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The purpose of the paper is to address customer alienation risk in the context of Marvel's recent (as of June 2023) under-performance and its contribution to Disney's stock's 50 percent-plus decline.

Research followed recent developments at Disney/Marvel, as well as the Bud Light customer alienation, and reconciled those developments to core brand and strategic risk management resources to derive practical suggestions to mitigate customer alienation risk across industries.

Marvel’s experience offers lessons that have relevance across industries inasmuch as a super hero paradigm is effectively a brand. The stronger the bond between customers and a brand, the more customers will maintain or extend their buying patterns over time. And the more customers personally identify with a brand, the greater the likelihood a customer alienation will occur if a firm disrespects that bond. Four practical suggestions are presented that will help to ensure the integrity of brands.

While the under-performance of Disney/Marvel has been (and is) covered in the press, this is the first paper that we are aware of that links that under-performance to customer alienation risk.

This paper offers a practical overview of the U.S. credit cycle and the challenges it poses, along with a perspective on where we seem to be in the cycle in early 2023. Suggestions are then offered for how corporate executives can address cyclical challenges from a corporate strategy perspective.

The United States credit cycle was out into context by following the trend of Moody’s Baa corporate bond yields from January 1919 to November 2022. Under the Moody’s rating system, Baa is the lowest level of investment grade credit, and as such it possesses speculative characteristics that are sensitive to cyclical dynamics. Another reason for choosing Baa credit patterns for analysis is data availability: over 100-years of continuous Baa data is searchable at the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The prior credit cycle wave of progressively lower inflation and interest rates began in 1982 and ended in 2020. The current credit cycle of wave of progressively higher inflation and interest rates will present strategic risks and opportunities that executives will increasingly have to deal with.

This is the first corporate strategy paper we are aware that practically addresses the credit cycle change. It is also the first paper we are aware that provides practical suggestions on how to address that change from a corporate strategy perspective.