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New product development and introduction, Marketing.

The case is suitable for post-graduate students in management, or in their final year. The case is intended for those business school students who are familiar with the basics of marketing management and are going through a course on new product development. The level of difficulty for post-graduate management students as far as this case is concerned is medium to high. The case can be a part of the following courses in marketing; new product marketing; technology marketing; brand management (how to build a technology brand).

The case concerns a computing technology company – Novatium Solutions – that has developed a new product, an affordable computing system, and is looking at ways of marketing it. The product offering in the initial stages is just hardware with limited local processing abilities that needs to be connected through a wire to a telecom broadband player to provide the internet browsing facility. As the case progresses, the product evolves into upgraded and newer formats. The theme of the case is intended to be new product marketing in a technology sector.

The following will be the learning outcomes for this case; new product process and marketing in a technology company (compared to non technology consumer product company); bringing customer orientation to a product technology company; the role of a marketing head in a new product company; and building a retail brand for an affordable technology product.

Teaching notes are available; please consult your Librarian for access. The teaching notes provide adequate questions and answers (four assignment questions and three class discussion questions) so that faculty members need not look beyond these to give student projects or assignments.

Entrepreneurship; tourism and hospitality.

Junior or senior-level business students as well as graduate-level (MBA and/or EMBA) classes in entrepreneurship, small business management, strategic management, international business or international economics.

Cuban tour guides working for the communist Castro Government dream of working for themselves or leaving for the USA. Their story is contrasted by a visit to Cuba as told by a US business professor.

To compare entrepreneurship under capitalism that is slowly relaxing their communistic rules, to learn more about the island of Cuba and its potential for tourism and new venture creation, to understand the legal, social, political, historical and cultural barriers to entrepreneurship, to hypothesize or brainstorm potential new ventures for Cuba.

Teaching notes; photos also available upon request from the author.

Wawa, a $4 billion privately held firm, is arguably the most successful convenience store operator in the United States. Explores how senior management decided to build an entirely new gasoline retailing business within the 100+-year-old firm's core business of high-quality prepared foods and beverages. Charges students with defining the business and organization strategy necessary to “mainstream” the newly proven gasoline retailing concept throughout the company.

To understand how corporate entrepreneurship occurs within established firms; redefine the core business—understanding organic growth beyond the core; and examine the critical role of leadership in any large-scale change process.

Marketing and brand management examples used in classes usually revolve around publicly traded corporations. Students are expected to learn how to deal with branding problems that can arise in new types of organizations as family businesses.

The case study discusses a brand identity and brand management problem facing the Founder of Habiba Community, Maged El Said. Habiba Community is an initiative focusing on sustainability and giving back to community. Many foundations were established under Habiba Community, such as its beach lodge, organic farm and learning center. The beach lodge and organic farm were more familiar to tourists and visitors than the other established foundations. The organic farm produced many organic products sold nationally and internationally. The founder was now faced with the challenge of whether to create one brand identity for Habiba Community as a whole or to go for separate brand identities for each of its foundations.

This case study is developed for students of the bachelor level in marketing and design studies. The case difficulty is regarded as intermediate as it includes new trends and ideas from the field of marketing and branding (as eco-branding and family business branding) and new trends in the tourism service industry (as voluntourism). Courses in which this case study can be used are integrated marketing communication, corporate identity, services marketing and brand management under marketing and graphic design studies. The case study is not designed for earlier courses in marketing and design, as students need to have basic knowledge in marketing and branding beforehand.

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

In April 2012 Bill Nichols, a financial analyst at the real estate investment firm Koenig Capital, was about to enter a unique lease renegotiation. One of Koenig's tenants, Hasperat Inc., had sixteen years left on its long-term lease of the Kelley Building, a 165,000-square-foot office building in downtown Cleveland. The lease contained a clause giving Hasperat the option to buy the Kelley Building from Koenig. When Nichols tried to place a mortgage on the property to take advantage of low interest rates, he learned that the existence of this option in the lease contract prevented lenders from offering Koenig their lowest rates. As a result, Nichols had been tasked with renegotiating the lease to remove the option clause. This unexpected event offered Nichols the opportunity to use his financial skills. He needed to calculate the fair value of the purchase option to be able to justify to his superiors by how much they should compensate Hasperat. Students will step into the role of Bill Nichols and apply real options modeling techniques to value the purchase option in Hasperat's lease.

After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to:

• Apply real options theory to the valuation of a purchase option in a commercial real estate lease

• Identify the common mistakes in applying traditional discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis to financial problems with option components

Apply real options theory to the valuation of a purchase option in a commercial real estate lease

Identify the common mistakes in applying traditional discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis to financial problems with option components

General management/strategy.

Case B: On April 4, 2013, the meeting of GMR’s Group Executive Council (GEC) was scheduled to take place. Srinivas Bommidala, G.M. Rao’s son-in-law and Chairman of GMR’s airports business, was gearing up for the meeting. The meeting was called to discuss a proposal for bidding for an upcoming airport project in the Philippines. It had been more than a decade since GMR entered the airport infrastructure sector. The organization had built substantial airport operating expertise during that period. It adopted a joint venture (JV) model for expanding into the airport infrastructure business. Until now the organization had always formed JVs for all its airport projects. JVs, with existing airport operators, were necessitated by the bid conditions that required a certain minimum airport operating experience for qualifying as a bidder for various projects. In some cases, JV with a local player helped GMR with market knowledge for functioning in a foreign market. GMR also used JVs to access the capabilities it lacked for operating in this sector and gradually learnt from its partners for building capabilities in-house. The group now had the required operating expertise in the sector to qualify as a bidder. One of the key issues the GEC was contemplating was: Whether GMR should continue to form JV for bidding for the upcoming project or should it go solo? Further, if it had to form a JV then, in which areas should it seek a partner?

Case B: To help students understand how companies use alliances as growth strategies; to understand the rationale for formation of various alliances; to explore various factors managers consider when deciding on alliance strategy of an organization; to understand the challenges associated with using alliances as a strategic option; and to understand the pros and cons of internal development (i.e. going solo) vis-à-vis strategic alliances.

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.

This case followed Todd Duncan, Chairman of Duncan Aviation, as he considered which international locations Europe, Latin America, or Asia were most important in positioning Duncan to benefit from continued internationalization of the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) industry. The company had the option to hire Regional Managers to actively manage these areas, recruiting new customers and building relationships with existing ones. The case provides students with an opportunity to identify the core competencies of a company, and to recognize ways in which employee engagement contributes to Duncan's core competencies. Optionally, the case may be used to introduce students to Dunning's eclectic paradigm.

The research for this case was obtained from a combination of primary research, secondary research, and personal experiences. One of the research assistants for this case was employed at the company for over two years, and reflections thus obtained, supported with supplementary research, enriched and deepened the paper. Duncan's Debrief magazine and news releases were important secondary sources, in addition to industry web sites, industry journal articles, reference books, and newspaper articles.

This case is intended to be taught in undergraduate international business or marketing courses.

This case is an illustration of the complexity, and strategic importance, of considering whether, and how, to build customer relationships outside the firm's home country. Such decisions confront many companies facing increasingly global industry environments. The eclectic paradigm, developed by John Dunning, explains why companies expand and participate in international markets.

During the COVID-19 pandemic micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses were hit hard. This was specially so in the restaurant business where physical lockdown and social distancing norms were challenging. Thus, small business performance was a concern (Akpan, Udoh, & Adebisi, 2020). This case study addressed this theoretical aspect. Zhang, Gerlowski, & Acs (2021) had highlighted the challenges of business continuance and enterprise sustenance, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This case study provided insights regarding how these aspects of business continuance and enterprise sustenance were addressed by “Café Tato”. Bhattacharyya and Thakre (2021) had deliberated regarding how firms through strategic initiatives and tactical responses were required to manage COVID-19 pandemic and economic lockdown. Café Tato case study was in line with these recommendations for firms. Barbieri et al. (2020) and Reardon et al. (2021) had outlined steps regarding maintaining business operations reliance given a business crisis situation like during the COVID-19 pandemic. Café Tato case study described this. Café Tato case study accommodated perspectives regarding business crisis situation, business continuance, enterprise sustenance, operations reliance, organizational strategic versus tactical initiatives and finally small business performance.

The teaching case study was written based upon primary data collected from the owners of Café Tato. Furthermore, secondary data was used for building the case.

Café Tato was the most popular and the oldest tea cafés in Goa, India. It had a presence in Panjim and Margaon in Goa. On 24 March 2020 India went into an economic and physical lockdown because of COVID-19 pandemic related crisis. One week down the line on 31 March 2020, Mr Pranav Dhuri (hereby referred as Pranav), one of the owners of Café Tato, was contemplating how to ensure business continuance once there was semi-normalcy restored. What would the initiatives that need to be undertaken was critical for success of Tato the legendary café in Goa was playing in the mind of Pranav.

This teaching case study could be used in the class for strategy planning and implementation in the course of strategic management. This case study could apply for teaching both bachelor’s and master’s students of business management. The case could also be taught to management students for helping them understand how small business firms, while confronting challenges of COVID-19, planned and implemented strategies in the course of strategic management. This study helped strategic management students understand the importance of organization culture in any business as it directly influenced the profitability and sustenance of business. The Dhuri family had all along laid stress on keeping the culture alive by taking various steps at critical times in improvising and maintaining the standards. The study also helped to understand the importance of good leadership and its direct impact on the employees in a crisis situation (COVID-19) work environment and ensure business sustenance.

Teaching notes are available upon request.

The purpose of this paper is to enable tourism management and strategic management students to evaluate and analyze tourism activities in the United Arab Emirates by TCA. Students will gain a comprehensive understanding of developing tourism in rural areas in the United Arab Emirates and to build up proper strategies. They will be able to perform the organization’s competitive standing using Porter’s Five competitive forces and analyze its business strategies as well. They will be able to analyze the current status of the organization using SWOT analysis and to design alternative strategies for the company using TOWS analysis.

The Department of Tourism and Culture – Abu Dhabi, also known as the TCA, is a governmental tourism authority in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi established 14 years ago as part of an economy-diversifying strategy for the non-oil era. The TCA is responsible of creating tourism activities to generate new tourists in Abu Dhabi, which will increase the revenue of the authority and as well increase the gross domestic product of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) economy. Tourism activities have been focused on Abu Dhabi City as is it considered the capital city of the UAE. However, other cities are also part of this strategy, e.g. Al Ain City, which is located in the eastern region of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and Al Dhafra City, which is located in the western region of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, both of which lack the required infrastructure, population, and tourism activity, due in part at least to the fact that the TCA’s strategy plans have been focused on Abu Dhabi City. Sultan Al Mutawa Al Dhaheri (Al Dhaheri), the TCA’s Executive Director of Tourism, has been responsible for developing tourism in Al Ain City and Al Dhafra, but due to the current situation of the two cities regarding the low revenue growth (and the consequent lack of investors willing to invest) and no critical mass (i.e. a sufficient number of hotel rooms available), Al Dhaheri is facing a dilemma regarding achieving TCA strategy in Al Ain City and Al Dhafra City.

This case study will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate level students majoring in Tourism and Hospitality Management, Business Administration and Strategic Management.

CSS 12: Tourism and Hospitality.

This case describes the experience of Kanpur Confectioneries Private Limited (KCPL), a family managed company, in being a contract manufacturer for A-One Confectioneries Private Limited. The alliance had worked to the advantage of KCPL. It had prospered as a profitable contract manufacturer. It had used the surplus to diversify into unrelated businesses. The family members, however had doubts regarding the employment opportunities provided by the move. They were not sure whether the progress was sustainable. Alok Kumar Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director of KCPL, along with his brothers and son, is required to review the strategy and performance of his company and develop a course of action for the future.