketing manager of CSA set up a project team to take the previously in-house Protea Fire brand public. With the 2015 Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand less than a year away, Jury worked with a diverse project team of Proteas players, cricket brand managers and external consultants to build a public brand identity for the national team, to nurture greater fan affinity and to mobilize South Africans behind their team for the World Cup. The project team developed a range of Protea Fire multimedia content as the core of the campaign. These included video diaries, scripts which were written by the Proteas players themselves, player profile videos, motivational team-talk videos and good luck video messages featuring ordinary and famous South Africans. Having invested in creating this content, the project team faced the difficult task of allocating a limited media budget to broadcast and amplify the content. Another significant challenge was to ensure that the Proteas team values were authentically communicated across all content, including via the social media strategy using Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. As the World Cup tournament kicked off on February 14th 2015, South Africa was well placed to overcome their previous inability to reach a final, although Jury wondered whether another exit in the knockout round would weaken the strong and positive emotions the Protea Fire campaign had ignited. With the last two balls remaining in South Africa’s semi-final game against New Zealand on March 24th 2015, and the home team requiring just five runs to win, Jury joined 60 million South Africans hoping that Protea Fire was strong enough. The case concludes with South Africa losing the semi-final game and Jury turning his attention to how the #ProteaFire campaign should respond.

This study aimed to analyse the development of a sport team brand and a megaevent campaign; to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of a marketing campaign; and to consider appropriate brand responses to the team’s failure to deliver on expectations.

CSS 8: Marketing.

This paper covers marketing strategy, retail management, branding, customer value, and competitive analysis.

The paper is applicable to undergraduate and postgraduate business and management level.

This case spotlights Al Ain Dairy in Dubai, UAE. It focuses on the launch of the new product – “Long Life Juice” in Dubai 2010. Al Ain Diary is the UAE's largest dairy company by market share but now wants to replicate success in both the regional market and the fruit juice market. The case highlights the challenges of increasing production capabilities; product innovation; supply chain management; and brand building in newer markets.

This case can be used to teach marketing strategy, retail management, branding, customer value, competitive analysis, and potentially elements relating to international business strategy.

A teaching note is available on request.

This case should facilitate participants to analyze the influence of internal and external factors on a growing company in the dairy, agro and food industries; analyze the drivers of a company’s competitive advantage; evaluate the relevance of the company in the new product-markets; and propose growth strategies for the expansion of the business beyond the core markets.

Gyan Dairy began its journey in 2007 and operated in the business-to-business segment by supplying skimmed milk powder and white butter to other dairy players. Then, the company launched its packaged milk brand in Lucknow – the capital city of Uttar Pradesh – one of the largest provinces in India. By the end of 2020, Gyan was the leading private dairy brand in Uttar Pradesh. The company’s vision was to become one of the top dairy brands in India by 2035. While deliberating on the growth choice, the company’s senior management debated whether to strengthen the company’s position in the existing markets or expand operations in adjacent locations. Increasing market share would have led to price wars or advertising costs. Diversifying into product categories involved the risk of product–market misfit and new product development and marketing costs. However, pursuing these options would further strengthen the company’s position in the North Indian market. Expanding into new locations would help establish the company’s presence across different parts of India. However, both these options were replete with various challenges. Expanding into new markets needed one of the promoters of the Gyan Diary, to relocate, build new markets and institutional connections and build a completely new localized economy of scale, which would create a financial burden on existing operations until the new operation was self-sustainable. However, in this journey, they would find and build a model to help expand their operations in other countries as well. Ideally, the company could pursue all the options, but this was not possible due to constrained resources.

This case allows students to discuss and evaluate alternate growth options associated with operationalizing the growth strategy choices in perishable branded food categories beyond existing markets and products. In addition, it also helps discuss how to arrive at such decisions after analyzing the focal firm’s market opportunities and existing capabilities. This case is helpful for the “growth strategy” module in the strategic management core course in a general MBA program and in specialized MBA programs in food and agri-business management.

This case is suitable for graduate-level courses on strategic management courses in general management programs and agri-business management programs. In a strategic management course, the case will help cover topics such as analysis of the internal and external environment of the firm and growth and expansion strategies. This case will help teach how to build competitive advantage in dairy and agro-food industries and the strategic analysis needed while pursuing growth decisions. Emerging markets, including India, are the growth markets for leading multinational companies in the food and dairy industries.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The teaching case study is based on a (real-life) complex organizational and strategic context, and several bodies of literature may be used to interpret, analyze, explore and discuss alternative solutions. Among several relevant theoretical basis are (educational) leadership, strategy, institutional change, organization, practice orientation of education and organizational learning. The Instructors’ Manual gives suggestions as to how the case may be used in teaching and gives references to relevant literature.

The teaching case study is based on participatory action research. The narrative of the case is based on empirical observations in form of a research diary recording events, dialogues and discussion with colleagues and organizational leaders during a five-year period. The case study is based on real proceedings. But, the narrative is generic, and names are anonymized, and organizational contexts and events are disguised. Any similarities to real institutions are coincidental.

The case tells the story of Birk Grimson (PhD), a professional who returns to academia after many years of business practice in the private sector. He is struck by how different the work ambience is in academia and how bureaucracy and a rigid organizational structure seem to quell innovation, resulting in resistance to systematic learning, organizational development and strategic change.

The teaching case study is appropriate for business, organizational or administrative students at master’s, PhD level or executive education. For students with other disciplinary educational backgrounds (such as engineering, education or health care), some basic knowledge of organization and management or alternatively relevant experience is recommended.

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

Entrepreneurship.

Postgraduate and undergraduate.

The case study focussed on the dairy sector in the southern African country of Zimbabwe. It offered an analysis of the management and business development approaches DHL employed in the country’s dairy sector. The narrative detailed how DHL’s commercial performance progressively declined overtime. Several factors including operational inefficiencies, intensive competition, political, socio-economic issues and natural disasters were attributable to its decline. To mitigate DHL’s business development challenges, Antony and his top management’s reprised “restructure, expand and diversify” strategy only achieved inconsistent commercial results. The scale and size of these results unequivocally necessitated radical entrepreneurial methods to turnaround its fortunes. It was indeed a matter of entrepreneurial decisions!

The case study used secondary analysis as its main strategy for generating relevant data. The rationale for adopting the principles of secondary analysis was to take advantage of quality archived data, public and readily available information concerning DHL’s commercial performance. Setting up to undertake secondary analysis for the purpose of DHL’s narrative was less-expensive, and it was less time-consuming when compared to structured interviews and self-administered questionnaires. Hence, it was deemed appropriate for producing a narrative on a company whose archived financial reports and publicly available research information were accessible.

DHL’s narrative is relevant for students studying entrepreneurship, business management and international business at postgraduate and undergraduate levels.

The multi-dimensional constructs of entrepreneurship and strategic management provided the theoretical basis for constructing a narrative about DHL’s business activities in Zimbabwe’s dairy sector. Particularly, the entrepreneurial decision-making paradigm offered some insight, direction and guidance in analysing the strategies Antony and his top management team applied in their planning and management at DHL. Equally, strategic management theories provided useful instructions for exploring business development issues in a rapidly changing business terrain that was presented by the dairy sector in Zimbabwe.

By the end of the lesson students will have had the opportunity to identify the features of an organisation with an entrepreneurial mind set; evaluate the importance of making entrepreneurial decisions in a rapidly changing market such as the dairy industry in Zimbabwe; explore the sort of issues faced by large enterprises in establishing an entrepreneurial architecture; develop an appreciation of the importance of practicing entrepreneurial leadership in rapidly changing business conditions; analyse the importance of developing an effective strategy while considering strategic options necessary to withstand markets such as the dairy sector in Zimbabwe that are characterised with rapid changes.

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 3: Entrepreneurship.