Search results

Marketing and entrepreneurship.

The case is applicable to MBA core marketing, sales and distribution, strategic marketing, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) marketing and entrepreneurship.

Isaac Padmasingh, a first-generation entrepreneur who was awarded TiECon's “Extreme Entrepreneur of the Year 2010”, has built a thriving enterprise. From his first job as a salesman in Godrej to being the founder of “Aachi” group of companies with a turnover of INR 700 crores (USD132 million) annual revenue, he has had quite an eventful journey. His early insights in Godrej in sales and distribution, coupled with his entrepreneurial passion, have enabled him to grow his company this far in a short span of 14 years. His business is partly managed by his wife and his two sons who are the directors of this private enterprise. Now he is making bold moves to venture outside Tamil Nadu and become a national brand, which means a major scaling up and moving into the next orbit. Vital questions in scaling are: Is Aachi pursuing the right growth strategy in their effort to scale up? How can Aachi look at the imminent foreign direct investment in retail as an opportunity for growth? Looking back over the years, what has Aachi learnt and how to carry forward the best practices and learn from the mistakes made?

Entrepreneurship: to introduce the entrepreneurial vision in creating a new enterprise, and to understand the characteristics of an entrepreneur. FMCG marketing: to discuss the importance of going-to-the-market strategy, to discuss the importance of distribution reach in rural marketing, to discuss the nuances of branding in Aachi's growth story and to familiarize students in successfully marketing FMCG products. Growth strategies: identifying opportunities for the future, and to explore the growth strategies suitable for Aachi.

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

A family business founded by Chinese immigrants grew into a $133 million toy and costume maker by exploiting seasonal niche segments in the highly competitive, global toy industry. Sales of traditional toys stagnated when replaced by game consoles and electronic toys. Unable to compete in high tech toys, MegaToys moved instead toward seasonal products. In 2007, brothers Peter and Charlie Woo were about to pitch what they hoped would be $63 million in Easter basket sales to Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart took the full order, it would come to represent over half of MegaToys' revenue.

The company was faced with the dilemma of how to grow, and at what pace. Charlie Woo knew that MegaToys could continue to grow as long as it was able to satisfy Wal-Mart's demands. Peter Woo wondered if this was the smartest way to grow the business. “Growth is a good thing as long as you don't sell your shirt to get it,” he noted. Should MegaToys continue to increase its sales to Wal-Mart, or would dependence on Wal-Mart eventually threaten the firm's success? Were there other, untapped opportunities for MegaToys that were well aligned with its strengths, resources, and capabilities?

This case uses Uber Technologies Inc. to engage students in a serious conversation about how a firm both affects its stakeholders and is affected by its stakeholders as well as the role of strategic leadership in the amount of emphasis placed on ethical practices. Uber represents a visible high-growth startup that has received considerable positive and negative attention in the media; however, few people know of the extent of its aggressive management approach. Much of the publicity about Uber is both a direct consequence of and a direct consequence for stakeholder relationships. Students are asked to analyze Uber’s approach and offer suggestions for moving forward.

This case was created using secondary data sources. The issues for Uber that led the authors to write this case were not very flattering to Uber, and therefore, the authors decided to use secondary sources. Since Uber and many of its direct competitors were private companies, the authors collected as much financial data as the authors could from publicly available sources. Also, due to the contentious nature of some of the managerial tactics used within Uber, the use of secondary data sources was warranted.

This case was crafted with senior undergraduate students in strategic management as the primary audience, but is also relevant for MBA-level strategy courses as well. This case touches upon core content in the vast majority of undergraduate strategic management courses with a special emphasis on two concepts underrepresented in most strategic management textbooks, stakeholder theory and ethical decision making.

An understanding of the competitive landscape and consumer dynamics of an emerging market, especially how a small local company learns to take on and deal with global players. Similarly, embeddedness within a market leads to increasing the competitiveness of local brands as they understand local consumers better than international ones. Local brands are also more likely to use home-based and innovative marketing strategies.

Bliss Chemicals, through their flagship brand, MAQ washing powder, captured market share from global multinationals during a price war. Nevertheless, their competitive landscape and their customer base are dynamic; the company cannot afford to rest on its laurels for long. The case provides insight into the marketing activities of both large and medium enterprises in an emerging market. It also demonstrates the type of marketing activation that engenders strong consumers’ response.

The case can be used in undergraduate, MBA and executive education courses on marketing, consumer behaviour, bottom of the pyramid or international marketing courses. It could also be used in business strategy courses on market entry, dealing with stronger competitors, price wars and doing business in Africa.

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

Branding and brand management.

This case is intended for advanced-level marketing courses (MSc, MBA and EMBA). Students should have some familiarity with central marketing issues and concepts, specifically related to segmentation, targeting and positioning; branding and brand management; and consumer behaviour.

This teaching case concentrates on branding in an emerging markets context, heritage branding, brand revival and entrepreneurial marketing. The case illustrates the challenges and opportunities related to re-launching a heritage brand in the Russian market.

The teaching objectives of the case are to provide students with an understanding of how branding tools are applied in an entrepreneurial context and how brands, especially heritage brands, are revived and managed.

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

Marketing.

The contribution of the present case lies in the critical view that every business actor should exercise – be it general manager, middle management, supervisor or executive – when building a strong organizational culture in corrupt political environments.

The purpose of this case study is to explore the dilemma in which Marcelo Odebrecht, once CEO of Odebrecht, found/determined whether to continue with the business model established by the founders of Odebrecht or take a new path for the organization. After exploring the corrupt acts of Odebrecht and the scope of Operation Lava Jato, the reader can reflect on the importance of organizational culture (according to the three levels proposed by Schein) in the face of the emergence of corruption. By generating discussions about organizational culture, business ethics, political culture and corruption, the organizational culture of Odebrecht is problematized in relation to its real behavior.

Students of administration, business and international business undergraduates and graduates, as well as members of senior management in companies in the infrastructure sector. Also, given the plurality of possible readings, it is recommended that the case also be used in courses or specializations in organizational psychology, organizational sociology or organizational anthropology.

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 5: International Business.

This is an illustrative case analyzing shareholder and accounting outcomes and legal issues resulting from a merger of two major publicly traded companies. In today's business world, the “urge to merge” is tempered by heightened shareholder activism. In response to this activism, boards must proceed with care when negotiating mergers. Challenges to mergers that appear to be in the shareholders' best interest occur often. As is the case here, shareholders and their well funded legal representatives, seek damages for alleged bad decisions. Conoco Oil and Phillips Petroleum announced their intention to merge in November 2001. At that time the cost of gasoline spiraled ever upward and large oil firms put heavy competitive pressure on smaller oil producer/refiners. The merger described as a “merger of equals”, intimated that neither Conoco nor Phillips shareholders would receive a financial advantage (or disadvantage) over other merging shareholders following the completion of the merger. Immediately following the announcement, Michael Iorio, a Conoco shareholder, filed a lawsuit, claiming damages to Conoco shareholders from the merger of the two firms.

This case raises the question: How does a company reasonably estimate and record entries for uncollectible trade receivables, and under what circumstances are receivables written off as uncollectible? The required accounting transactions for the case involve estimating a receivables allowance both as a percentage of sales and as a percentage of accounts receivable and making specific account judgments under the direct write?off method. The subjective issues involve analyzing and assessing a company's methods of collection and accounting for bad debts.

The case, while acknowledging the difficulty of managing a family business in view of the accompanying human issues, emphasizes that sound business practices and procedures, and clarity with regard to the goal, remain the key; a firm is a complex, interconnected system and management needs a systems viewpoint; and technology can only support underlying business processes if there is clarity with respect to these.

SomPack had survived low-cost Asian competition starting the mid-1990s, a revolt by some extended family to try and bring it down with the help of a competitor, the Turkish banking crisis of 2001, and the global economic crisis of 2008 all the while watching its suppliers, competitors and customers collapse. A focus on cost-cutting and internal discipline by the successor, who had been promoted to CEO in 2004, had exacerbated internal discontent somewhat and had led to issues with production planning, but everyone understood that times were tough. Several large customers who had left were asked to return because the alternatives had been worse. By 2012, SomPack was considering expansion into new products in collaboration with its international partners. Then one day, in July 2013, it suddenly collapsed. Could the entire approach have been wrong? What should management have done instead?

Undergraduate, graduate business 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 7: Management Science.

The case can be used in strategic management, international business or ethics courses. In strategic management courses, students will be able to identify political relationships as sources of a firm’s competitive advantage. Students will also understand the role of ethics in the firm’s competitive advantage. In international business courses, the students will be able to analyze the role that corruption and bribery play in the analysis of a country’s institutions. Students will also understand how corruption in a host country influences a firms’ decision to internationalize. Finally, students will understand the challenges that firms face when serving customers in other countries. In ethics courses, students will understand the nature of state/business corruption, i.e. the abuse of public office for private gain and the concept of state capture, i.e. managers controlling the political system for their advantage. Students will be able to analyze the decision of whether to collaborate with unethical partners or customers.

Bell Pottinger Private (BPP) was a British public relations (PR) firm with a successful but questionable reputation of helping famous critical figures and despots improve their public image. In 2016, Lord Tim Bell and the other leaders of BPP were asked to create a PR campaign for the Gupta family. The Guptas were a group of businessmen headed by three brothers who migrated from India to South Africa in the early 1990s. By the 2010s, they had built a business empire allegedly thanks to a corrupt relationship with the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma and his family. The press and prosecutors were increasing their investigations on these relations. The case has two parts, which address two separate challenges and can be taught as standalone cases or in a sequence in two sessions.

MBA and Executive Education.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 5: International business.