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Economics, entrepreneurship, pricing and marketing strategy, print industry in Pakistan.

Undergraduate and first-year graduate level.

The main theme of the case revolves around decision-making by the publisher, Bilal Lakhani, as he operates in conditions of an oligopolistic market. The case focuses on the set-up of a major English-language newspaper, The Express Tribune, in conjunction with the internationally branded and well-regarded International Herald Tribune by a well-known business group of Pakistan. The group already has a major Urdu newspaper, which has been operational for 15 years, and three television channels, as well as a host of other non-media-related businesses. The case tries to go behind the reasons for setting up an English-language newspaper in a market which already has at least five major existing ones and where literacy is not that widespread. Also, experience in much of the rest of the world would suggest that newspapers – i.e. the print media – are in decline, especially because of the rise of the Internet and social media as means for providing news, information and entertainment. The case is set in Karachi, Pakistan's media capital and, in particular, in an organization that has been involved in the business of media for several years. It currently runs the country's second most-circulated Urdu newspaper, Daily Express. Specifically, the time period is three weeks after the paper, The Express Tribune, was launched into a market with a few competitors and high brand loyalty for existing competitors. The publisher of the paper, Bilal Lakhani, is questioning his pricing decision right after the launch of the paper and there are a series of reasons he is looking into on how he set the original price and why should he reduce the price of the paper now.

Students should be able to see, understand and analyze: challenges faced by entrepreneurs of starting an initiative which has a largely unreliable and untested audience; the extent of interdependence in an oligopolistic industry and how it influences the current and future decision-makings of an entrepreneur or any other firm for that matter, especially in a developing economy; the personnel, financial production and regulation issues involved in setting up assembly/ delivery systems that deliver a product for mass use, i.e. a newspaper; and the pricing and marketing strategies involved in the launch and subsequent successful operation of a product, in this case, a newspaper.

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The subject area is strategy and business.

The case can be used for MBA students. This is equally effective in short courses meant for low-to-mid-level working executives. The case is suited for classes in strategy, general marketing, media management and family business courses.

Dainik Jagran – a vernacular daily – is the most read newspaper in India. Under the banner of Jagran Prakashan Ltd.; which is one of the leading media houses in India, the success of Dainik Jagran has been an outcome of the strategic marketing decisions taken by its founder and his successors in the post-independence era. With extensive circulation, it created a large readership base and took bold decisions to launch multi editions to its daily through a series of acquisitions, mergers and consolidations from 1975 to 2010, enabling it to step into product diversification. Readership surveys, investments in technology, advertising, regular branding events and smart phone applications are a few tools that helped. While the group has diversified into other industries, there is an underlying anxiety about the future prospects of its newspaper business. With the onslaught of online news dailies, will Dainik Jagran be able to expand and maintain its readership base using its previous business and marketing strategies? Or is it time to change strategies for businesses in the newspaper and allied media industry in India?

The study has the following outcomes: application of value chain concept in businesses serving two-sided markets; application of environmental analysis, Porter’s five forces analysis and related strategy concepts; and learning to critically approach and develop a sustainable growth strategy framework for a successful family-run newspaper business in India.

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CSS 11: Strategy.

Strategic Marketing Management. This case is also relevant for discussion in other courses like brand management.

Postgraduate Management students.

Just before the official launch of “no-negative” news edition by Dainik Bhaskar Corp. Ltd, there was widespread speculation that the group was risking too much by going against the set convention of the newspaper industry. The common belief in the industry was “If it bleeds, it leads” and “good news is no news”. While endeavoring to do away with this perception, the management needed answers to questions like “Would it really be an attractive proposition for the readers?”, “Was the group compromising the role and responsibilities of press in presenting the truth to the world?” and “How would it add value to the brand?” The entire debate was pivoted around the sustainability of positive marketing strategy and “Is it a good idea to go forward with No Negative?” For decades, Dainik Bhaskar was known for its strategy of capturing untapped markets or denting into monopolistic markets and become a leader. This case is an odyssey of moving away from the “me-too” to category (positive newspaper) positioning. The main objective of this case is to build the concept and rudiments of positive marketing in practical perspectives using the backdrop of the Hindi newspaper industry and its largest player breaking the myth “only negative news sell”. Besides this, the case also evolves the process of institutionalizing positive marketing in organizations.

The primary objective of teaching through this case is to make students aware and understand the emerging strategy of positive marketing and its ability to break through the present clutter in the market. It also elaborates on how companies can use this tool for differentiating themselves from others.

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CSS 8: Marketing.

Dinesh Sibal, CEO of Q-Connect, was reading his mails on his laptop after returning back to his hotel room in Guwahati. He was in Guwahati for his regular monthly meeting with field team. One of the mails was from marketing manager of a leading consumer durables company dealing in kitchen utensils and appliances. The company wanted to use Q-Connect network to carry out demonstrations and sales of its products for its target customers in Assam. Sibal was pleased as this was the first instance of a company reaching out to him for using Q-Connect network. He wanted to share the good news with his colleague Gulancha Baruah with whom he had built this network.

This case allows students to engage with classical marketing tenets of branding, media and communications decisions and content marketing within a management framework.

This case is appropriate for an undergraduate or graduate-level programme in marketing management.

Suzanne Stevens was part of a group of four former senior employees of a large life insurance firm that decided to establish a new and innovative South African insurance company, BrightRock. They identified a gap in a large and highly competitive (albeit generic and opaque) insurance market and developed a distinctive positioning within the market. There was low consumer understanding of the technical aspects of life insurance products, and no existing life insurance product provided an individualized offering. Stevens developed the company’s brand and marketing strategy by drawing on reputation drivers, traditional advertising and a content marketing approach. BrightRock focused on change moments in consumers’ lives, including getting married, having children or getting a new job, and changed the standard insurance product model by launching an individualized flexible product that could adapt with the consumer through their various life stages. The case study documents the first three years of BrightRock’s operations, with a strong focus on brand and product development, distribution and communication. The case dilemma involves choices Stevens faced at the beginning of 2015 about marketing investments across paid, earned and owned media.

This study enables to critique the development of a services brand; integrate paid, owned and earned media to increase communication effectiveness and efficiency; and critique a content marketing strategy.

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CSS 8: Marketing.

The theoretical concepts and frameworks from the following literature are brought in to discuss the case situation. Freeman’s stakeholder framework, Yukl’s Influence Tactics, Johnson and Scholes’ Power-Interest Matrix Please see: Freeman, R. E. (2010). Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Pitman Publishing Inc. Yukl, G. (2002). Leadership in Organizations. Prentice-Hall. Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. (1999). Exploring Corporate Strategy: Text and Cases. Prentice-Hall.

Information required for the case was primarily collected from Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorie, India, where the newly recruited civil service officers (probationary trainees) of India are trained. The main protagonist, a senior officer in the Indian Administrative Services was interviewed by one of the authors. Secondary data from contemporary newspaper reports and government orders were also made use of.

Palakkad District Magistrate Gayathri Nair was tasked with acquiring 130 hectares of land for a government-sponsored public-private partnership project to set up a railway coach factory in Palakkad. After taking the landowners into confidence and fast-tracking the administrative process through the line departments, she successfully acquired 93 hectares of land for Phase I of the project. However, the intervention from local politicians and activists halted the next phase. Gayathri was pressured by her bosses to solve the standstill in four weeks. Unable to make the owners realize the benefits of the project, she witnessed a showdown between the agitating masses and the district administration. The entire episode is worsened by the partisan media coverage. The only options open to Gayathri, as the head of the district administration, are either to go ahead with forceful land acquisition and thereby, risk the wrath of the public or abandon the project and bury the months-long back-breaking teamwork. How could Gayathri handle the situation better? What steps could she take at various stages to ensure a balanced outcome for all the stakeholders in the project?

This case is applicable for the courses/sessions in training programmes for executives, and undergraduate courses related to project management, strategic management, leadership and public policy. It is also useful for courses and training programmes on stakeholder mapping and conflict management.

This case is intended to help students of business communication and public relations to trace the effects of communication by public figures and understand essential elements of designing effective communication. After working through the case and assignment questions, the students will be able to:understand the drivers of vaccine hesitancy;analyze the effects of mass communication on public sentiment, in a fast-changing public health situation; anddesign interventions to influence public awareness and action, using a simple model (5W) for mass communication.

As the vaccines first arrived after the devastating first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Indians hesitated to take the shot. Vaccine hesitancy, a worldwide phenomenon, hampered the uptake of the first Covid vaccines despite the dark clouds of the lethal disease. The case looks at the massive problem of vaccine hesitancy and how an integrated communication strategy could overcome and mitigate the challenge. The case protagonist, the leader of a communications agency, looks at the messaging, medium and platforms needed for strategic communication pitch to combat this vaccine hesitancy.

The case was designed for use in a graduate-level course in business communication. This case may be positioned toward the middle or end of the course to illustrate mass communication strategy for pressing and sensitive challenges. The case may also be used in a course on public relations, both at graduate and undergraduate levels.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Leadership, human resource management, crisis management, change management and communication.

Executive education; postgraduate; undergraduate.

This case study describes the collapse of Satyam, a leading IT industry service provider from India. Satyam went into a crisis mode after revelation of financial fraud by its Chairman. This resulted in a crisis not just for the company, its clients and employees – but it also had the potential to shake up the entire Indian IT industry the world over, by shattering investor and client confidence in the Indian IT sector. The case provides the students with an inside view of the unfolding of events at Satyam and the people challenges that emerge in a crisis scenario. The case outlines reactions from the industry, government, clients and employees as they tried to make sense of a very chaotic situation, and its multi-level ramifications both within India and outside. The case ends with Thallapalli Hari, the Global Head of Marketing and Communication and ex-head of HR, trying to visualise and prioritise a course of action to propose to other members of the leadership team.

The key aim of this case is to provide a backdrop to the crisis, and also help students put themselves in the role of an HR crisis manager as well as portray the decision making and communication challenges that emerge in chaotic situations. The importance of an immediate and yet strategic response is emphasised and the case is a great starting point to have a discussion on the competencies and skills required in HR to lead under unusual circumstances. This case allows participants to get an in-depth understanding of the collapse of Satyam. The case also illustrates principles of leadership, change management and communication, in particular:

• Leadership: The Satyam story is an HR and leadership crisis nightmare come true. What should an HR leader do when you wake up to find your company with a ruined reputation, minimal financial capital, 53,000 employees on the payroll and more than 500 clients with pending deliverables worldwide. Where do you begin? The case illustrates a situation where immediate action is required to stop the tailspin into which the company was heading.

• Change management: The situation demanded that change be managed from a chaotic system to a stable system. The big issue though remains as to how one can get a system into a state of stability when everything is changing at the same time. Most change management plans have some stable variables, however in the case of Satyam there were multiple changes taking place simultaneously. A combination of change in leadership, client relationships, employee trust and confidence, market reactions together make for a perfect storm. Dealing with even one of these changes is a challenge for a company. In the case of Satyam, its entire existence was at stake.

• Communication: The demands for communicating effectively in a crisis situation are different than communicating under stable systems. The choice of medium, the speed of response, the content all need careful monitoring. Whereas most companies have teams that separately deal with internal and external communication, Satyam provides a unique situation where managing both effectively at the same time was critical to the future of the firm. The stakes for effective communication are much higher under the circumstances. This case can be used in organizational behaviour, human resources and corporate communications modules being taught to under-graduates, post-graduates and for executive education.

Leadership: The Satyam story is an HR and leadership crisis nightmare come true. What should an HR leader do when you wake up to find your company with a ruined reputation, minimal financial capital, 53,000 employees on the payroll and more than 500 clients with pending deliverables worldwide. Where do you begin? The case illustrates a situation where immediate action is required to stop the tailspin into which the company was heading.

Change management: The situation demanded that change be managed from a chaotic system to a stable system. The big issue though remains as to how one can get a system into a state of stability when everything is changing at the same time. Most change management plans have some stable variables, however in the case of Satyam there were multiple changes taking place simultaneously. A combination of change in leadership, client relationships, employee trust and confidence, market reactions together make for a perfect storm. Dealing with even one of these changes is a challenge for a company. In the case of Satyam, its entire existence was at stake.

Communication: The demands for communicating effectively in a crisis situation are different than communicating under stable systems. The choice of medium, the speed of response, the content all need careful monitoring. Whereas most companies have teams that separately deal with internal and external communication, Satyam provides a unique situation where managing both effectively at the same time was critical to the future of the firm. The stakes for effective communication are much higher under the circumstances. This case can be used in organizational behaviour, human resources and corporate communications modules being taught to under-graduates, post-graduates and for executive education.

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

This paper aims to understand the changing landscape of media and entertainment industry, to understand the difference between display advertising and native advertising, to know the standing of BuzzFeed in the industry and to know the strategic actions of BuzzFeed under the current competitive business environment.

Founded in 2006 as a viral lab, by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson, with the aim of tracking viral content, it caused disruption in the market with its entry and grew very rapidly. It was valued at $1.5bn in 2015, having raised money from numerous investors. The revenue of BuzzFeed was driven by the concept of native advertising. Catchy headlined articles conveyed the sense that BuzzFeed might be charging advertisers on basis of clicks, but this was not entirely true. Instead, BuzzFeed charged a fee from its clients for creating custom content targeting the customer base of the client. However, the year 2015 went tough for BuzzFeed when, as per the reports by Financial Times, it fell short of achieving its targeted revenue of US$250m by US$80m. It forced the company to revise and lower its target revenues for the year 2016 as well. The combined worldwide traffic to BuzzFeed saw a decline of up to 14 per cent. As Claire marketing head looked out of the window and pondered over the slashed revenue projections and the content related issues, the question on her mind was would native advertising sustain BuzzFeed in the longer run? BuzzFeed was known for its viral content and native advertising would involve finding a balance between what is good for the advertisers' brand and what will become viral. Buzzfeed ran a risk of losing brands to other modes of advertisement if they felt that native advertisement, which disguises the product within the content, was not meeting their expectations.

The case is targeted at students of post-graduation and under-graduation programs in Business Administration.

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Marketing

In December 1999 Thomson Financial (TF) began a radical transformation from forty-one divisions toward a more integrated firm organized around customer segments. This required active, coordinated involvement from business, organization, and technology functions, as well as sustained investment and execution through the crises of the technology market crash and September 11, 2001. By 2005 TF had emerged as one of the top three financial information firms globally (with Bloomberg and Reuters).

Understand: 1. Building the customer-centric firm; “synchronizing” marketing (branding and sales), organizational, and technological infrastructure to focus on customer segments rather than products. 2. Making transformative, long-term investments under difficult circumstances. 3. Coordinating business, organization, and technology strategies throughout a long-term transformation process.