Explain why the brand was going tough in the market

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Marketing Management

Case Studies

CASE STUDY (20Marks)

This case study's primary objective is to debate and discuss on: Does it make sense for a single­business firm from an emergingcountry like India, to transform itself into a conglomerate when the reverse trend is witnessed in other countries – both developed aswell as developing? With the inception of Bharti Telecom (Bharti) in 1985, Sunil Bharti Mittal laid the foundations of anorganisation that would emerge as India's 'telecom conglomerate giant'. The company made a humble beginning with themanufacture of push button handsets. However, 1992 marked the turn of events for Bharti. The liberalization of the Indian telecomsector in that year unleashed numerous opportunities for domestic and international players to tap the lucrative Indian telecommarket Notwithstanding its small size, Bharti plunged into the bidding war for cellular licenses, successfully capturing the license forproviding cellular network service in New Delhi (Delhi). Making a mark with its brand, Airtel, in the Delhi market, Bharti wasconfident of a triumphant journey. Contradictory to its aspirations, this early victory was followed by a string of downturns. Thecompany lost most of the subsequent cellular bids and found itself in troubled waters. Nevertheless, competitors' inability to exploittheir winning cellular bids proved a boon to Bharti. The eagerness of these companies to sell their cellular licenses to Bharti broughtthe company back into limelight. Banking on the opportunity, the company spread its cellular service to new regions in the country.

From being a handset manufacturer, Bharti transformed itself into a full cellular service provider with a whopping 4.5 millioncustomers in March 2003. However, the company is not content with being only a 'telecom conglomerate'. In 2008, to gratify itsgrowing aspirations, Bharti declared its intentions of becoming India's 'finest conglomerate by 2020'. Equipped with a youthful logoand new brand identity, Bharti is determined to unveil another success story. However, many challenges lie ahead.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Analyze the critical success factors in building conglomerates and to understand the role of brand building in aconglomerate.

Q2. Examine the challenges that Bharti would face in operating as a conglomerate when a reverse trend is beingwitnessed all across the globe.

CASE STUDY (20Marks)

The fiercely competitive Indian airline industry witnessed as many as three giant merger and acquisitions ­ Jet Airways­Air Sahara,Indian Airlines­Air India, and Kingfisher Airlines­Air Deccan in 2007. Of them, the Kingfisher­Air Deccan deal was a strategicalliance with a difference. The two airlines decided to operate as distinct legal entities with separate brand identities. Air Deccan hada substantial brand equity among the consumers and had became synonymous with low­cost travel in India. However, Vijay Mallya,Chairman of Kingfisher Airlines, decided to adopt a re­branding exercise for it. The exercise involved renaming Air Deccan as‘Simplify Deccan’ with a tagline ‘The Choice is Simple’, replacing the previous famous tag line ‘Simplifly’; replacement of logo,colour, uniform, old aircraft, and delivery of services. This re­branding was intended to give it a premium look, increasing itsairfares. The company thus modified its business model from a low­cost to a value based airline model. The industry was abuzz withspeculation that Kingfisher was planning to increase its stake in ‘Deccan’ to 51%, with an objective to have a greater say in thedecision-making process. However, analysts were skeptical about Deccan’s prospects of attracting a wider target audience.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Discuss strategic alliances as a business expansion strategy.

Q2. Debate the consolidation trend in the Indian airline industry.

CASE STUDY (20Marks)

Procter & Gamble's Old Spice, a major player in the male personal care sector, was launched by Shulton Company in 1938.Although Old Spice was tagged as an Old Man's Product since the 1970s, the product maintained its market leader position till early2000. Ever since P&G acquired Old Spice in 1990, it has been aspiring to give Old Spice a spicy and younger appeal. Its reasons forrevamping its historic image with generation X has become stronger with the success of Axe, an offering from its competitor – Unilever, in 2004. Old Spice in its struggle to regain its lost leadership status, is trying to make its old sailor whistle a new tune.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Debate the the growth of Old Spice over the decades

CASE STUDY (20Marks)

YouTube.com was a video sharing Web site where users could upload, share and watch videos for free. In less than 2 years of itsexistence, YouTube ranked amongst the Web's top 50 sites and had 16 million daily viewers. By August 2006, it had the highestmarket share in the free video sharing Web site category. YouTube had introduced two new advertising avenues named 'BrandChannels' and 'Participatory Video Ads' to encash its huge audience base and soaring popularity. But at the same time, YouTube'ssuccess story seemed to be eclipsed by allegations of copyright violations for the non­permissible content posted on its Web site.

YouTube also faced a challenge to maintain its rapid paced growth and competition from other emerging me-too kind of startups. InOctober 2006, Google announced the acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock­for­transaction. Would YouTube be able toderive benefit from its association with the global reach and technology leadership of Google or get further entangled in lawsuitsafter being acquired by a cash­rich technology giant?

Answer the following question.

Q1. Explain the business model and functioning of YouTube.

Q2. Examine the critical success factors for YouTube as a company.

Q3. Debate the marketing strategies of YouTube.

Q4. Give an overview of the case.

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Explain why the brand was going tough in the market

Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets

Project Report and Thesis contact

aravind.banakar@gmail.com

www.mbacasestudyanswers.com

ARAVIND – 09901366442 – 09902787224

Marketing Management

Case Studies

Case (20 Marks)

Eureka Forbes successfully introduced and sold for many years few models of vacuum cleaners through door–to door marketing. During the initial few years Eureka Forbes vacuum cleaners were not available at any dealer channel. These were sold only by direct marketing. Some experts attribute the success of Eureka Forbes to two factors: one, implementation of an effective sales management system & two, elimination of channel conflict by adopting only door to door selling even at a stage when durables were sold only through dealers. Scene1 It has been a common experience that well advertised & well organized trade fairs generate huge sales. Experts believe that people visit such trade fairs with a frame of mind that is favorably predisposed to making purchase decisions. Deriving a cue from the trade fairs, way back in 1980, a small & upstart computer manufacturer arranged “Road Shows” in metros & mini metros. It was a period when foreign computer vendors were asked to leave India; indigenous makes of computers were few; perception of people about computers were – highly expensive, complex to use, needed trained manpower to operate that was scarce & performance of the hardware was unreliable. Those were the early days of computer marketing when there were no dealers & manufacturers had to sell through their own sales team. Scene2 In the year 1999 Compaq Corp declared that its objective for the year is to become the Internet leader in the InfoTech industry. But for some strange reasons the rival company Dell took the lead in sale of PC’s over the Internet. They take just over three days to deliver a built to specs PC ordered via the net in the USA. Compaq, in the meanwhile, has behaved all muddled up in its Internet plan. The company made a tentative start, but recently announced that it has stopped selling its computers to internet only retailers worldwide. Such a move had a drastic effect on major players such as Siberian Outpost & Shopping.com, which derive much of their revenue from the sale of Compaq PC’s through their websites. On the other hand Compaq plans to purchase Shopping.com and merge it with the Alta Vista search engine on the net. Compaq also declared that its move to stop retailing on the net is not permanent & it will reexamine this policy after three months. So what exactly prompted Compaq to move away from what is apparently the direction in which all others are headed? Industry watchers say that Compaq’s regular stores were being hurt through online sales. Many online retailers sell items at just above the procurement cost, since they maintain low inventories and have hardly any overheads to take care of. This was turning out to be the competition to Compaq’s brick and mortar retailers, who cannot simply match those prices because of slow operations and high overheads. As against this Dell, who sold only through direct marketing, could derive immense advantage from Internet retailing. This was supplemented by a highly rated online customer support service.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Explain channel conflicts. What lesson do you learn about selection of channel from the above scenes?

Q2. Compare the merits & demerits of selling by company’s own sales team, Dealer Channel & Direct Marketing?

Case (20 Marks)

Till the dawn of the 21st century, lamp makers concentrated on the quantity of light, and the growth has been from incandescent to fluorescent, to high and low pressure gas discharge, to compact fluorescent lamps, etc. The main aim of lamp makers has been to maximize the use of energy, focusing on not cutting the lighting levels. Prakash lamps ltd (PRL) plans to introduce electronic ballast with a view to minimize energy loss in conventional fluorescent lighting. In conventional lighting, a ballast and a starter are essential for starting and running fluorescent lamps. The electronic ballast virtually eliminates this loss. Whereas the normal blast consumes 12 watts of power in the case of the electronic blast, it is as low as 2 to 3 watts. The lamp’s efficiency goes up by 7 to 8 per cent. The life of the tube goes up by 2000 to 3000 hours. There is also no need for a flicker star. PRL estimates a resultant saving of at least Rs.400 during the life of the tube. In addition, the electronic ballast is particularly useful in areas facing frequent fluctuations of voltage. The organized sector accounts for 75 million fluorescent lamp production. Industry sources estimate that, in the next 5 years, about 30 to 40 per cent of the lamps will have electronic ballast. A potential threat however is offered by the advent of compact fluorescent tubes. Nevertheless, PRL feels the compact tube’s high installation cost is a plus point for the electronic ballast fitted fluorescent tube, which will only entail an additional cost of Rs.200

 Answer the following question.

Q1. What marketing information will PRL need to decide whether the consumer will opt for the new product?

Q2. What should be the appropriate research technique that should be adapted to the required information? Explain.

Case (20 Marks)

When HLL introduced Lifebuoy in the Indian market in 1895 (110 years ago) it was positioned as the soap that would destroy germs and keep the body healthy. The brand found the going tough especially in rural markets where most people were accustomed to without any soap. HLL then decided to project lifebuoy as soap for hand wash. The approach seemed is pay off. By 1900 Lifebuoy had established itself as soap for hand wash. At this stage, the brand’s inherent properties were expanded and lifebuoy was repositioned as bath soap. Health remained the benefit proposition. “Where there is lifebuoy, there is health”, become a popular jingle in rural India. The brand was also projected on the plank of economy. Much later, in 1964, the brand was relaunched with a change in shape and wrapper design. Lifebuoy started associated with sports. The health and body fitness dimension got reinforced HLL had many requirements to meet. It had to tap same of the emergency market needs. It had to play down the image of lifebuoy as villagers soap and it had to embrace to earnings from lifebuoy brand in the long term. HLL decided to meet these needs through line extensions such as: Lifebuoy personal, Lifebuoy plus, Lifebuoy gold, liquid lifebuoy and lifebuoy active.

Answer the following question.

Q1. How did HLL Position lifebuoy in the beginning?

Q2. What was the geographical focus and why?

Q3. Explain why the brand was going tough in the market?

Q4. What are your views about HLL’s building line extensions?

Case (20 Marks)

Sunshine Lumieres was established in 1992 in Bangalore, India to manufacture lamps mainly for household use. The company was established by Dr. Srinath Kashyap who had extensive experience in the lamp industry with the major multinational manufacturers in India and overseas. Sunshine was involved till now in manufacturing and supplying lamps for consumer and household use under various brands for the leading lamp companies. Dr. Kashyap was involved in looking after the manufacturing and marketing functions while his wife looked after the Finances and the HR functions. The Company had a total of 50 employees and grossed revenue of Rs.9 crores in 2005. The market in India was large and growing due to the increasing affluence and the massive rural electrification programmes of the Government. Post liberalization in 1992; the market dynamics slowly started changing due to increased competition from leading brands looking to capture larger market shares. Dr Kashyap felt it was time to diversify this business and get into newer product segments. The lamp industry can be classified into various segments like: Consumer household Lamps Industrial & Commercial lamps Specialty lamps like high intensity lamps used in Medical & Office Equipment Automotive lamps Miniature lamps Energy efficient lamps like CFL lamps, LED lamps etc. While the large MNCs were present in all segments, most local manufacturers were involved in the consumer and household lighting. Typically, household lamps sold at around US$0.25 per piece at the retail level while the Industrial and commercial lamps sold at prices upwards of US$25 per piece retail. Sunshine lumeries hired Dr. Mohan Das, a bright Engineer from IIT and MBA from a leading Business school. After working in some leading companies, Mohan felt it was time for him to exploit his innovative skills and create world class products. In a very short span of time after joining Sunshine, Dr. Das was able to produce some very interesting and technologically advanced products. Dr. Kashyap felt that over time , in low value products like lamps, the large MNC’s would be forced to give way to players from developing countries like China and India, who would over time establish the products under their own brands. Establishing the Sunshine brand over time was therefore vital for the future. Meanwhile, Mohan had designed a slew of new and innovative products – comparable with the best in their class in the world, in the energy efficient and Industrial lamp categories. Given suitable financial investments, these could take the company’s revenues to over Rs.100 crores by 2008 between the domestic and export markets. As he looked out of his office window, enjoying the light drizzle and cool breeze of Bangalore, Dr. Kashyap’s realized that he was at a point of inflexion. If the current opportunities were exploited fully, it could lead to great fortunes for himself and his family. He could even take the company public and unlock the value of his holdings. However, it would also mean that Sunshine would have to evolve into a professionally managed company and have a larger number of employees. He wondered how he should go about structuring his Sales and Distribution organization so as to grow manifold both domestically and overseas within the next three years before taking the company public. Dr. Kashyap was convinced that he needed to seek professional advice. He invited Dr. Vasant Rao, an old friend and leading Management expert in Bangalore to visit his office for a discussion on a broad game plan.

Answer the following question.

Q1. How Dr. Kashyap should go about professionalizing & restructuring his organization?

Q2. Should the sales be organized on geographic or product basis?

Q3. Should be distribution be common for all products?

Q4. Should he have his own Sales and Distribution organizations in some countries?

Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets

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ARAVIND – 09901366442 – 09902787224