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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.

Sustainable fashion.

Bachelor Degree/Master Degree, Master of Business Administration (MBA), PhD.

The case focuses on Osklen, one of the world’s first eco-fashion brands, founded in 1989 by Oskar Metsavaht. For the past 26 years, Osklen had become Brazil’s foremost sustainable luxury venture, and since 2012, under first minority and then majority corporate ownership, pursued an aggressive global expansion strategy. The dilemma of the case juxtaposes Osklen’s creative aesthetics, which leverage unique Brazilian beauty in nature and heritage, with the financial pressures of global expansion. The tension is exacerbated by the 2015 corruption scandal, which decelerated the Brazilian economy and reduced consumer spending on sustainable luxuries in Osklen’s home market; it also risked compromising the appeal of Brazilian brands elsewhere. The case explores the complex interconnections between local and global aspects of sustainability and brings forward the environmental, social and cultural aspects of brands and business to the foreground. The case also illustrates how economic crises impact brands from the initial creative inspiration to the prospects of global expansion.

Students will master tools for strategic analysis (VRIN framework and scenario planning) to a company evolving in an emerging economy. They will learn about the ways to consider and communicate sustainability. Students will be exposed to the importance of aesthetics and multi-sensoriality in business activities.

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

The Dudley Beauty case illustrates a contemporary branding, management and marketing challenge facing many companies that are 50 plus years old. Movahhed (2016) highlights the six elements to consider during brand strategy: the target audience, the brand promise, brand perception (past, current and future), brand values, brand voice and brand positioning. The times have changed with changing macroenvironmental factors including political, economic, sociological, technological, legal and other environmental (PESTLE) changes that affect a business but which the business does not directly control.

The case is based upon an interview with Dudley Beauty CEO and President Ursula Dudley Oglesby and secondary sources.

The “A Makeover for Dudley’s Q+” case explores the challenges of a second-generation textured hair care and personal care company in the direct selling channel as it faces an aging market and changing business and economic environment. A Black-owned company, begun in 1967 by her parents, Dudley Beauty is led by the founders’ daughter, Harvard College and Harvard Law School-educated, Ursula Dudley Oglesby. At over 50 years old, the company has continually created new textured hair products and has high brand awareness among older Black consumers but has not adequately addressed changing hair trends and shifting communication preferences of younger consumers. The company is at a critical point needing to reach a younger, larger market to survive. The business situation supports marketing, management, strategy, and/or entrepreneurship undergraduate students in understanding how macroenvironmental forces and internal structures affect businesses.

This case is intended primarily for use by undergraduates in a variety of courses. It is suitable for courses in Principles of Marketing, Entrepreneurial Marketing, general Entrepreneurship and Marketing Strategy courses covering topics such as direct selling, the role of environmental factors in business, rebranding efforts using digital and social media marketing and women/minority business owners.

Data for the case came from public sources, including legal proceedings, court filings and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The authors perused hundreds of court documents and identified 28 that were most relevant to this case. The authors also used press interviews with the women highlighted in the case. The authors have no relationship with the company and no one from the company has reviewed the information presented in this case. As the case is drawn from sworn legal testimonies, interviews and related documents in the public domain, the authors did not have to seek approval for publication.

Pinterest touted itself as “the nicest place on the Internet.” It had an almost 80% female user base and purported to have an inclusive culture that embraced diversity. However, in June 2020, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, two former female employees of color violated their non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to publicly accuse Pinterest of racial and gender discrimination. In August 2020, Pinterest’s former Chief Operating Officer, Francoise Brougher, filed a lawsuit charging the company with gender discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination, and authored a public blog post titled, The Pinterest Paradox: Cupcakes and Toxicity, detailing her own experience with the company’s discriminatory culture. Three days later 236 of Pinterest’s 2,545 employees staged a virtual walkout and 445 employees signed a petition in an attempt to change Pinterest’s policies and culture. The case provides a brief overview of Pinterest, including its mission, values and organizational culture, and details several incidents and complaints by female and minority employees. The case questions whether employee complaints are a relatively narrow issue involving disgruntled former employees who did not fit at the organization or a much broader issue involving discrimination and managerial neglect in creating and maintaining a nondiscriminatory, inclusive culture. Students are encouraged to evaluate the situation in which Co-Founder, Board Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Ben Silbermann finds himself, evaluate the actions taken and decide if Silbermann should take any additional actions to address the discrimination claims and ensure a positive culture for all employees.

This case is appropriate for graduate and advanced undergraduate level courses in organizational behavior, human resource management and business law or any course where discrimination and workplace culture are discussed.

This case was based on both primary and secondary data. In-depth semidirected interviews were conducted in 2021–2022 after receiving the institutional research board approval. The interviews took an approximate time ranging from 90 to 120 min. They were recorded and transcribed. A thematic analysis was undertaken to identify the most relevant themes for the case. The secondary sources used included various websites, scholarly and trade journals, as well as specific databases, such as Statista.

The case exposes students in multiple disciplines to the challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis at Yale School of Medicine (YSM). It describes its remarkable effects on organizational and community members as they struggled to reimagine more inclusive and supportive spaces. As one of the most severe crises humanity has ever witnessed, COVID-19 exacerbated the existing struggles of the underrepresented communities, creating a double pandemic. It has also amplified inequities among marginalized groups including black, indigenous and people of color; women; immigrants; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning; people with different abilities; working parents; single parents; religious minorities; and people with low income. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Yale University School of Medicine (YSM), like other pioneering schools in the field of health care, doubled their efforts to face both the public health crisis and the substantial social turmoil (racial tensions after the death of George Floyd, food insecurity, vaccine resistance, social inequalities, etc.). Professor Marietta Vazquez, MD, who was the first Latina to be named Associate Dean for Medical Students Diversity at YSM, launched with Dr Latimore (Chief Diversity Officer) and her other colleagues many strategic initiatives aiming at improving the diversity, equity and inclusion of organizational and community members.

The case is an invitation to graduate students and students in executive education programs to reflect on the grand challenges leaders faced at YSM as well as in other institutions across the nation and the globe. It is also a call to reimagine ways leaders can accelerate the pace of change in their organizational ecosystems.

This case was written for use in graduate-level courses, including executive education dealing with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, Leadership and Change, Health-Care Equity/Policy, Health Sciences, Human Resource Management, Organizational Behavior, Crisis Management, Sustainability, Business and Society, Social Issues in Management, Strategy, etc. Faculty members can easily adapt the case to fit the content of the course they teach, the students’ context as well as the specific learning outcomes to be achieved.

Russ Clark is a successful NAPA Auto Parts franchisee in Yuma County, Arizona. He sees opportunity in the neighboring Mexican city of San Luis Rıo Colorado. But crossing the border with an after-market auto parts store will require building relationships with others, lots of learning to overcome the significant barriers, and some savvy decision-making in addition to the usual evaluation of business opportunities. Clark must consider a location decision, product mix, human resource issues, and how to promote the new business in an uncertain and unfamiliar context. Clearly, his current American business model will require a great degree of adaptation to make the venture a success. This case was developed from extensive field interviews and shadowing Mr. Clark for a day. In addition, Mr. Clark and his store manager, Rigoberto made classroom presentations describing their experiences surrounding the case situation.

This case can be used in management of international business courses to illustrate the analysis of market attractiveness, the importance of fit between firm capabilities and market requirements, and the effects of multimarket competition. It describes the international expansion challenges facing EAC Nutrition, the infant formula division of a Danish conglomerate, in early 2002. Growth in EAC's core markets of Thailand and Malaysia has stagnated and EAC is contemplating three expansion options: entry into India, geographic expansion within China, and product line expansion in existing markets.

The various learning outcomes of the case include the following: to provide information and help the students to understand how a start-up business succeeds with the proper branding and marketing; to help understand different marketing theories related to segmentation, targeting, positioning, branding, distribution and marketing process and the frameworks of understanding start-up business marketing with a practical example; to improve analytical skills and help evaluate marketing strategies related to segmentation, targeting, positioning, branding, distribution and marketing in the Indian quick-service restaurant (QSR) business; and to encourage learners to think differently towards solution generation and strategy decisions.

The case portrays the dilemmas related to segmentation, targeting, brand positioning, distribution and start-up business marketing in the context of an Indian QSR. The present case strives to portray the journey of WoW! Momo is a QSR brand in India and highlights the company's branding and marketing challenges. Based on the challenges faced by the company and the decision dilemma pointed out in the case, the readers can get sufficient motivation to generate probable solutions. This was early 2007; Binod Kumar Homagai and Sagar Daryani, bosom friends, were on the verge of finishing their graduate studies in commerce from St. Xavier's College Kolkata. Pursuing Chartered Accountancy or MBA was the common trend as the career option among most commerce graduates then. Still, both Homagai and Daryani thought to be innovative and different in their career options. After a series of discussions, they determined to start with their favorite dish, momos, as an alternative brand proposition that would be opening off from the City of Joy, Kolkata. They managed to arrange a seed capital of INR 30,000 in 2008 and started their venture WoW! Momo. In the financial year 2018–2019, the company's revenue had already crossed INR 1170m, achieved its presence in 11 cities in India, and reached more than 243 outlets. This case has followed the qualitative research methods where in-depth interviews of the founders and stakeholders along with the observation method were used. The case unfolds a systematic solution of dilemmas related to segmentation, targeting, brand positioning, distribution and start-up business marketing in the context of Indian QSR business. This case can also be seen as one of the youth entrepreneurial success stories of Indians.

This case is primarily meant for second-year students in a postgraduate program in business management. The case could also be discussed in an executive development program on marketing/brand management/business strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Social enterprise.

This case study can be used on modules on social enterprise (SE) and international business for undergraduate and postgraduate studies.

Arusha Women Entrepreneur (AWE) is a SE established in 2008 in Tanzania that employs low-income women from peri-urban Arusha and provides technical and management skills training to smallholder farmers. AWE has created a value supply chain from the production and marketing of aflatoxin-free, natural peanut butter, having a strong vision of delivering social and development benefits for smallholder peanut farmers and unemployed women.

This case is the basis for class discussion rather than for illustrating either effective or ineffective handling of a business. From this case, students will learn about the emergence and development of SEs and the challenges they encounter to grow.

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: 3: Entrepreneurship.

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.