Search results

Learning outcomes are as follows: understanding the difference between brand identity and brand image; applying various segmentation tools; understanding the appeal of the aspirational brand and its consequence on private and public consumption; exploring the strategic options available to a brand facing a brand appropriation; exploring the pros and cons of opposing a brand appropriation; and developing a plan for the implementation of this strategy.

This case will help students understand the difference between the brand identity that the brand owners intend and the brand image that consumers actually perceive.

This case is designed to be used in marketing management, brand strategy or consumer culture course. Specifically, the case is designed for college seniors or master students with basic strategic marketing training. It should provide the basis of discussions on the topics of brand management, consumer culture, brand portfolio management, international marketing, repositioning strategy, brand architecture, brand equity, brand assets, brand appropriation and consumer relationships with brands.

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

The learning outcomes of this study are as follows: use advanced frameworks and tools to convey complex ideas related to corporate social responsibility and ethics; apply relevant concepts and theories of ethics and corporate governance to a practical situation while making decisions; demonstrate understanding of the importance of stakeholders when developing socially responsible thinking; and analyze ethical and legal conflicts that need to be considered by employees in situations of whistleblowing.

Sara Khan was a Pakistani-American who had moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2015 to pursue her Bachelor’s degree in accounting. After graduation, she started working for a baked products manufacturer, Dough Fresh, which was a business unit of Dubai-based Fresh Foods Co. Three years later, she enjoyed her work in the company that embraced strong ethical values and socially responsible practices. She was recently given the task of delivering a financial statements’, investment projections’ and cost-cutting presentation to the senior management of Dough Fresh. Her performance at completing this task was of critical importance for her obtaining the eagerly awaited promotion to the senior accountant position. One day, while Sara was looking through some files to update the financial statements’ records, she came across a deleted purchase order of poppy seeds that amounted to AED 680,000. While poppy seeds were widely used as ingredients in baked products in other countries, they were illegal in the UAE. After approaching her colleague from the purchasing department, she realized that the purchasing manager, who was the grandson of the chairman, was closely involved in the matter. Moreover, it appeared that poppy seeds were used unwashed, which triggered deleterious health consequences and made them highly dangerous to consume. As Sara spent more time researching about poppy seeds and whistleblowing laws in the UAE, she questioned whether she should divulge this information or keep it for herself. Making this decision was extremely challenging. Because the UAE laws regarding whistleblowing were not comprehensive and constantly evolving, she was not certain whether her identity and reputation would be protected in case she decided to blow the whistle. Even more, she worried immensely about the prospect of her colleagues losing their jobs if this information became public, as many of them needed the money to support their families back home and to finance expensive health-related treatments of their relatives. At the same time, she was also aware that if poppy seeds were consumed by people unknowingly, this could lead to serious and even fatal health consequences. All things considered, Sara was caught between deciding what was the right thing to do.

This case study can be used in a higher level undergraduate business course on Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Identify the influence of contextual variables (i.e. politics) in the strategy of a military organisation. Analyse and evaluate strategic change options of a military organisation. Decide on a strategic change from the resources and capabilities model.

Colombia Aeronautics Industry Corporation (CIAC) is a Colombian mixed economy company that commercialises, maintains and repairs civil and military aircraft and aeronautical components. The case presents the decision that the manager must make regarding a change in corporate strategy because of the entry into force of the peace agreement between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). This agreement assumes that the main line of business of the CIAC would be weakened (i.e. repair of military aircraft used in the internal armed conflict with FARC), because in a new peace scenario, the aircraft would not need as much maintenance as in the most critical stages of the conflict.

Master of Business Administration level (suggested courses: strategy, strategic management and organisational change). Undergraduate level (suggested courses: strategy and organisational change).

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.

Looks at the merger of two Chicago-based nonprofits that share similar missions and clientele, but have different strategies and capital structures. They also operate in the highly competitive job training/temporary work field, where organizational survival is at stake. Suburban Job Link is a fee-driven, largely commercial nonprofit, and STRIVE/CES is a philanthropic-based nonprofit dependent on grants and government for revenue. Explores alternatives to a merger and proceeds from merger discussions to post-merger outcomes.

To discuss strategic collaboration and alliances; how to get “more mission” through resource combinations; and how nonprofits compete in highly competitive industries.

This case focuses on ethics issues arising from the tobacco trade. Government as regulator of that trade and guardian of public health faced complex political, financial and ethical issues in discharge of its responsibilities. The harms resulting from tobacco use were well-known and had generally attracted adverse decisions from governments everywhere. The company offering tobacco products for sale, Carreras Ltd., had generally continued to do well financially despite those adverse decisions. Government, in the present case, had introduced legislation to penalize tobacco use in public places, and in so doing, raised several ethical issues such as punishing smokers for using a legal, widely distributed product; classifying cigarettes as harmful to health yet allowing its wide distribution and sale; continuing to derive substantial tax revenue from sale of a harmful product; enabling Carreras to profit from sale of said harmful product; offering little help to smokers to break their nicotine addiction. Students should be asked to identify and recommend solutions to the ethical issues faced by: the government and its “point man”, the Minister of Health as they sought to reduce the public’s use of a harmful product. The smoker who may be even addicted to a product is known to cause or contribute to a host of serious diseases. Students were to identify and recommend solutions to ethical issues faced by the players in the case. One of these players was Carreras whose operations were facing severe regulatory and public relations headwinds. Another was the nonsmoking public whose health was put at risk even though they did not use the product. The sentences could be reworded to read; Carreras, in its continued efforts to justify selling a harmful product. Nonsmokers who, despite not using the product, suffered adverse health consequences because of its use by others.

Cigarette smoking has been linked to a long list of serious diseases including several cancers, cardio-vascular disease, pulmonary ailments and stroke. Despite several government actions over the years to reduce cigarette smoking, it remained widespread and continued to take a heavy toll on public health. The government’s latest gambit, the Public Health (Tobacco Control) Regulations introduced in 2013, represented the first legislation specifically designed to restrain smoking in “public places”. Carreras Ltd., a subsidiary of British American Tobacco (BAT), had been the only significant provider of cigarettes in Jamaica for several decades and in the period allocated for public feedback, mounted a fierce assault on the Regulations, and galvanized other private sector interests to join in that effort. The case addresses the interaction between government’s roles as guardian and financier of public health, the public’s right of choice, and a company’s right to sell a legal product, albeit one deemed harmful to public health. That government derived substantial tax receipts from trade in that product added another layer of complexity to the matter. The Minister of Health, Dr Fenton Ferguson, was the government’s point man and our protagonist.

Final year University students of Management would have been exposed to ethics theories. Many management courses do not devote enough effort to the study of the interplay between the ethical, financial, and legal and the issues that can arise therefrom to complicate decision-making. The case was structured to invite exploration of this interplay.

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