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Describes the winning formula at Neiman Marcus that has made it the No. 1 luxury retailer in the United States in terms of sales per square foot and profitability. Highlights Neiman Marcus' efforts to define who its customers are and are not and to achieve superior focus on its customers by aligning location, price, service, and merchandise to fulfill these customers' every need. Describes ways in which Neiman Marcus prevents typical silo behavior between merchandising and selling and how it ensures that the right merchandise gets to the right customer, despite the challenge of doing this in 36 micromarkets.

To show how a company integrates two strong high-performance functions—merchandising and sales—to get the right merchandise to each customer in more than 30 diverse selling locations while consistently providing exceptional customer service.

Pebble Technology Corporation (Pebble) was an early entrant into the smartwatch industry. Pebble’s Founder, Eric Migicovsky, began thinking about creating a smartwatch in 2008 while still an undergraduate engineering student. After selling about 1,500 prototype watches, he was accepted into Silicon Valley’s prestigious Y Combinator business start-up program. Finding it difficult to attract investors, Migicovsky launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised a record-breaking $10.27m on Kickstarter. The case concludes shortly after Apple’s unveiling of its soon-to-be-released Apple Watch. The case provides an opportunity to evaluate Pebble’s various strategic options at the time of Apple’s announcement.

The authors observed over 30 h of video and audio recordings of speeches, interviews and other events involving Pebble’s founder, other Pebble executives, investors and competitors. These recordings are all publicly available. Whenever possible, the authors also reviewed the Twitter feeds, Facebook sites and personal websites of Pebble’s top executives over time. Similarly, the authors followed Pebble’s official website, corporate blog and Kickstarter campaign websites. The authors also drew from numerous media reports. Due to the public nature of the data, no company release is provided nor has any information been disguised in any way.

The case is designed for both undergraduate and graduate students for courses in strategic management.

The learning outcomes are as follows. First, female managers can face gender inequity in different forms, such as the glass ceiling and glass cliff, while they run for leadership positions, especially in male-dominated business contexts. Second, managers can show high performance and be effective leaders as long as they are aware of that all managers are evaluated according to a wide variety of criteria, and play many different managerial roles, such as interpersonal, informational and decisional roles. Finally, managers should pay attention to all stakeholders’ demands in decision-making process for sustainability and performing better in the long run.

Since football began gaining popularity in Turkey at the dawn of the 20th century, the sport remains the most popular national sport today. However, recently, a new name has shaken the world of Turkish football: Berna Gozbasi, the first female football manager in Turkish history. In the middle of 2019–2020 football season, Gozbasi became the first female club president after she assumed leadership of Kayserispor. Kayserispor was officially founded as a Turkish professional football club in 1966, and, as its name suggests, was based in Kayseri, a sizeable industrialised city located in Central Anatolia. The team competes in the “Turkish Super League”, Turkey’s top football competition. In this case, to discuss gender inequity, leadership, and management in the sport context, the authors explained the dilemma Gozbasi faced while she decided whether or not to accept this challenging role. Then, the authors examined the experiences she gained as a leader and the dilemma she faced to diminish the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the organisation she led.

Undergraduate and MBA students.

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 6: Human Resource Management.

Greenko, a renewable power generating company investing in biomass, small and medium hydro power and wind power projects, had projected to achieve 1GW (Giga Watt = 1000 Mega Watt) of installed capacity by March 2015. The company had been financing its projects with debt from Indian banks and financial institutions on a project finance basis and it had to now decide whether to refinance the project finance debt with an international bond issue of USD 550 million. The case provides an opportunity to discuss the public policy and financing aspects of renewable energy in India.

This case explores the turnaround and corporate renewal of the Chicago Blackhawks professional hockey team, which transformed from one of the worst-run organizations in all of professional sports in 2007 to one that won the Stanley Cup (the National Hockey League championship trophy) in 2010. W. Rockwell “Rocky” Wirtz was faced with making critical decisions shortly after inheriting the team from his father, who was the individual most associated with the organization's decline. The team faced financial trouble and had narrowly avoided missing payroll; the previous customer relations strategy (which included refusing to televise home games or to conduct effective marketing) had resulted in significantly diminished brand value; and management and player personnel were devoid of effective leadership. At its nadir, the team was named “The Worst Franchise in Professional Sports” by ESPN in 2004. After assuming control, Rocky embarked on an ambitious corporate renewal strategy that included the following components: leadership: install a new management team with clear goals and creative ideas about how to turn around the organization; culture: reward players for accomplishing their goals and establish a performance-based culture; financial: seek new corporate sponsorships and increase ticket prices once the team established a winning record; and brand and marketing: send a clear message that the team was intent upon winning the championship and design a customer-focused marketing strategy.

After analyzing the case, students should be able to: recommend strategic, financial, and operational changes needed to turn around the organization, and identify key leadership qualities that enable execution of a turnaround plan.

The authors analyzed data and information mainly from the company’s annual reports and the books written by the CEO.

How and when can a “value” brand upscale its brand image? In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, UNIQLO – Japan’s street fashion brand – considered introducing a new brand collaboration. They needed to capture the attention of younger, more fashionable consumers. However, people were tightening their spending as they faced uncertainties related to their jobs and wealth. Even though UNIQLO had had a steady growth in sales for the previous 24 years, it was questionable whether it was strategically a good time to launch a premium brand collaboration. And if so, who was the right partner? High-end designer Jil Sander, fashionable New York-based Theory or emerging French “casual luxury” brand Comptoir des Cotonniers?

This case is about the challenges faced by a low-priced brand to collaborate with a high-end brand to enhance the brand image. It explores the important elements to take into consideration when evaluating launching collaboration using the high-end brand’s name. The students will learn how to examine the risks and benefits of creating a new image for the core brand. If the students had learnt branding or brand extension before, this case can be used to teach how consumer’s perception affects brand extension and the target market’s impact on pricing and distribution strategies. It can be used for a marketing course at the MBA level to explore the concepts in a growing company’s brand image or an undergraduate specialized course in brand management or marketing management. The students also learn how the fashion industry’s supply chain management works to adapt to rapidly changing fashion trends.

The case briefly describes the history of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) under Ross Perot and GM before turning to the beginning of a tumultuous decade in the late 1990s. As the turn of the century approached, EDS made critical strategic missteps such as missing opportunities in the Internet space, overlooking the onset of client-server computing, and failing to obtain major Y2K-related projects. The company attempted a turnaround by replacing the CEO with Dick Brown, whose leadership helped streamline the sprawling company. Despite initial successes, Brown's tenure ultimately ended in failure, due largely to his failure to recognize the growing Indian market and his willingness to buy business at the expense of the company's margin. The disastrous multibillion-dollar Navy & Marine Corp Intranet contract typified the type of high-profile transactions that Brown pursued, often boosting EDS's stock price in the short term while eroding its cash flow short term and its profitability over the long term. EDS management went through several stages of the turnaround process: the blinded phase, the inactive phase, and the faulty action phase, until Michael Jordan replaced Brown as CEO and enacted a three-tiered operational, strategic, and financial turnaround.

EDS's near-decade of turnaround efforts takes students through every phase of the turnaround process and demonstrates that even initially successful turnaround efforts can become distracted, rendering them ineffective. The case will show both a failed turnaround and a subsequent successful one, while adding an international component with respect to EDS's overlooking an important, growing Indian market.

The teaching objectives of the case study are to provide students with an understanding of how strategic marketing tools are applied in an international marketing context and how brands, especially brands that come from emerging markets, are introduced and managed within modern versus traditional trade (e.g. ethnic shops).

This case illustrates the challenges and opportunities related to the introduction of a brand to a new market wherein the product (traditional coffee), although part of a very well-developed product category (coffee), may have been new to consumers in the new market. The brand itself, Zlatna džezva, is a flagship brand in its home country (Bosnia and Herzegovina) within a developing market. However, both the brand and the traditional coffee experience are relatively unknown to other markets. The case study focuses on Vispak’s CEO and CMO who are contemplating their next business move in the new market. Finally, the Dutch market and consumers are presented to facilitate the process of segmentation, targeting and positioning for students. The case study concludes with a task and dilemma for managers of the company.

This case could be used in a variety of undergraduate level classes, depending on what the instructor wishes to emphasize. The authors use the case for following courses: principles of marketing, marketing management and international marketing. In all courses, the case is allowing students to obtain the greater overview of the scope of the strategic marketing decision-making. Before starting with case analysis, students should have some familiarity with central marketing issues and concepts, specifically related to analysis of environment, segmentation-targeting-positioning, product and brand management.

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.

Hasn’t everyone at some point felt as if the universe was conspiring against his or her success? This case narrative tracks the story of Emmett Taylor, an operations manager for a bottling company, as a snow and ice storm bears down on his southeastern U.S. plant. Taylor is already plagued by stress caused by all facets of his life-family, work, and personal health-and this storm is no exception. The story offers an opportunity to discuss time, energy, and priority management; individual behavior from a type-A personality; work-life balance; organizational behavior; and leadership. This case is a suitable substitution for the classic best-selling Darden case “John Wolford” (UVA-OB-0167).

Fingerhut, based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, is a direct-marketing company that sells a smorgasbord of consumer goods through an array of specially targeted catalogs. In November 1996, an article in the Star Tribune, a major Minneapolis newspaper, drew attention to a class-action lawsuit pending against Fingerhut that suggests the firm made its profits by exploiting the poor. Several civil rights groups rallied around the suit and submitted amicus curiae in favor of the litigation. The case illustrates issues in ethics and management communication. Discussions focus on the constituencies. Is Fingerhut exploiting its customers or providing them with an affordable method of obtaining valued consumer goods on credit? Do retailers have a duty to offer products at reasonable prices? Are the high interest rates reasonable given the risk? What are the options: pawn shops, rent-to-own? What is the profile of the typical Fingerhut customer? Discussions also focus on the issues communicating to the constituencies. How much damage will the lawsuit do to Fingerhut's image as an ethical, socially conscious company? What communication strategies can the firm employ? Should it react to the lawsuit? What should it tell its employees?