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Focuses on Apple Computer's launch of iTunes and iPod as a way to give Wintel users a relationship with Apple. Deals with issues of brand equity, corporate and brand goal setting, target selection, and matching product and service characteristics with goals and targets. Also allows for a discussion of channel partners, their interests, and their impact on the likely success or failure of a strategy.

This case is intended to illustrate to readers the challenges faced in 2011–2013 by Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, as he guided his company into the exploding tablet market. Faced with the tough decision between focusing on the e-reader market—which Amazon had come to dominate with its Kindle product line—and making a foray into tablets—for which it had no expertise—Bezos chose the latter. Amazon sought to combine platform assets to create an end-to-end experience that would let users find a “sweet spot” in the mix of features and services. This strategy involved critical decisions such as selecting a customer segment to target and a positioning for the new product, dubbed the Kindle Fire, as the tablet market rapidly evolved. The Kindle Fire was designed to put the full Amazon experience right into the laps of customers, and Bezos was betting that his customers would see the Kindle Fire as the physical manifestation of all things Amazon. To achieve this, Amazon was willing to heavily subsidize the Kindle Fire hardware device. The key assumption was that the superior end-to-end experience Amazon had carefully created would lead to incremental purchases of content as well as physical products and services, and the margins thus gained would outweigh the hardware subsidy.

• Position and define target segments for a new product relative to competition as well as to a company's own products

• Articulate a competitor's strategy and how to compete against an incumbent with a disruptive business model and a differentiated position

• Discuss selling an experience (as opposed to a product or device) and how to create a differentiated service experience

• Determine pricing, analyze business model, and calculate revenue/profit for a technology product

Position and define target segments for a new product relative to competition as well as to a company's own products

Articulate a competitor's strategy and how to compete against an incumbent with a disruptive business model and a differentiated position

Discuss selling an experience (as opposed to a product or device) and how to create a differentiated service experience

Determine pricing, analyze business model, and calculate revenue/profit for a technology product

Marketing.

Post Graduate.

Rajiv Bapna and Pradeep Bapna co-founded Allied Electronics & Magnetics Limited (widely known as Amkette) in the year 1985 for the production of floppy diskettes in India. By the year 1995, Amkette was the largest selling floppy diskette brand in India. With the advent of new technology in storage media sale of floppy diskette observed a constant decline. By the end of year 2004, floppy diskettes completely vanished from the market. Amkette anticipated the changes in the computer peripherals market and introduced a wide range of products in storage media, wireless and wired peripherals, accessories and digital lifestyle products. After the launch of Evo TV on June 2012, Amkette was hopeful for a major success in digital lifestyle segment. Evo TV, a connected TV device, allowed consumers to use smart apps on their television sets and was a cost-effective substitute to Smart TVs. Amkette was betting very high on Evo TV for revenue generation and market development.

Following are the learning outcomes: to review the product life cycle of technology products, to understand evolving customers’ expectations and behavior, to assess the adoption process of innovative products and to explore the challenges associated with innovative products for market development.

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.

Appreciate changing contours of business to business (B2B) purchase and how sellers should adapt their selling style and promotions.

In the past two decades, imaging Goa (IG) and Azim Shaikh had weathered many business crises. However, as the COVID 19 pandemic unfolded, he became aware of critical fault lines in his B2B selling model. IG offered customised digital display solutions, but its primary source of revenue was B2B selling of interactive flat panel display (IFPD) devices. It, respectively, controlled about 35% and 3% of the market share of IFPD sales, respectively, in Goa and western India. IG’s success in the B2B segment was because of Shaikh’s ability to build strong relationships and customised solutions in an emerging market context. To deal with the COVID pandemic, the Indian Government had imposed a country-wide lockdown, which forced organisations to adopt work from home. This, in turn, created a pull for IFPDs. Yet, very soon Shaikh realised, in the new normal, there was a growing mismatch between his selling efforts and outcomes. Though overall revenue had not fallen much, but the veteran seller had started doubting his tried and tested relational solution selling model. Case dilemma involves the selection of appropriate selling approaches e.g. solution, insight or tiebreaker selling for different situations. This case also offers an opportunity to discuss, how to use online channels to complement B2B selling.

This teaching case study is suitable for the graduate-level programme in marketing management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing

This case features Stripe, a startup that enables merchants to accept payments from customers on the web, on mobile devices, and at the point of sale (POS). Stripe was launched in 2011 by the Collison brothers and quickly gained traction with e-commerce startups, particularly software and platform developers who needed help building their payment processing infrastructures. Stripe incurred high fixed costs in developing its platform and had low margins per transaction, so the company needed to reach high processing volumes (i.e., scale) to survive. This was challenging, as Stripe competed with large payment processors and traditional banks that had high processing volumes and were able to offer merchants significantly lower rates than Stripe. Still, merchants valued Stripe#x0027;s solution because it was simple and versatile. Students assume the role of the Collisons to think about possible strategies Stripe could pursue to process higher volumes of transactions. Students are challenged to think about the potential response of the incumbents to Stripe's different growth alternatives. The teaching note presents the Value Net framework and discusses the importance of considering complementors and their effect on a firm's strategy. Finally, a discussion about Stripe's potential entry into the Indian market allows students to apply the concepts they learned in the discussion of a new market.

Emerging markets – marketing and business strategy; social entrepreneurship; opportunity identification; frugal innovation.

MBA; marketing management; specialis ed courses such as entrepreneurship and international marketing. Data rich case, but analytical difficulty is only moderate.

Reboot Systems was conceived as a reverse engineering/refurbishing company for used computers when Rahul Chowdhury and Subbarao came in contact with Anand Tater who had started a small business in the used computer market. The team recognised the potential of the refurbished computer market in India, which was largely unorganised with penetration of personal computers pegged at less than 5 per cent. They identified the opportunity to address the digital divide, caused by lack of affordability and accessibility, by providing inexpensive “as good as new” used computers to those who aspired to own a computer. Additionally, in extending the life of used computers on a large-scale through “frugal innovation”, they hoped to reduce the extent of e-waste generated in the economy. This case provides a rich description of an emerging market characterised by market heterogeneity, social-political governance with poor policy measures, unorganised markets, chronic shortage of resources and inadequate infrastructure. Entrepreneurs hoping to address social issues must tackle these problems at the grass-root level and come up with improvised solutions that address the unique needs of the heterogeneous and resource constrained market. Some of Reboot Systems pressing challenges were in building a viable strategic approach to the market and ensuring scalability in a sustainable way.

An understanding of the characteristics of an emerging market from a macro (environmental) as well as micro (industry specific) perspective, an appreciation of opportunity identification and improvisation in emerging markets as well as differentiating “frugal” innovation from the idea of “Jugaad”, an understanding of the role of strategic vision and mission in accomplishing social and business objectives, an understanding of how to develop sustainability and competitive advantage from a social as well as business perspective.

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

After a successful run for many years as a resilient consumer electronics giant, Best Buy was under intense pressure at the end of 2014. Even as competitors like Circuit City melted away, Best Buy had been able to withstand the onslaught of online behemoth Amazon and discount retailers like Target and Walmart. However, its competitive position was threatened as online shopping became more popular, particularly among millennial customers.

With a new leadership team, Best Buy had recently undertaken bold initiatives to expand and refine its online presence and position itself for success. These initiatives had produced encouraging results, but Best Buy needed to do more to stem the loss of market share to Amazon and to become more relevant to millennial customers. To address these challenges, Best Buy approached the Kellogg School of Management to solicit ideas from student teams by sponsoring a Business Challenge competition. The teams came up with several strategic initiatives. Best Buy needed to evaluate these initiatives on two criteria: First, how well did these initiatives leverage Best Buy's privileged physical assets (stores, salespeople, and Geek Squad services staff) to create a winning customer experience? Second, how effective would these initiatives be in attracting and retaining millennial customers?

In May 2013, Jack Russo, a Chicago-based tech entrepreneur, had to choose one of four possible product concepts to use as the starting point for his new K–8 educational learning company, TabletTeach LLC. At the time, the K–12 education market in the United States was experiencing major disruption due to print-to-digital transformation, new Common Core State Standards (CCSS), new standardized tests aligned to the Common Core (rolling out in most states in the 2014–2015 school year), and increasing pressure from parents for schools to incorporate technology in their children's learning. Based on his first-hand experience and research, Russo knew there was a significant opportunity for a company that brought to market a tablet-enabled learning solution focusing on grades K–8, which made learning Common Core math and/or language arts fun for every student and engagingly simple for all teachers.

This case provides an interesting example of something typically hard to teach: transitioning from the fuzzy front end of a market opportunity analysis to a specific product opportunity. The case bounds the problem by outlining four potential product concepts, which students will then evaluate and rank using their own sets of criteria.

Define evaluation criteria for an opportunity analysis of a tech startup in a dynamic market; use these criteria to evaluate a set of product concepts and their business opportunities; refine a set of product concepts to develop and present a recommendation; understand the importance of the problem-persona-product fit and “jobs to be done” data in identifying high-value opportunities; present findings in an opportunity brief and a market opportunity hypothesis statement

Through this case, students will not only learn about the latest development of this emerging industry, IoT, but also gain a systematic understanding of “ecosystem strategy” and get to know a new corporate growth model called “co-creation”.

This case describes why and how Advantech Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Advantech) has transformed in the age of the Internet of Things. Aware of the ecosystem attributes of the IoT industry and committed to the company’s principle of “altruism”, Advantech strategically positioned itself as an “IoT platform provider” and an “enabler” for IoT applications. After carrying out a reform in terms of internal management, external cooperation, and development model, Advantech has evolved from an industrial computer maker to an IoT solution provider. Since the launch of the “co-creation model” at the end of 2016, Advantech has drawn attention from many excellent companies in traditional industries. With the Internet of Everything close at hand, Chairman KC Liu is well aware there are many challenges to overcome as Advantech strives to build an industrial IoT ecosystem, the “evolution” continues.

MBAs, EMBAs and senior executives.

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

PageWell, an e-reading platform provider, was preparing to launch PageWell 2.0 to the larger full-time MBA student market after a successful trial of PageWell 1.0 in Executive MBA (EMBA) classes at the Kellogg School of Management. Research had shown that full-time MBA students would be very interested in using products that allowed electronic access to course materials everywhere and across many platforms and that allowed electronic note-taking and storage. To better understand this user group, PageWell conducted a market research survey of students, faculty, and administrators to gauge their needs, preferences, and potential interest in the PageWell product. The study revealed that MBA student usage patterns, scenarios, and behavior varied significantly from EMBA student needs and perceptions. PageWell now had the task of prioritizing the product requirements and recalibrating the market requirements document to more accurately reflect student needs and thus create a viable product

After students have analyzed the case, they will be able to:

• Use customer feedback to help define requirements for a new product

• Understand the role of personas and scenarios in defining requirements

• Understand how to use scenarios and scenario templates to derive scenario implementation requirements

• Understand how to prioritize scenarios based on customer, company, and competitive criteria

• Write a market requirements document for a next-version technology produc

Use customer feedback to help define requirements for a new product

Understand the role of personas and scenarios in defining requirements

Understand how to use scenarios and scenario templates to derive scenario implementation requirements

Understand how to prioritize scenarios based on customer, company, and competitive criteria

Write a market requirements document for a next-version technology produc