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In October 2016, Timothy Sloan, the newly appointed CEO of American banking giant Wells Fargo, faced a massive public-relations crisis. A few weeks earlier, a United States government agency had announced the results of its regulatory review of the bank and exposed a shocking practice common in the retail division, in which aggressive community bankers had created more than a million fraudulent accounts and credit card applications on behalf of unaware customers for the past several years. Over the next few weeks, the bank—and Sloan's predecessor, John Stumpf, in particular—suffered from harsh criticism from politicians, journalists, and former employees alike, ultimately forcing Stumpf's resignation. As Sloan sought to minimize the public-image backlash and restore general trust in Wells Fargo, he struggled to construct the best communication strategy for the bank's next chapter.

In early 2014, recent Stanford University graduate Tyler Shultz was in a quandary. He had been working at Theranos, a blood-diagnostic company founded by Elizabeth Holmes, a Stanford-dropout wunderkind, for almost a year. Shultz had learned enough about the company to realize that its practices and the efficacy of its much-touted finger-prick blood-testing technology were questionable and that the company was going to great lengths to hide this fact from the public and from regulators.

Theranos and Holmes were Silicon Valley darlings, enjoying positive press and lavish attention from potential investors and technology titans alike. Just as companies like PayPal had revolutionized the stagnant payments industry and Uber had upended the for-hire transportation sector, Theranos had been positioned as the latest technology firm to substantially disrupt yet another mature sector: the medical laboratory business. By the start of 2014, the company had raised more than $400 million in funding, and had an estimated market valuation of $9 billion.

Shultz's situation was exacerbated by the fact that his grandfather, the highly respected former US Secretary of State George Shultz, was on the Theranos board and was one of Elizabeth Holmes's biggest supporters.

But Tyler Shultz worried about the customers he was convinced were receiving highly unreliable and often inaccurate blood-test results. With so much at stake, Shultz wondered how he should proceed. Should he raise his concerns with the firm's investors? Blow the whistle externally? Report to industry regulators? Go away quietly?

This case and its subsequent four brief follow-up cases are based largely on interviews with Tyler Shultz, and outline the dilemma he faced and the various steps he would take both to extricate himself from his unsavory position and let the public know the full extent of the deception at Theranos.

Five optional handouts are available to instructors to further discussion after the case has been debriefed. The handouts serve as additional decision points for the students if your class time permits.

The case study offers interesting learning possibilities and offers the following learning opportunities to the learner. assess and conduct a macro- and micro-environmental analysis, comprehend the nature of the competitive landscape and how it changes when one looks at a digital-only versus an omnichannel marketplace, examine the product mix and policy of the firm and evaluate how it delivers customer value and analyse the pros and cons of growth strategies available to a firm and arrive at a viable and actionable future business and product strategy.

The short case study presents the story of a young start-up called Country Delight. The firm began operations in 2011 and was the brainchild of Chakradhar Gade and Nitin Kaushal. The direct-to-consumer firm addressed urban consumers’ non-articulated, latent need to get “fresh and uncontaminated” milk to their doorstep. Country Delight delivered farmer-to-consumer fresh cow and buffalo milk and milk products based on a well-designed and efficient value chain where the supply chain was either wholly owned or quality monitored by the firm. The firm began operations in India’s National Capital Region and was spread across 15 metro cities. Slowly, over the years, Gade and Kaushal added more product categories.Country Delight had a subscriber base of around 500,000, and the ambitious duo wanted to double their subscriber base and reach one million subscribers by financial year 2025. The firm was looking at various paths to achieve this number. Should Country Delight expand into new geographies? Or look at adding to the existing product portfolio? Diversification into agritourism, like the Pune-based vineyard – Sula, also looked attractive to build consumer engagement. Would taking the consumer to the farmers from whom they sourced the milk and vegetables contribute additional revenue to Country Delight and their farmer-suppliers? As the firm got ready to raise another round of funding, it needed a well-articulated growth strategy that was exciting and profitable for all stakeholders.

This case study presents the dilemma entrepreneurs face as they look at the next phase of growth. Thus, this case study serves as a learning opportunity for a graduate-level course in management and as a sounding board for those who aspire to enter the start-up space. Though this case study has the potential to illustrate basic concepts such as value chain and macro- and micro-environment analysis, the protagonist’s dilemma and the problem statement make it apt for integrated discussions that are critical in advanced electives in marketing management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

For the design of this case study, the authors used primary sources of information from the shops visited by them in preparation of the case and website of Fred Perry and secondary sources of information from both academic and journalistic publications.

Fred Perry is a premium clothing brand, well-known for its polo shirts. It was created by Mr Fred Perry, a British tennis player. The brand’s stated values are integrity, personality and individuality. Throughout its history, the brand has been adopted by different British subcultures but recently it has faced a challenge because of the brand appropriation by the Proud Boys, a US far-right white supremacy group and other extremist groups as Antifa and hooligans. The nature and actions of the group mean that Fred Perry runs the risk of losing control over its brand equity. This brand hijack means that Fred Perry risks alienating some of its customers by openly opposing the group but also by embracing this subculture’s appropriation. Practically, the brand opposed the appropriation in a press release and by putting an end to the sale of the black and yellow polo shirts in the USA and Canada. Fred Perry has also made a lot of efforts to reposition the brand away from extremist groups while maintaining its strong historical and cultural roots. Through this case study, students will have the opportunity to discuss this topic and explore solutions for brands that face this type of dilemma.

This case is designed to be used in a marketing management, brand strategy or consumer behavior/culture course, especially in the subfield of market segmentation in the telecommunications sector. Specifically, this case is designed for college seniors or master students with basic strategic marketing training. 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. It provides the basis of discussions on the topics of brand management, consumer culture, consumers-brands relationships, brand architecture, brand equity, brand appropriation and repositioning strategy.

The case is written based on publicly available data from primary sources such as the company’s annual reports, company website and the company’s presentations, as well as from secondary sources comprising newspaper articles, research papers, research magazines, magazine articles, industry reports, research reports, etc. as indicated in the references. The company’s financials and peer data are sourced from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database.

The case examines the financial position of Macy’s, Inc., America’s largest and one of the oldest premier departmental stores, with a consolidated annual turnover of US$18,097m in the fiscal year 2020/2021 (FY, 2021). Over the previous few years, the company had been struggling with decreasing market share and profitability mainly due to increasing competition from online retailers and deep discounters, which was affecting the company’s share price. With the appointment of a new chief executive officer (CEO) in fiscal year (FY) 2017, Macy’s, Inc. undertook several changes to revive its financial health and improve its market share. However, it still registered heavy losses of US$3,944m in the FY 2020/2021, the company’s first time in the past decade. With many retailers filing for bankruptcy, was there more that Macy’s could do to improve the company’s position and regain lost investor confidence? Will its entry into emerging markets play a crucial role in its turnaround?

The case can be used in undergraduate and postgraduate courses such as accounting for managers, financial statement analysis, management accounting, introduction to accounting and advanced financial statement analysis. The case can also be effectively used to understand the primary fundamental analysis of the company that involves understanding the company’s positioning and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis. The case would also help business management and entrepreneurship students to get a preliminary idea about the change management process. Finally, the case can be used to familiarize students with using Microsoft Excel to build financial analysis worksheets.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

This case aims to study the growth, evolution, and social innovation of iThrive Games, a socially minded initiative that aims to create meaningful opportunities using technology for teens to enhance the knowledge, mindsets, and skills they need to thrive through development and across the continuum of mental disorder to wellness. iThrive's focus has been on creating “meaningful games”—that is, games that promote health and well-being of teen players. Founded in 2014 by Dorothy Batten, President of DN Batten Foundation, the organization's mission was to collaborate with game developers, partner with teens across the game development cycle (ideation to testing), and provide resources to foster teen thriving through gameplay. To do so, the organization took a unique social entrepreneurial approach. Drawing on a positive psychology framework and building the brand among key stakeholders including game developers, researchers, funders, youth, educators, and parents, the organization orchestrated a community dedicated to advancing the meaningful games field, and in doing so, have widespread impact.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to identify and discuss competition using Porter’s five forces, analyse and understand the enablers and challenges that impacted Rocky Brands’ growth and recommend a solution in relation to Rocky Brands’ growth strategy.

This case study investigates Rocky Brands, a South African manufacturer and distributor of cleaning products in the retail market. The case was set in November 2022 and highlights the important events ranging from the company’s founding in 2011 up until 2022. This case aims to study strategy in the South African fast moving consumer goods industry. At the time of writing the case study, Rocky Brands was operating across South Africa, with their main manufacturing warehouse in Johannesburg and a subsidiary manufacturing warehouse in Durban. They were changing the Durban warehouse to a distribution warehouse, as they planned to manufacture primarily from a bigger warehouse in Johannesburg. Rishav Juglall, the main protagonist, is the founder and managing director of Rocky Brands. Rocky Brands imports and redistributes several of the brands that the company sells, including Weiman’s, Wright’s and Goo Gone. They also manufacture their own line of products in South Africa under the Oakmont brand. Juglall acknowledges that their sales and revenue have grown yearly, but they have recently saturated the market and reached a plateau. Juglall needs to determine whether he should diversify into Africa, expand his product range or enter the market for private label cleaning products.

The case study’s primary focus is on strategy in an emerging market. This case study is suited to undergraduate students studying Porter’s five competitive forces, SWOT analysis (see teaching note exhibit) or the Ansoff matrix in the fields of strategy, marketing or macroeconomics. This case study can be taught in courses such as decision-making, environment of business, leadership or strategic implementation. The case study will teach students how to apply the frameworks to a business and assist students in determining which option is best for the business.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Information was obtained in interviews with Richard Nagel in Winter/Spring 2022. This information was supplemented by material from secondary sources. The only information that was disguised were the real names for Bob Crater, Tim Landy, Jane Tolley and Mary Nagel.

The case was classroom tested in Summer 2022. The responses from students helped to shape the writing of the case.

Richard Nagel, the owner of the RE/MAX Elite real estate agency in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey, has just learned that one of his agents, Tim Landy, quit and left the industry. Tim was a young real estate agent and Richard had spent considerable time training him. Tim was motivated and he worked hard to prospect for business, but he showed that he was experiencing difficulty closing on his sales. Richard decided to recommend that Tim work with another agent, Bob Crater, as Bob was an experienced salesman but was not doing the up-front prospecting that Tim was doing. Richard suggested two different strategies to the two agents – a pairing up arrangement and peer-to-peer learning. The outcome that Richard envisioned was that both of the struggling salesmen would benefit from either of these strategies, but Bob refused to collaborate.

Tim’s quitting was characteristic of an ongoing problem with employee retention that Richard had been experiencing as a manager in recent years. This problem caused Richard to think about how he recruited his real estate agents, how he developed them through coaching and how he motivated them so that they would stay happy in their job and not leave. He recognized the importance of thoroughly examining his retention strategy within the next 12 months so that he could better manage the problem and strengthen the productivity of his real estate agency.

The case is intended for an undergraduate course in human resources management, as it deals directly with recruiting, coaching and retaining employees.

This case study is related to start-up post-listing investment analysis. Through this case study, students will be able to perform the business analysis guided by the Venture Evaluation Metric tool, perform financial analysis using the discounted cash flow methods and perform investment analysis recommendation with justifications from the business and financial analysis performed above.

This case study sets out the study of a scalable start-up, Zomato, which is a successfully listed start-up firm in India. Despite the start-up development success in the pre-listing, the firm has exhibited a continuous unprofitable finance performance in the post-listing and has further experienced a volatile share price performance, both of which have puzzled existing and potential investors. In addition, some analysts are in the opinions that the firm share price valuation have been inflated with overvaluation since in the initial public offering stage and remain traded with overvaluation in the market. Notably, considering the negative indicators mentioned above, investors are concerned about long-term sustainability of the firm business and financial performance. In the context of post-listing investment, the following questions are material to investors: What is the realistic growth trajectory for Zomato in the medium term? What is Zomato’s share fair value in the medium term? Can one see opportunities or risks ahead of investing in Zomato’s shares? What will be the investment strategy for new investors?

This case study is suited to bachelor’s and master’s level in business schools studying entrepreneurial finance analysis.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 1: Accounting and finance.

This case reviews the development of Dianping. After seeing Zagat's unique business model in the United States, founder Zhang Tao found that he could bring it to China and bring about local innovation. At the beginning of its establishment, the collection and promotion of comment content was the major challenge for Dianping. At the same time, Dianping faced legal issues. To solve these problems, the review mechanism of Dianping was designed to a certain extent to ensure the fairness of the review. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, Dianping began to develop a new business model. Relying on its high-quality “word-of-mouth” content and mass basis, Dianping launched group buying, online restaurant ordering, and other businesses. Dianping has always been open to strategic partners. Since 2015, Dianping has undergone historical changes, merging with Meituan. Since then, Dianping has continuously adjusted its business and organizational structure to maintain its competitiveness. Gradually, Dianping has changed from an independent business entity into a business unit of Meituan.