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Summary The Times 100 Business Case Studies

17 E D I T I O N www.thetimes100.co.uk Designed & produced by: Wilson & Wilson P U B L I S H I N G Commer House Station Road Tadcaster North Yorkshire LS24 9JF T: 00 44 1937 831831 F: 00 44 1937 831832 E: [email protected] BUSINESS CASE STUDIES EDITION 17 E D I T I O N 1 7 Participants Aldi ARM Bibby Line Group CIMA CMI Enterprise Rent-A-Car Harrods IET IMI JD Sports Kellogg's Lafarge Logica National Trust (Online) NATS (Online) Nestlé Network Rail OPITO/CIPS Portakabin Primark Reed Elsevier (Online) Sheffield Forgemasters International Syngenta Tesco TNT UNISON United Utilities Zurich ISSN 17576539-17 www.thetimes100.co.uk This, the 17th annual edition of The Times 100 Business Case Studies, continues to support and inspire both teachers and students of Business Studies through its unparalleled insight into companies. The case studies provide not only greater understanding of how real businesses work, but the practical examples and context they give also help students to deliver more in-depth answers and achieve higher results. As ever, thanks to the generosity of our corporate sponsors, we are able to bring this unique resource to UK schools and colleges. The printed edition is once again supported by a wealth of additional material on The Times 100 website www.thetimes100.co.uk and I would welcome your feedback on how useful you find these additional resources or importantly, what else we could do to enhance your experience of working with The Times 100. This year, our new website has enabled us to open up The Times 100’s vast archive of case studies from previous editions. You may now purchase a pdf download of a case study for a nominal fee or take advantage of our collections of case studies on CD, themed by curriculum areas. For more information go to The Times 100 shop at http://shop.businesscasestudies.co.uk/ Gordon Wilson Chief Executive Welcome to The Times 100 Published by Wilson & Wilson Publishing ©2012. Permission is given by the publishers to print any part of this publication by schools and colleges for non-profit educational purposes only. Other than this special exemption, all rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior, written permission of the publishers. Printed in the United Kingdom. Contents Page What The Times 100 includes 3 Index of case studies with relevant curriculum topics 4 The case studies in alphabetical order by client 8 Example lesson resources pack, including lesson PowerPoint 109 Example crossword and word search 114 Key glossary terms for Edition 17 case studies 116 The Times 100 Team Chief Executive Gordon Wilson Director of Operations Lynn Wilson Authors Stephen Barnes • Neil Denby Rob Dransfield • David Needham Academic Editors Paul Stirner • Claire Wilson • Paul Woodcock Account Managers Jean Naylor • Melanie Rosser Marketing Amanda Hynes • Nicola Wilson Graphic Designer Ian Campbell Web Developer Andrew Hall INTRO SECTION EDITION 17 2/10/12 14:02 Page 1 [email protected] www.thetimes100.co.uk 2 The Times 100 Business Case Studies is a unique annual resource containing business case studies from blue-chip companies. Each case study is constructed around a key element of the Business Studies curriculum. By using real information from the sponsoring companies, the case studies provide real-life examples which help students engage more easily with curriculum topics and learn the complexities of business. Students and teachers tell us how important The Times 100 is to business studies teaching: • The case made the supply chain a lot clearer as it shows lots of examples from Kellogg’s to help it fit the three main sectors. Before we had studied the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors but not in this much detail. • The case study was good at showing how matrix structures work in a real business. Because KBR is involved in so many very different projects it needs to make sure that the people working on them have the right skills and experience to ensure they are successful. The Times 100 website www.thetimes100.co.uk has become one of the leading business studies websites. It receives over 6 million visitors and generates over 18 million downloads each year. If you are a teacher or a student or are new to using The Times 100, the following overview will show you all the different elements available and help you to get the best out of the resource. How to use this resource INTRO SECTION EDITION 17 2/10/12 14:02 Page 2 www.thetimes100.co.uk 3 What The Times 100 includes The Times 100 www.thetimes100.co.uk Careers Participating clients provide an overview of entry levels and typical roles available • Annual edition of case studies • A1-size curriculum- themed posters for classroom display • Handbook sent to Careers Advisers in schools and colleges • Pdf downloads of case studies • Case studies searchable by company or curriculum topics • MP3 audio downloads for easier learning • PowerPoint of case study highlights for revision • Crosswords and word searches to make learning fun • Web links and client videos to help with further research • Revision theory and glossary to support learning • Online shop offering The Times 100 case studies archive • Free download of current careers handbook • Client entries searchable by company or entry level • Includes details of starting salary and other benefits • Real-life role profiles • Company information and recruitment contacts • Supporting information on writing CVs and job-seeking • Suggested lesson plans • Teacher guides • PowerPoints on curriculum topics Online for students Online just for teachers Case Studies Each study focuses on a topic from the Business Studies curriculum + + + INTRO SECTION EDITION 17 2/10/12 14:02 Page 3 www.thetimes100.co.uk 4 The table shows current edition case studies relevant to key topics in GCSE, A level and Scottish specifications. For a fuller list of all Times 100 case studies by topic, go to http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/case-studies/by-topic/ Where a case study shows the Careers icon , this means that you will find information on career opportunities with this client on The Times 100 Careers pages http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/career-info/ Where a case study shows the STEM icon , this means the topic of the case study or the company involved is relevant for students following or interested in STEM subjects. Edition 17 case studies and curriculum topics Business expansion through training and development Curriculum topics • Identifying training needs • On-the-job training • Off-the-job training • Development How innovation drives research and development Curriculum topics • New product development • Innovation • Research • Development Page 8 PEOPLE Page 12 OPERATIONS Growth through investment Curriculum topics • Growth as business strategy • Organic growth • Inorganic growth • Measuring growth Decision making techniques Curriculum topics • Decision making • Types of decisions • Decision trees • Ratio analysis Online STRATEGY Page 16 FINANCE Developing the skills for managing change Curriculum topics • Managing change • Causes of change • Barriers to change • Evaluating change impacts Marketing and product strategies for growth Curriculum topics • Ansoff's matrix • Market development • Product development • Diversification Page 20 PEOPLE Page 24 MARKETING Developing a career path in retail Curriculum topics • Training • Development • Retention • Roles & responsibilities Page 28 PEOPLE C S C S S C S C INTRO SECTION EDITION 17 29/8/12 13:41 Page 4 www.thetimes100.co.uk 5 Edition 17 case studies and curriculum topics Entrepreneurship in engineering Curriculum topics • Entrepreneurship • Characteristics of an entrepreneur • Business start-up • Engineering and enterprise Engineering Advantage - strategy in action Curriculum topics • Strategy • Values • SLEPT analysis • Innovation Page 32 STRATEGY Page 36 STRATEGY Using market research to support decision making Curriculum topics • Market research • Primary market research • Secondary market research • Quantitative & qualitative research Devising a communications plan Curriculum topics • Communication process • Communcation plan • Communication channels • Barriers to communication Page 40 MARKETING Page 44 PEOPLE Developing a sustainable supply chain to add value Curriculum topics • Sectors of industry • Supply chain • Sustainability • Efficiency Using skills to respond to the external environment Curriculum topics • Political factors • Economic factors • Social factors • Technological factors Page 48 STRATEGY Page 52 ENVIRONMENT The use of social media in promotion Curriculum topics • Marketing mix • AIDA model • Above-the-line promotion • Below-the-line promotion Online MARKETING C S C S C S C C S C S C INTRO SECTION EDITION 17 29/8/12 13:41 Page 5 www.thetimes100.co.uk 6 Edition 17 case studies and curriculum topics Effective strategies for long-term growth Curriculum topics • Aims & vision • Objectives • Strategy • Tactics Creating shared value in the supply chain Curriculum topics • Corporate social responsibility • Supply chain • Benefits of responsible behaviour • Stakeholders Online STRATEGY Page 56 ENVIRONMENT Managing change through training and development Curriculum topics • HR strategy • Training • Development • Roles & responsibilities The importance of sustainable purchasing and supply Curriculum topics • Purchasing & supply • Supply chain • Skills • Sustainability Page 60 PEOPLE Page 64 OPERATIONS Adding value through health and safety Curriculum topics • Health & safety • H&S legislation • Implementing H&S • Business benefits of H&S Beyond corporate social responsibility Curriculum topics • Corporate social responsibility • Business ethics • Stakeholders • Supply chain Page 68 OPERATIONS Page 72 ENVIRONMENT Corporate responsibility and stakeholders Curriculum topics • Internal stakeholders • External stakeholders • Stakeholder conflict • Benefits of stakeholder focus Online STRATEGY C S C C S INTRO SECTION EDITION 17 29/8/12 13:41 Page 6 www.thetimes100.co.uk 7 Edition 17 case studies and curriculum topics Apprenticeship training within the steel industry Curriculum topics • Workforce planning • Training • Training in action • Benefits of training Values into vision Curriculum topics • Mission • Vision • Values • Strategies Page 76 PEOPLE Page 80 STRATEGY Using diversity and inclusion to build a competitive edge Curriculum topics • Diversity strategy • Diversity • Inclusion • Equal opportunities Delivering a superior customer experience Curriculum topics • Customer focus • Customer satisfaction • Benefits of customer focus • Measuring customer satisfaction Page 84 PEOPLE Page 88 OPERATIONS Developing responsiveness through organisational structure Curriculum topics • Organisational structure • Culture • Skills • Roles & responsibilities Using cost-benefit analysis to appraise investments Curriculum topics • Cost benefit analysis • Average rate of return • Payback • Stakeholders Page 92 PEOPLE Page 96 FINANCE The benefits of budgeting Curriculum topics • Types of budgets • Setting a budget • Using a budget • Benefits of budgeting Page 100 Creating quality customer care Curriculum topics • Quality control • Quality assurance • Total Quality Management • Measuring quality Page 104 OPERATIONS C S C S C C C C S S C S INTRO SECTION EDITION 17 29/8/12 13:41 Page 7 FINANCE Introduction Aldi is a leading retailer with over 8,000 stores worldwide. It continues to expand in Europe, North America and Australia. The Aldi brand is associated with value for money. Its stores provide customers with a wide range of products. There is an emphasis on high quality products and providing excellent value for customers. Aldi’s slogan is ‘spend a little, live a lot’. It works hard to keep prices low for its customers. The company buys large quantities of products from carefully selected suppliers. Its buyers are experts who choose the best quality products at the most competitive prices. The savings achieved by sourcing products in this way can be passed on to customers. Aldi keeps costs down in other ways. It ensures its operations are as efficient as possible, for example, store layouts are kept simple and opening hours focus on the busiest times of the day. Aldi places great importance on how it trains and develops its employees. Training is the process of providing employees with the necessary knowledge and skills to perform their tasks and roles competently. Training not only helps to increase business efficiency but it can also make staff more motivated by increasing their job satisfaction. While training is narrowly focused on helping a company become efficient and effective in the short term, development is more about building the long-term capabilities of the workforce. It is about helping individuals to gain knowledge, learn new skills and develop a wide range of attributes. Development makes employees more adaptable and more able to take on a wider range of roles. This case study will demonstrate how Aldi’s training and development programmes help ensure its employees have the skills and competencies that the business requires both now and in the future. Identifying training needs Workforce planning is the process of finding out how a business will meet its labour requirements both now and in the future. Aldi, like other businesses, needs to predict its future staffing needs accurately. It needs to plan for both the number of workers it will require and the specific skills that the business will need in the future. The company can then recruit new staff if necessary. It can also ensure that it has training and development programmes in place to meet these needs. Aldi identifies future training needs through an ongoing analysis of company performance in key areas at all levels. For example, the company monitors the availability of its products to the customer within its stores. If the level of availability drops below the targeted level then a programme of training on order accuracy would be undertaken. It also considers future developments within the business and within the grocery retail sector in order to predict both the total numbers of staff it will need and, more crucially, the skills and competencies that will be required. Aldi’s rapid expansion means that its current workforce cannot meet its future staffing requirements. The company will need to recruit more than 4,000 new members of staff within the next 12 months to meet the requirements of current exceptional sales growth and new store openings. To attract the best candidates, it offers industry-leading salaries at all levels. 8 Business expansion through training and development PEOPLE Curriculum topics covered: • Identifying training needs • On-the-job training • Off-the-job training • Development ALDI STUDY 29/8/12 10:21 Page 2 www.thetimes100.co.uk 9 To ensure it gets people with the right set of skills, the company produces clear and detailed job descriptions for each post. These show the tasks and responsibilities for that position and in turn, the skills and competencies needed by an individual to succeed in that role. Through a process of interview and assessment, managers identify if candidates have the precise skills and competencies that the job requires. If the selection process shows that they are suitable, then they will be recruited and Aldi can be confident that they will fulfil the challenges of their role. Although Aldi expects new recruits to make an immediate contribution to the business, it also provides training so that they can develop their careers within the company. Aldi has entry levels for apprentices, store assistants, deputy managers, assistant store managers, trainee store managers and graduate trainee area managers. Aldi organises high-level training for recruits to all levels. For example, in their first year, graduate recruits receive training in all areas of the business. This ranges from training in-store to understand how the retail operation works, to regional office tasks such as logistics, trading and financial planning. All new recruits go through a comprehensive structured training plan. New employees learn about the philosophy of Aldi and its expectations of them. This is important in making new employees quickly feel part of the Aldi family. This training will be appropriate to the role, so could be in a store or at an Aldi regional office. On-the-job training On-the-job training is training that takes place while employees are actually working. It means that skills can be gained while trainees are carrying out their jobs. This benefits both employees and the business. Employees learn in the real work environment and gain experience dealing with the tasks and challenges that they will meet during a normal working day. The business benefits by ensuring that the training is specific to the job. It also does not have to meet the additional costs of providing off-the-job training or losing working time. There are several methods of providing on-the-job training. Four frequently used methods are briefly described here: • Coaching – an experienced member of staff will help trainees learn skills and processes through providing instructions or demonstrations (or both). • Mentoring – each trainee is allocated to an established member of staff who acts as a guide and helper. A mentor usually offers more personal support than a coach, although the terms ‘mentor’ and ‘coach’ are often used interchangeably. • Job rotation – this is where members of staff rotate roles or tasks so that they gain experience of a full range of jobs. • ‘Sitting next to Nellie’ – this describes the process of working alongside a colleague to observe and learn the skills needed for a particular process. This can be a faster and more useful way of learning a job role than studying a written manual. The colleague is always on hand to answer any questions or deal with any unexpected problems. For most on-the-job training at Aldi stores, the store manager acts as the trainer. A typical format is for the manager to explain a process to the trainee, then to demonstrate it. The trainee then carries out the process, while the manager observes. Once the manager is happy that trainees are competent, they can then carry out the process unaided. This process is used, for example, to teach a store assistant how to operate the till and to instruct a trainee manager how to order stock accurately. ALDI STUDY 29/8/12 10:21 Page 3 All positions from apprentices through to trainee area managers follow this type of structured ‘tell, show, do’ training. Trainee area managers also undergo job rotation. They have the opportunity to experience all aspects of the business to give them a complete overview of how Aldi operates. They can then see how each department and business operation relates to and links with other parts of the company and other processes. Off-the-job training As the name suggests, off-the-job training is provided away from the immediate workplace. This might be at a specialist training centre or at a college or at a company’s own premises. This type of training can be particularly useful for developing transferable skills that can be used in many different parts of the business. It may be used, for example, to train employees in the use of new equipment and new methods or to bring them up to date with changes in the law. Typical off-the-job training courses offered to employees by Aldi include: • recruitment, interviewing and selection • employment law • influencing skills • performance reviews (appraisals) • Aldi Management System (how to develop and performance manage people). For each aspect of training Aldi decides whether on-the-job or off-the-job training is the better option. Off-the-job training may involve extra costs, such as payments to training organisations. It also means that staff taking training courses are not at work, so their jobs have to be covered by others. This can lead to an increase in payroll costs. However, balanced against these costs are the gains that Aldi makes from off-the-job training. These include the benefits of having more motivated staff, greater staff productivity and employees with better skills and the ability to provide improved customer service. Aldi provides training opportunities for young people. The Aldi apprentice scheme combines on-the-job and off-the-job training. Apprenticeships are open to 16-18 year olds. Apprentices training as store assistants also study for an NVQ in Retail Apprenticeship. They complete store assistant training and gain an NVQ Level 2 in their first year. They then take a store management training programme over two years and work for a Level 3 advanced qualification. The variety seems to suit apprentices. As Sam, an Aldi apprentice says: ‘The fast pace of the role is really exciting, with lots of chances to learn new and useful skills. As well as the on-the-job training, there is also studying towards a recognised qualification that I can fit around work.’ Emily, another apprentice, recognises that the programme is a good opportunity: ‘After attending college I was looking for an opportunity that would allow me to use my customer service skills and the Aldi apprenticeship has given me just that. There is a lot of competition for places, so you really need to want to succeed. I really feel part of the store team. It can be challenging but it is well worth it.’ At the end of their apprenticeships, Sam and Emily will have the knowledge and skills to take on deputy manager or assistant store manager positions. From there each can rise to become a Store Manager in the business. Aldi’s current growth means that there are many opportunities for promotion, so Sam and Emily could soon join the many others who have been promoted within the business. Development Development is not the same as training. Development focuses as much on personal growth as skills that are directly related to the job. A development programme is designed to make individuals more skilled, more flexible in their approach and better qualified for their chosen careers. 10 www.thetimes100.co.uk ALDI STUDY 29/8/12 10:21 Page 4 11 Through a development programme, employees can obtain transferable qualifications that benefit the individuals concerned as well as the business. This can have disadvantages for the business, as it gives workers greater value in the job market. However, Aldi is willing to take this risk as it believes in providing what is best for its staff. Development options for apprentices include working for various qualifications. Aldi has a fast-track approach for graduates. Opportunities for graduate recruits at Aldi include secondments to different international countries to develop all-round expertise. The Aldi retail placement scheme takes university students on a one-year placement. This allows the chosen individuals to show what they can offer the business and to find out what the business can offer them. Aldi offers an excellent reward package for students on a placement, but in return expects trainees to have enthusiasm, drive and ambition. Successful students get the opportunity to apply for a place on Aldi’s Area Management training programme. To support their development, managers help employees to set personal goals. These are identified during an appraisal process. This is when a member of staff sits down with their line manager to evaluate past and current performance, to consider what skills are needed going forward and to set targets for the future. This could involve identifying further training or development opportunities. Conclusion Aldi seeks to provide its customers with quality products at prices that provide value for money. It wants efficient operations, with its stores staffed by people who are keen and competent. Aldi’s success is shown by the fact that it is expanding rapidly. It is opening new stores and experiencing sales growth that requires it to take on more staff. This means that it needs to combine good recruitment policies with robust selection processes. Staff are recruited from school or college into Aldi’s apprenticeship scheme or directly into stores for positions from store assistant up to trainee Store Manager. Those from university with a 2.1 degree or better are able to apply for the Graduate Area Manager programme. All recruits are assured of appropriate on-the-job and off-the-job training, as well as career development opportunities. Promotion is open to all staff, regardless of the route they choose to join Aldi. Aldi puts great emphasis on developing its people. Over 85% of Aldi directors have been recruited from within the company. This commitment to training and development makes Aldi a business of choice for both ambitious teenagers and top graduates. This is shown by its placing in the Top 5 in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers and the Graduate Employer of Choice for 2012 for General Management. Aldi | Business expansion through training and development Exam-style questions www.aldi.co.uk 1. Describe what is meant by training. (2 marks) 2. Explain the difference between on-the-job and off-the-job training. Explain why you think both training approaches are used by Aldi. (4 marks) 3. Analyse the similarities and differences between training and development. Which do you think is most important to Aldi and why? (6 marks) 4. Evaluate the different ways that Aldi attracts and trains new staff. Which of these do you think is the most important route for Aldi? Give reasons for your answer. (8 marks) ALDI STUDY 29/8/12 10:21 Page 5 Introduction Using a laptop computer, Smartphone or iPad has become an essential part of everyday life for many people. Few, however, will be aware of how the technology that drives these tools is created. ARM is the world's leading semiconductor intellectual property (IP) supplier. Intellectual property is that which originates in the mind such as ideas, literary works, music and designs. ARM’s business model is not typical. It does not own any factories but instead designs and licenses its technology to a network of partners who carry out the manufacturing. Over 900 licenses have been sold to more than 250 different partner companies. These include the world's leading semiconductor and systems companies, such as Samsung, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm. From its founding in 1990 in Cambridge in the UK, it has grown to become a major developer of digital electronic products. The company has offices around the world, including design centres in the UK, USA, India, Scandinavia, France and China. ARM is a Research & Development (R&D) focused business. Its ‘products’ are intangible and cover a diverse range of applications. They are used in everything from sensors to servers. Mobile phones, tablet computers, washing machines, car braking systems and network routers all use ARM technology. In return for its technology, ARM receives a licence fee for the original IP from the partner and a royalty on every microchip produced. To date, over 20 billion chips containing ARM technology have been manufactured. ARM relies on the high levels of creativity, innovation and knowledge of its people to continue to develop new ideas and provide customers with the benefits of emerging technology. Its R&D activity is collaborative and generates innovation in other companies. For example, leading brand Smartphones contain ARM technology that has been incorporated into chips manufactured by a variety of semiconductor companies. In turn, they use diverse software and applications running on various operating systems such as Android. This sharing of information contributes to increasing the industry’s knowledge base. This case study will look at the processes of research and development at ARM and show how these support the company’s leading market position. New product development (NPD) New products may stem from invention or innovations. Invention is the formulation of new ideas for products or processes. Innovation is the practical application of new inventions into marketable products or services. Product development may follow different routes: • A product-orientated approach is where a company develops a new product. It then seeks a market and ‘pushes’ the product out to that market. This might be to solve a problem or to take advantage of an opportunity. An example could be developing new functions for mobile phones. This is a higher risk approach as the company will carry the costs of development without knowing what the returns might be. • A market-orientated approach develops a product to meet a known current or future customer need. This need would have been identified through market research. Developing a product to specific requirements may reduce costs and increase the probability of product success. Having a market waiting to buy the product gives assurance of return on the investment. 12 How innovation drives research and development OPERATIONS Curriculum topics covered: • New product development • Innovation • Research • Development ARM STUDY 2/10/12 14:04 Page 2 www.thetimes100.co.uk 13 • Responding to competitor products allows a business to catch up or overtake business rivals. This development may lead to a better product. • Changes in technology may lead to the development of a more effective product or one which sets a new benchmark for the market. For example, the Amazon Kindle is changing the way people read books. ARM adopts a route of innovation to transfer its technology into products customers want and need. Its technology supports three key types of chips: ARM’s product development also takes various external factors into account, for example, the need to develop low carbon products, increase energy security and address impacts on global warming. In addition, meeting global economic challenges is also high on ARM’s agenda. For example, developing countries such as Brazil and China are becoming more affluent and buying more consumer electronics. Other factors affecting ARM include the customer’s desire for greater computing mobility, lower power consumption and increased battery life. Consumers are also looking to ‘cloud’ technology, for example, in mobile phone apps, to provide remote access to virtual storage and software. This provides convenience and lower cost. ARM’s main technical driver is power efficiency, making microchips smaller whilst increasing their performance. The smallest processors are now the size of human hair or crumbs. Research The research process involves inquiry into and discovery of new ideas to solve a problem or create an opportunity. ARM invests around £140 million per year into its research programmes. As a knowledge-based research and development business, the majority of costs are associated with the company’s high quality employees. ARM’s R&D is predominantly market-orientated. It is influenced by feedback from hundreds of customers – and their customers – from different industries and with different needs. ARM employs a ‘Push/Pull’ model. The push is where ARM puts its latest developments out to manufacturers to drive new technical innovations. The pull reflects what customers and consumers are asking for, i.e. market demand. ARM’s R&D team talks to people at every level within key industries to establish what they need and what demand there is for different products in order to ensure products are customer-orientated. External influences also affect ARM’s research. For example, energy efficiency is high on the public agenda. R&D into low power techniques has always been a key focus for ARM. The microprocessor market is now focused on evaluating the benefits of similar products across competitors. For example, which has lowest power, highest performance (speed) and the smallest scale (which is vital for mobile devices). A - class processors (applications) R - class processors are ‘real-time’ M - class processors (micro controllers) These are equivalent to PC processors; these are ‘high end’ and are used in everything from smartphones to servers and supercomputers where multi- tasking is needed. These are embedded in things and do only one job, such as the overall braking control on a car. These are general purpose and programmable. They are used for a single less complex task or a larger process. These are used in, for example, washing machine programmes or on the ABS brakes on each wheel of a car. ARM’s corporate R&D ARM’s advanced product development ARM’s product development This looks 5-10 years into the future for new ways to do things. It also considers future products. This is concerned with how to apply new technology 3-5 years in the future. This is focused on new products for launch in 1-2 years. ARM STUDY 29/8/12 10:22 Page 3 Development Development involves transforming ideas into a product fit for market. From numerous ideas at the research stage, ARM will take only a few with potential into the development stage. The key elements of the development process include: • A product brief – identifying what market need it fills. To produce a product brief, ARM works with around 1,000 companies. These companies may be ARM customers, competitors and collaborators all at the same time. ARM’s engineers talk to partners who make the microchips to establish what is possible technically and its market-focused people identify what the market is asking for. • A product specification – outlining the main features, benefits and costs. ARM combines this feedback and establishes priority needs. These are then evaluated to focus on the application which will lead to a deliverable product. • A process of evaluating alternative solutions – through computer modelling, samples or prototypes. ARM will select lead partners for specific projects. The partners’ R&D teams then work with ARM’s R&D team to develop the initial idea. • A sequence of testing – to check the product meets requirements. Once tested, the design is then licensed to the partners to manufacture, on which ARM receives royalties. The development of ARM’s Cortex-M0+ processor, which was released in early 2012, is a world-leading innovation. It has the lowest energy consumption of any processor and generates low carbon. The Cortex-M0+ (M class) is a very simple processor. However, its profile reflects the concept of ‘machine to machine communication’. It is believed that this is the next major step in technology. For example, it could automatically control a fridge’s temperature depending on whether it is full or empty. Typically projects take around 18-24 months. However, the Cortex-M0+ had a relatively short timescale. Initial conception of the idea was in December 2010. The project team was set up in April 2011 and delivery to the customer was in February 2012 – just 10 months of development time after the specification was finalised. The ARM team involved is proud of achieving completion to such a tight timescale. The project path followed a clearly defined structure: • The idea was generated via the feedback from product managers and the marketing managers. • An outline product specification was devised by working with the lead partner Freescale. • The project team of three key people including a Project Manager was created. The project team determined the required team size, estimated schedule, agreed stages and milestones to meet customer requirements. The project approval also included deciding how Cortex-M0+ would fit into the existing ARM ‘roadmap’ (or timetable) of products already underway and planned for the future. ARM’s typical project process gives opportunity for lead partners to add their influence or interact with the product development team. This might include changing the specification or having early access to the product for testing. Freescale was given access to Cortex-M0+ at the beta design stage. This enabled them to develop a prototype which could be demonstrated at conferences and to key customers. This generated early interest in the product and reduced the time to market, which increases the revenue potential for ARM and Freescale. Challenges and benefits of R&D The challenges of a typical R&D process include: • large costs – of people, time and equipment • long timescales – for example in the pharmaceutical industry it can take as long as 10-20 years to complete full testing • high risk – difficulties in anticipating changing market and consumer needs over the duration of R&D projects, which leads to uncertain outcomes. 14 www.thetimes100.co.uk ARM STUDY 29/8/12 10:22 Page 4

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14 Market Research Examples

This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

Example #1: National bank’s A/B testing

You can learn what customers want by conducting experiments on real-life customer decisions using A/B testing. When you ensure your tests do not have any validity threats, the information you garner can offer very reliable insights into customer behavior.

Here’s an example from Flint McGlaughlin, CEO of MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute, and the creator of its  online marketing course .

A national bank was working with MECLABS to discover how to increase the number of sign-ups for new checking accounts.

Customers who were interested in checking accounts could click on an “Open in Minutes” link on the bank’s homepage.

Creative Sample #1: Anonymized bank homepage

After clicking on the homepage link, visitors were taken to a four-question checking account selector tool.

Creative Sample #2: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool

After filling out the selector tool, visitors were taken to a results page that included a suggested package (“Best Choice”) along with a secondary option (“Second Choice”). The results page had several calls to action (CTAs). Website visitors were able to select an account and begin pre-registration (“Open Now”) or find out more information about the account (“Learn More”), go back and change their answers (“Go back and change answers”), or manually browse other checking options (“Other Checking Options”).

Creative Sample #3: Original checking account landing page — account recommendation selector tool results page

After going through the experience, the MECLABS team hypothesized that the selector tool wasn’t really delivering on the expectation the customer had after clicking on the “Open in Minutes” CTA. They created two treatments (new versions) and tested them against the control experience.

In the first treatment, the checking selector tool was removed, and instead, customers were directly presented with three account options in tabs from which customers could select.

Creative Sample #4: Checking account landing page Treatment #1

The second treatment’s landing page focused on a single product and had only one CTA. The call-to-action was similar to the CTA customers clicked on the homepage to get to this page — “Open Now.”

Creative Sample #5: Checking account landing page Treatment #2

Both treatments increased account applications compared to the control landing page experience, with Treatment #2 generating 65% more applicants at a 98% level of confidence.

Creative Sample #6: Results of bank experiment that used A/B testing

You’ll note the Level of Confidence in the results. With any research tactic or tool you use to learn about customers, you have to consider whether the information you’re getting really represents most customers, or if you’re just seeing outliers or random chance.

With a high Level of Confidence like this, it is more likely the results actually represent a true difference between the control and treatment landing pages and that the results aren’t just a random event.

The other factor to consider is — testing in and of itself will not produce results. You have to use testing as research to actually learn about the customer and then make changes to better serve the customer.

In the video How to Discover Exactly What the Customer Wants to See on the Next Click: 3 critical skills every marketer must master , McGlaughlin discussed this national bank experiment and explained how to use prioritization, identification and deduction to discover what your customers want.

This example was originally published in Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want .

Example #2: Consumer Reports’ market intelligence research from third-party sources

The first example covers A/B testing. But keep in mind, ill-informed A/B testing isn’t market research, it’s just hoping for insights from random guesses.

In other words, A/B testing in a vacuum does not provide valuable information about customers. What you are testing is crucial, and then A/B testing is a means to help better understand whether insights you have about the customer are either validated or refuted by actual customer behavior. So it’s important to start with some research into potential customers and competitors to inform your A/B tests.

For example, when MECLABS and MarketingExperiments (sister publisher to MarketingSherpa) worked with Consumer Reports on a public, crowdsourced A/B test, we provided a market intelligence report to our audience to help inform their test suggestions.

Every successful marketing test should confirm or deny an assumption about the customer. You need enough knowledge about the customer to create marketing messages you think will be effective.

For this public experiment to help marketers improve their split testing abilities, we had a real customer to work with — donors to Consumer Reports.

To help our audience better understand the customer, the MECLABS Marketing Intelligence team created the 26-page ConsumerReports Market Intelligence Research document (which you can see for yourself at that link).

This example was originally published in Calling All Writers and Marketers: Write the most effective copy for this Consumer Reports email and win a MarketingSherpa Summit package and Consumer Reports Value Proposition Test: What you can learn from a 29% drop in clickthrough .

Example #3: Virtual event company’s conversation

What if you don’t have the budget for A/B testing? Or any of the other tactics in this article?

Well, if you’re like most people you likely have some relationships with other human beings. A significant other, friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, customers, a nemesis (“Newman!”). While conducting market research by talking to these people has several validity threats, it at least helps you get out of your own head and identify some of your blind spots.

WebBabyShower.com’s lead magnet is a PDF download of a baby shower thank you card ‘swipe file’ plus some extras. “Women want to print it out and have it where they are writing cards, not have a laptop open constantly,” said Kurt Perschke, owner, WebBabyShower.com.

That is not a throwaway quote from Perschke. That is a brilliant insight, so I want to make sure we don’t overlook it. By better understanding customer behavior, you can better serve customers and increase results.

However, you are not your customer. So you must bridge the gap between you and them.

Often you hear marketers or business leaders review an ad or discuss a marketing campaign and say, “Well, I would never read that entire ad” or “I would not be interested in that promotion.” To which I say … who cares? Who cares what you would do? If you are not in the ideal customer set, sorry to dent your ego, but you really don’t matter. Only the customer does.

Perschke is one step ahead of many marketers and business leaders because he readily understands this. “Owning a business whose customers are 95% women has been a great education for me,” he said.

So I had to ask him, how did he get this insight into his customers’ behavior? Frankly, it didn’t take complex market research. He was just aware of this disconnect he had with the customer, and he was alert for ways to bridge the gap. “To be honest, I first saw that with my wife. Then we asked a few customers, and they confirmed it’s what they did also. Writing notes by hand is viewed as a ‘non-digital’ activity and reading from a laptop kinda spoils the mood apparently,” he said.

Back to WebBabyShower. “We've seen a [more than] 100% increase in email signups using this method, which was both inexpensive and evergreen,” Perschke said.

This example was originally published in Digital Marketing: Six specific examples of incentives that worked .

Example #4: Spiceworks Ziff Davis’ research-informed content marketing

Marketing research isn’t just to inform products and advertising messages. Market research can also give your brand a leg up in another highly competitive space – content marketing.

Don’t just jump in and create content expecting it to be successful just because it’s “free.” Conducting research beforehand can help you understand what your potential audience already receives and where they might need help but are currently being served.

When Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) published its annual State of IT report, it invested months in conducting primary market research, analyzing year-over-year trends, and finally producing the actual report.

“Before getting into the nuts and bolts of writing an asset, look at market shifts and gaps that complement your business and marketing objectives. Then, you can begin to plan, research, write, review and finalize an asset,” said Priscilla Meisel, Content Marketing Director, SWZD.

This example was originally published in Marketing Writing: 3 simple tips that can help any marketer improve results (even if you’re not a copywriter) .

Example #5: Business travel company’s guerilla research

There are many established, expensive tactics you can use to better understand customers.

But if you don’t have the budget for those tactics, and don’t know any potential customers, you might want to brainstorm creative ways you can get valuable information from the right customer target set.

Here’s an example from a former client of Mitch McCasland, Founding Partner and Director, Brand Inquiry Partners. The company sold a product related to frequent business flyers and was interested in finding out information on people who travel for a living. They needed consumer feedback right away.

“I suggested that they go out to the airport with a bunch of 20-dollar bills and wait outside a gate for passengers to come off their flight,” McCasland said. When people came off the flight, they were politely asked if they would answer a few questions in exchange for the incentive (the $20). By targeting the first people off the flight they had a high likelihood of reaching the first-class passengers.

This example was originally published in Guerrilla Market Research Expert Mitch McCasland Tells How You Can Conduct Quick (and Cheap) Research .

Example #6: Intel’s market research database

When conducting market research, it is crucial to organize your data in a way that allows you to easily and quickly report on it. This is especially important for qualitative studies where you are trying to do more than just quantify the data, but need to manage it so it is easier to analyze.

Anne McClard, Senior Researcher, Doxus worked with Shauna Pettit-Brown of Intel on a research project to understand the needs of mobile application developers throughout the world.

Intel needed to be able to analyze the data from several different angles, including segment and geography, a daunting task complicated by the number of interviews, interviewers, and world languages.

“The interviews were about an hour long, and pretty substantial,” McClard says. So, she needed to build a database to organize the transcripts in a way that made sense.

Different types of data are useful for different departments within a company; once your database is organized you can sort it by various threads.

The Intel study had three different internal sponsors. "When it came to doing the analysis, we ended up creating multiple versions of the presentation targeted to individual audiences," Pettit-Brown says.

The organized database enabled her to go back into the data set to answer questions specific to the interests of the three different groups.

This example was originally published in 4 Steps to Building a Qualitative Market Research Database That Works Better .

Example #7: National security survey’s priming

When conducting market research surveys, the way you word your questions can affect customers’ response. Even the way you word previous questions can put customers in a certain mindset that will skew their answers.

For example, when people were asked if they thought the U.S. government should spend money on an anti-missile shield, the results appeared fairly conclusive. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed thought the country should and only six percent were unsure, according to Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls .

But when pollsters added the option, "...or are you unsure?" the level of uncertainty leaped from six percent to 33 percent. When they asked whether respondents would be upset if the government took the opposite course of action from their selection, 59 percent either didn’t have an opinion or didn’t mind if the government did something differently.

This is an example of how the way you word questions can change a survey’s results. You want survey answers to reflect customer’s actual sentiments that are as free of your company’s previously held biases as possible.

This example was originally published in Are Surveys Misleading? 7 Questions for Better Market Research .

Example #8: Visa USA’s approach to getting an accurate answer

As mentioned in the previous example, the way you ask customers questions can skew their responses with your own biases.

However, the way you ask questions to potential customers can also illuminate your understanding of them. Which is why companies field surveys to begin with.

“One thing you learn over time is how to structure questions so you have a greater likelihood of getting an accurate answer. For example, when we want to find out if people are paying off their bills, we'll ask them to think about the card they use most often. We then ask what the balance was on their last bill after they paid it,” said Michael Marx, VP Research Services, Visa USA.

This example was originally published in Tips from Visa USA's Market Research Expert Michael Marx .

Example #9: Hallmark’s private members-only community

Online communities are a way to interact with and learn from customers. Hallmark created a private members-only community called Idea Exchange (an idea you could replicate with a Facebook or LinkedIn Group).

The community helped the greeting cards company learn the customer’s language.

“Communities…let consumers describe issues in their own terms,” explained Tom Brailsford, Manager of Advancing Capabilities, Hallmark Cards. “Lots of times companies use jargon internally.”

At Hallmark they used to talk internally about “channels” of distribution. But consumers talk about stores, not channels. It is much clearer to ask consumers about the stores they shop in than what channels they shop.

For example, Brailsford clarified, “We say we want to nurture, inspire, and lift one’s spirits. We use those terms, and the communities have defined those terms for us. So we have learned how those things play out in their lives. It gives us a much richer vocabulary to talk about these things.”

This example was originally published in Third Year Results from Hallmark's Online Market Research Experiment .

Example #10: L'Oréal’s social media listening

If you don’t want the long-term responsibility that comes with creating an online community, you can use social media listening to understand how customers talking about your products and industry in their own language.

In 2019, L'Oréal felt the need to upgrade one of its top makeup products – L'Oréal Paris Alliance Perfect foundation. Both the formula and the product communication were outdated – multiple ingredients had emerged on the market along with competitive products made from those ingredients.

These new ingredients and products were overwhelming consumers. After implementing new formulas, the competitor brands would advertise their ingredients as the best on the market, providing almost magical results.

So the team at L'Oréal decided to research their consumers’ expectations instead of simply crafting a new formula on their own. The idea was to understand not only which active ingredients are credible among the audience, but also which particular words they use while speaking about foundations in general.

The marketing team decided to combine two research methods: social media listening and traditional questionnaires.

“For the most part, we conduct social media listening research when we need to find out what our customers say about our brand/product/topic and which words they use to do it. We do conduct traditional research as well and ask questions directly. These surveys are different because we provide a variety of readymade answers that respondents choose from. Thus, we limit them in terms of statements and their wording,” says Marina Tarandiuk, marketing research specialist, L'Oréal Ukraine.

“The key value of social media listening (SML) for us is the opportunity to collect people’s opinions that are as ‘natural’ as possible. When someone leaves a review online, they are in a comfortable environment, they use their ‘own’ language to express themselves, there is no interviewer standing next to them and potentially causing shame for their answer. The analytics of ‘natural’ and honest opinions of our customers enables us to implement the results in our communication and use the same language as them,” Tarandiuk said.

The team worked with a social media listening tool vendor to identify the most popular, in-demand ingredients discussed online and detect the most commonly used words and phrases to create a “consumer glossary.”

Questionnaires had to confirm all the hypotheses and insights found while monitoring social media. This part was performed in-house with the dedicated team. They created custom questionnaires aiming to narrow down all the data to a maximum of three variants that could become the base for the whole product line.

“One of our recent studies had a goal to find out which words our clients used to describe positive and negative qualities of [the] foundation. Due to a change in [the] product’s formula, we also decided to change its communication. Based on the opinions of our customers, we can consolidate the existing positive ideas that our clients have about the product,” Tarandiuk said.

To find the related mentions, the team monitored not only the products made by L'Oréal but also the overall category. “The search query contained both brand names and general words like foundation, texture, smell, skin, pores, etc. The problem was that this approach ended up collecting thousands of mentions, not all of which were relevant to the topic,” said Elena Teselko, content marketing manager, YouScan (L'Oréal’s social media listening tool).

So the team used artificial intelligence-based tagging that divided mentions according to the category, features, or product type.

This approach helped the team discover that customers valued such foundation features as not clogging pores, a light texture, and not spreading. Meanwhile, the most discussed and appreciated cosmetics component was hyaluronic acid.

These exact phrases, found with the help of social media monitoring, were later used for marketing communication.

Creative Sample #7: Marketing communicating for personal care company with messaging based on discoveries from market research

“Doing research and detecting audience’s interests BEFORE starting a campaign is an approach that dramatically lowers any risks and increases chances that the campaign would be appreciated by customers,” Teselko said.

This example was originally published in B2C Branding: 3 quick case studies of enhancing the brand with a better customer experience .

Example #11: Levi’s ethnographic research

In a focus group or survey, you are asking customers to explain something they may not even truly understand. Could be why they bought a product. Or what they think of your competitor.

Ethnographic research is a type of anthropology in which you go into customers’ homes or places of business and observe their actual behavior, behavior they may not understand well enough to explain to you.

While cost prohibitive to many brands, and simply unfeasible for others, it can elicit new insights into your customers.

Michael Perman, Senior Director Cultural Insights, Levi Strauss & Co. uses both quantitative and qualitative research on a broad spectrum, but when it comes to gathering consumer insight, he focuses on in-depth ethnographic research provided by partners who specialize in getting deep into the “nooks and crannies of consumer life in America and around the world.” For example, his team spends time in consumers’ homes and in their closets. They shop with consumers, looking for the reality of a consumer’s life and identifying themes that will enable designers and merchandisers to better understand and anticipate consumer needs.

Perman then puts together multi-sensory presentations that illustrate the findings of research. For example, “we might recreate a teenager’s bedroom and show what a teenage girl might have on her dresser.”

This example was originally published in How to Get Your Company to Pay Attention to Market Research Results: Tips from Levi Strauss .

Example #12: eBags’ ethnographic research

Ethnographic research isn’t confined to a physical goods brand like Levi’s. Digital brands can engage in this form of anthropology as well.

While usability testing in a lab is useful, it does miss some of the real-world environmental factors that play a part in the success of a website. Usability testing alone didn’t create a clear enough picture for Gregory Casey, User Experience Designer and Architect, eBags.

“After we had designed our mobile and tablet experience, I wanted to run some contextual user research, which basically meant seeing how people used it in the wild, seeing how people are using it in their homes. So that’s exactly what I did,” Gregory said.

He found consumers willing to open their home to him and be tested in their normal environment. This meant factors like the television, phone calls and other family members played a part in how they experienced the eBags mobile site.

“During these interview sessions, a lot of times we were interrupted by, say, a child coming over and the mother having to do something for the kid … The experience isn’t sovereign. It’s not something where they just sit down, work through a particular user flow and complete their interaction,” Gregory said.

By watching users work through the site as they would in their everyday life, Gregory got to see what parts of the site they actually use.

This example was originally published in Mobile Marketing: 4 takeaways on how to improve your mobile shopping experience beyond just responsive design .

Example #13: John Deere’s shift from product-centric market research to consumer-centric research

One of the major benefits of market research is to overcome company blind spots. However, if you start with your blind spots – i.e., a product focus – you will blunt the effectiveness of your market research.

In the past, “they’d say, Here’s the product, find out how people feel about it,” explained David van Nostrand, Manager, John Deere's Global Market Research. “A lot of companies do that.” Instead, they should be saying, “Let's start with the customers: what do they want, what do they need?”

The solution? A new in-house program called “Category Experts” brings the product-group employees over as full team members working on specific research projects with van Nostrand’s team.

These staffers handle items that don’t require a research background: scheduling, meetings, logistics, communication and vendor management. The actual task they handle is less important than the fact that they serve as human cross-pollinators, bringing consumer-centric sensibility back to their product- focused groups.

For example, if van Nostrand’s team is doing research about a vehicle, they bring in staffers from the Vehicles product groups. “The information about vehicle consumers needs to be out there in the vehicle marketing groups, not locked in here in the heads of the researchers.”

This example was originally published in How John Deere Increased Mass Consumer Market Share by Revamping its Market Research Tactics .

Example #14: LeapFrog’s market research involvement throughout product development (not just at the beginning and the end)

Market research is sometimes thought of as a practice that can either inform the development of a product, or research consumer attitudes about developed products. But what about the middle?

Once the creative people begin working on product designs, the LeapFrog research department stays involved.

They have a lab onsite where they bring moms and kids from the San Francisco Bay area to test preliminary versions of the products. “We do a lot of hands-on, informal qualitative work with kids,” said Craig Spitzer, VP Marketing Research, LeapFrog. “Can they do what they need to do to work the product? Do they go from step A to B to C, or do they go from A to C to B?”

When designing the LeapPad Learning System, for example, the prototype went through the lab “a dozen times or so,” he says.

A key challenge for the research department is keeping and building the list of thousands of families who have agreed to be on call for testing. “We've done everything from recruiting on the Internet to putting out fliers in local schools, working through employees whose kids are in schools, and milking every connection we have,” Spitzer says.

Kids who test products at the lab are compensated with a free, existing product rather than a promise of the getting the product they're testing when it is released in the future.

This example was originally published in How LeapFrog Uses Marketing Research to Launch New Products .

Related resources

The Marketer’s Blind Spot: 3 ways to overcome the marketer’s greatest obstacle to effective messaging

Get Your Free Test Discovery Tool to Help Log all the Results and Discoveries from Your Company’s Marketing Tests

Marketing Research: 5 examples of discovering what customers want

Online Marketing Tests: How do you know you’re really learning anything?

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The most-read case studies of 2021, and the profs who wrote them.

Debapratim Pukayastha of ICFAI Business School in India topped the Case Centre’s list of the world’s top case studies for the sixth straight year. Sadly, Pukayastha passed away in May from Covid-19.

Harvard Business School, which invented both the first MBA program and the business case method, remains king of the case study 100 years later, according to the latest international ranking of case authors.

The Case Centre, a nonprofit that distributes the largest collection of management case studies to business schools across the world, today (October 25) unveiled its 2020-21 Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors. HBS had more case authors (nine) on the list than any other business school. However, ICFAI Business School in India was close behind with seven authors, including all three top individual spots. INSEAD had four authors in the top 10, while Harvard has two top-10 authors.

Case studies, which use real-life problems faced by business executives, are still one of the most widely used education tools for MBA students across the globe. More than 8,800 faculty are registered as authors with The Case Centre. This year’s list of best-selling cases includes each author’s top-selling cases — and though MBA students may not recognize the names of a case study’s author, the titles are more likely ring a bell.

SIX YEARS AT NO. 1, BUT A POSTHUMOUS HONOR

Debapratim Pukayastha of ICFAI Business School (IBS) in India topped the Case Centre’s list of bestselling authors for the sixth straight year. He has earned the distinction every year since the Case Centre began issuing yearly awards for case writing. But this year’s award was a bittersweet honor, as Pukayastha passed away in May from Covid-19.

“Selling over 100,000 copies from an extensive back catalogue of cases since the list was introduced in 2016, Debapratim’s undoubted impact on the case method and management education will live on for years through the many case authors and teachers he has inspired,” the Case Centre announced, “and the vast number of students whose education has been enhanced by learning through his cases.”

Among Pukayastha’s best-selling cases are an examination of safety lapses at a BP oil refinery in Texas City that led to one of the most serious workplace accidents in U.S. history; a case looking at Netflix’s leveraging of Big Data to predict hits; and a case examining how Procter & Gamble develops new products. Besides his annual plaudits for bestselling case, he also won the Case Centre’s Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method Award in 2015, 2018, and 2019.

“I believe that one can be a good teacher without being a good case writer, but it’s not possible to be a good case writer without being a good teacher,” Pukayastha wrote in an author profile on the Case Centre website . “However, I have also found that regularly writing cases can greatly improve classroom teaching. Case writing can be a lonely activity and even hard work, but if you have the passion, it’s worth it! It means you can have a positive impact in classrooms around the world where your case is taught.”

This infographic from The Case Centre shows the key demographic trends in the 2020/21 Top Bestselling Case Authors ranking. Courtesy Case Centre

WHERE TO TOP B-SCHOOL CASE STUDIES COME FROM

The UK- and U.S.-based Case Centre has released its bestselling case author list every year since 2016, ranking authors whose cases have sold the most copies during the previous academic year. This year, it raised the number of bestselling authors from 40 to 50.

Of this year’s list, authors came from 19 different business schools in nine separate countries. That includes 42% each from Europe and the United States, and 16% from Asia.

“As the list increases from 40 to 50, we see a change in the geographic dynamics,” the nonprofit announced. “European and U.S. schools each have a 42% share of the 2020/21 Top 50, down from 45% in 2019-20. While the representation of schools in Asia rises to 16%, up from 10% last year.”

Eighteen percent of the authors are women while 82% are men. While the list does not break down bestselling cases by the race, ethnicity or gender of its protagonists, finding case studies that represent the increasing diversity of business students (and in business executives) has been an ongoing concern for many B-schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. For example, Harvard Business School published more than 70 cases with Black or African-American protagonists this past year after long-standing criticism that its studies ignored Black business leaders, according to a Poets&Quants article published in June .

It also produced 90 cases featuring Hispanic, Asian or Asian-American/Pacific Islander, or Native-American protagonists. HBS faculty write about 400 case studies per year.

“Our students are right that protagonist diversity matters,” Jan Rivkin, HBS senior associate dean and chair of the MBA program, said in June . “By studying cases with a wide diversity of protagonists, students learn that talent and leadership come from all backgrounds and identities. If students don’t understand that, they’ll worsen inequities, miss out on opportunities for themselves, and miss chances to create opportunities for others.”

DEBUT AUTHORS EARN TOP SPOTS

ICFAI Business School also had the No. 2 and No. 3 authors, and both are new entrants to the Case Centre’s list.

Second-ranked author Indu Perepu is an assistant professor specializing in human resource management. Her best-selling cases include “Airbnb: A Disruptive Innovator” and “Snapchat Turns Down Facebook’s Acquisition Offer.”

“What makes the case study method even more meaningful is that in developing countries like India where teaching through cases is picking up, case studies help the students with limited international exposure to learn intricately about multinational corporations and the world’s largest companies,” Perepu says.

Third-ranked author Syeda Maseeha Qumer is an assistant professor specializing in business strategy. For her top-selling cases, she looked at the integrated marketing strategy of HBO’s Game of Thrones and the impact of conflict palm oil on deforestation, human rights violations, and climate pollution, and PepsiCo’s use of it in its products.

“Case-based learning is unmatched in its ability to engage students and teach essential concepts that are relevant to practicing managers,” Qumer says. “Innovation in the case method is essential to enliven any classroom and to obtain better learning outcomes. I have always endeavored to develop diverse cases on contemporary issues that offer students an opportunity to explore complex real-world management challenges in the classroom, allowing them to assess their decision-making skills before taking the plunge into the corporate world.”

France’s ESSEC Business School had the top climbing author, Ashok Som , who moved up 26 places to No. 11 from last year’s ranking.

See the full list of this year’s case-writing winners on page 2, including links to their bios.

Harvard Business School is the home of the business case study. Once again it is also where most of the top-ranked cases were written in 2021

Beyond its ranking of case study authors, the Case Centre trains faculty in using case studies in B-school education, runs international case competitions and offers scholarships to unpublished case writers and teachers. Membership includes more than 500 business schools and organizations around the world.

See its full release and read about other best-selling authors here .

1. The Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors 2020/21 – full list

1 Debapratim Purkayastha , ICFAI Business School (IBS) 2 Indu Perepu , ICFAI Business School (IBS) 3 Syeda Maseeha Qumer , ICFAI Business School (IBS) 4 W Chan Kim , INSEAD (joint) 4 Renée Mauborgne , INSEAD (joint) 6 Joerg Niessing , INSEAD 7 Christopher A Bartlett , Harvard Business School 8 Wolfgang Ulaga , INSEAD 9 David B Yoffie , Harvard Business School 10 Nader Tavassoli , London Business School 11 Ashok Som , ESSEC Business School 12 Jill Avery , Harvard Business School 13 Kamran Kashani , Institute for Management Development (IMD) 14 Youngme Moon , Harvard Business School 15 Kasra Ferdows , McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University 16 John A Quelch , Miami Business School 17 David Dubois , INSEAD 18 Carlos Cordon , Institute for Management Development (IMD) 19 Michael Lewis , University of Bath School of Management (joint) 19 Jose A D Machuca , Universidad de Sevilla (joint) 21 David J Collis , Harvard Business School 22 Pierre Chandon , INSEAD 23 Mohanbir Sawhney , Kellogg School of Management 24 Robert F Bruner , University of Virginia Darden School of Business 25 Denis Gromb , HEC Paris 26 Urs Mueller , SDA Bocconi School of Management 27 Vivek Gupta , TechSci Research 28 Jamie Anderson , Antwerp Management School 29 Benoit Leleux , Institute for Management Development (IMD) 30 Sanjib Dutta , ICFAI Business School (IBS) 31 Vincent Dessain , Harvard Business School 32 GV Muralidhara , ICFAI Business School (IBS) 33 Jitesh Nair , ICFAI Business School (IBS) 34 Michael J Schill , University of Virginia Darden School of Business 35 Elizabeth Grasby , Ivey Business School 36 Horacio Falcão , INSEAD 37 Robert S Kaplan , Harvard Business School 38 Seán A Meehan , Institute for Management Development (IMD) 39 Herminia Ibarra , London Business School 40 Ian Dunn , Ivey Business School 41 Peter Killing , Institute for Management Development (IMD) 42 Stefan Michel , Institute for Management Development (IMD) 43 Jan W Rivkin , Harvard Business School 44 Inyoung Chae , Goizueta Business School, Emory University 45 Sean D Carr , University of Virginia Darden School of Business 46 James E Hatch , Ivey Business School 47 Thales Teixeira , Decoupling.co 48 Eric Van den Steen , Harvard Business School 49 V Namratha Prasad , ICFAI Business School (IBS) 50 P Fraser Johnson , Ivey Business School

DON’T MISS HOW TO REVIEW MBA CASE STUDIES LIKE AN EXECUTIVE and HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL FACULTY PUBLISHED 70 CASES WITH BLACK PROTAGONISTS THIS PAST YEAR

The post The Most-Read Case Studies Of 2021, And The Profs Who Wrote Them appeared first on Poets&Quants .

Business Case Studies

• Getting Started
• Case Analysis

Harvard Business School Cases

Business databases, journals with business cases.

• Free Case Studies
• Buying Cases
• Writing Case Studies
• Case Competitions
• Case Interviews
• Case Method (Teaching)
• Harvard Business Review Harvard Business School does not make full-text case studies available to libraries - these cases are only available for purchase from the Harvard Business Review website.
• Business Source Ultimate Business Source Ultimate database indexes HBS cases: combine your topic and Harvard Business School Cases. The database provides direct links to the cases on the Harvard Business Review (HBR) website, where you can purchase them (usually under $10 USD). Business Source Ultimate contains full-text articles from HBR that are considered case studies.

Also see the Free Case Studies and Buying Case Studies pages of this guide.

Search market research and article databases for case studies by adding the phrase "case studies " to your search.

• ABI/INFORM Collection This link opens in a new window Combine your topic with the subject term case studies: e.g. marketing and automobile industry and sub(case studies).
• Business Source Ultimate This link opens in a new window Combine your topic with phrases "case studies" or "case study". HBS case studies are indexed but full-text is not available. Includes case study articles published in Harvard Business Review. Also try searching datamonitor and "case study".
• Canadian Business & Current Affairs (CBCA) This link opens in a new window Canadian journals. Combine your topic with the subject term "case studies".
• Emerald Publishing This link opens in a new window Journals and ebooks in business, management and engineering. Combine your topic with the phrase "case studies".
• O'Reilly for Higher Education This link opens in a new window Scroll down on the homepage and look for the Case Studies heading
• SAGE Business Cases This link opens in a new window Discipline-wide collection of global business cases from a variety of industries.
• Warc : World Advertising Research Center This link opens in a new window includes case studies which showcase how leading brands achieve key marketing objectives. Each report focuses on a specific industry sector, and summarises relevant campaigns. Sectors include government, non-profit, food, automotive, telecoms, retail and travel/tourism.
• International Journal of Business Cases
• Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies
• Journal of Case Studies
• The Journal of Case Research in Business & Economics
• Journal of Business Case Studies
• Business Case Journal
• Asian Case Research Journal
• International Journal of Cases in Management Available in ABI/Inform Collection from 2003-2012
• The Times 100 Business Case Studies Journal issues available from Sep 1, 1997 - Sep 1, 2013

Many books contain case studies in their contents. Combine "case studies" along with another search term in a library catalogue keyword search.

• "case studies" and management
• "case studies" and trucking
• "case studies" and finance

Library Catalogue Keyword Search

• << Previous: Case Analysis
• Next: Free Case Studies >>
• Last Updated: Jan 17, 2024 11:02 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.ubc.ca/businesscases

Accessibility Links

Times 100 shows theory put in practice

The latest edition of The Times 100, a teaching and learning resource designed to engage students with a range of topical business case studies, is now available.

The printed resource is distributed free to all 5,600 secondary schools, colleges of higher and further education and universities in the UK.

Arcadia Group, one of Britain’s largest fashion retail companies, explains its culture and how entrepreneurial staff are a prerequisite for growing and sustaining a business. The company also demonstrates the importance of its recruitment, selection and training programme.

The spread of case studies covers more aspects of the syllabus than before. BG Group looks at how managers make investment decisions, weighing the risk and likely rewards of various options that affect stakeholders.

Corus examines its continuous

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Create Case Studies With Market Research Tactics

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Ready to create case studies? If you’re a B2B business (or a B2C business with long sales cycles), you should be. Case studies fuel a host of marketing and sales activities, from PR and content marketing to outbound sales enablement.

But, volume matters. The more case studies you have that represent a wide variety of industries, use cases, and benefits, the more you can pick the right story for the right context.

Thankfully, you can scale case study creation with classic market research approaches. Because case studies are, at their core, tailored one-to-one interviews , you can templatize the approach and create a case study arsenal in as little as 2-3 months.

Why Create Case Studies

Creating case studies takes time. We won’t dispute that! But, the benefits of creating case studies is so great that it’s well worth it. Check out some of the benefits most organizations derive from building up their arsenal:

PR Opportunities

After a business launches a new product or service, there isn’t much “newness” to announce. This means you have to make news. Finding great customer wins gives PR teams something worthwhile to pitch. These stories talk to the business’ products or services in an intersting, not too business-centric way, offering great PR fodder.

Marketing Nurture Activities

In longer sales cycle businesses, you need to keep you product top of mind. Using case studies throughout your nurturing and bottom-of-funnel outreach activities gives you targeted content to do just that.

Top-Of-Funnel Marketing Activities

Most companies need to fuel their social media, blog, and email marketing activities to attract new attention. Slicing and dicing case studies into smaller content pieces lets a marketing team produce top-of-funnel content for months on end.

Outbound Sales Materials

For those businesses doing outbound sales, case studies serve as valuable entry tools. Citing a customer name and the the business benefits they enjoyed builds credibility and gives an outbound sales team the chance to pitch a prospect on a meeting or demo.

In sum, when you create case studies, you create a content marketing and sales activation engine.

Start With The Case Study Output Template

Using market research to create case study libraries means developing a scaleable approach. That’s why we always say start from the end and then work backwards. When it comes to case studies, that means start with your final template or output layout. Once you know what you want your output to look like, you’ll know what information you’ll need to fill it in.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of ways to build out your case study template. Nevertheless, the example on the left is a standard approach we like. This is because it includes a few key components:

• Skimmable Text : Most prospective customers are in a hurry. This means they may not want to read a full story. Having a column or area that makes it easy to glean the case study content solves this problem. With a bulleted text and results area, readers absorb the story quickly. From there, they can read the fuller story or move on.
• Long-Form Story : For prospects that want the entire story, include the main body area. This is paragraph-based text that offers a synopsis of the customer’s background, how they approached their problem using the solution, and the tangible benefits received.
• Individual Quote : Social proof matters. There are few things more impactful than a person willing to give their name and likeness to another company for marketing purposes. That’s why, if possible, include a customer quote.

Design Your Case Study Questions

Obviously, the questions you ask will depend on the nature of what your product or service does. You’ll need some amount of question tailoring. That said, if we look at our template above, you’ll see you need to ask questions around three key areas:

Business Background

These are questions that isolate the business challenges a customer had, and what led them to look for your solution in the first place.  Typical questions include:

• • Tell me a little about your organization (e.g. employee number/background, what people are tasked with, core KPIs, etc.)
• • What challenges did you have that ultimately led you to seek out a solution?
• • Why were these issues so problematic?
• • What was your go-to approach to addresses this before you starting using our product?

This is where you marry the customer’s problem with your solution. These questions let you illustrate how people use your solution to address a variety of needs. Some sample questions include:

• • What was it about our product that led you to pick it?
• • How did you first go about using it?
• • Were there certain features in particular you / your team found critical? If so, which ones and why?
• • What was especially beneficial / useful about the experience?

Especially important are tangible, quantifiable benefits that let you tout really clear product wins. Some questions we often use include:

• • Tell us about [time savings, cost savings, faster resolution times, faster throughput times, etc.] you got from using the product. How did that come about?
• • Thinking about broader business goals, how did this fit in? How did the product help you meet those objectives?
• • Were there any unexpected benefits you received from using the product?

Structure Your Outreach & Production Workflow

Once you finalize your questions, you’re ready to gather up your case study interviews. This means developing a process for reaching out to customers, gathering their stories, and formalizing the stories into complete case studies.

The typical workflow includes the following approach:

1. Develop An Outreach List : First, build a list of all the customers you hope will give you a story. This usually means working with sales or customer service reps to build out an initial list. As they enter in names, also ask them to include a “Why.” That is, what do they know about this customer that makes them a great case study opportunity.

2. Perform Outreach : With your list finalized, it’s time to reach out and request a case study interview. We suggest developing email templates and phone scripts for your sales and customer service teams. This lets them spend their time on outreach, not on figuring out how to ask for the interviews in the first place.

Include an explanation of what the process is, why you’re doing it, and what they may get in return. This is also where you mention any incentive you wish to offer.

3. Schedule The Interviews : Once a customer says “yes,” get them scheduled! You can do this manually or with a tool. For example, we like using Calendly , a scheduling tool that lets you streamline scheduling and get meetings faster.

4. Complete The Interviews : This is the part where you get to use your interview questions with each and every customer. It’s also where you can go a bit off script. As you listen to answers, don’t be afraid to probe for more details. Each story is a little different, and therefore may require some tailored questions.

5. Draft The Story & Get Approval : With the full story recorded, clean it up and draft it into your standardized case study template. Because you are likely using customer names, you’ll need to share the document and get their approval. Or, get their feedback and make necessary edits.

6. Finalize Design & Publishing Approach : With approval in-hand, you can finally share the story. At the simplest level, this likely means putting it into a PDF for easy shareability and pushing it live on your website. However, it should also include sharing it with your content and sales teams and letting them consider how they can leverage it for their particular needs.

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Case Studies

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Here’s a collection of our client work across many industries. Each study demonstrates our thoughtful response to particular research needs and how our approach made a difference.

Green Marketing

Does 'yummy' play a role in profitability of this alternative-protein source.

Our client was excited about a new plant-based protein that could be marketed to clients. But the “yum” factor played a big part in the demand for it.

Do U.S. consumers believe a tire company can be "green"?

Global tire manufacturer needed to understand sustainability views of their existing U.S. consumer market segments so they could fully develop their green marketing strategy focused on a circular economy.

Health Insurance

Applying an integrated qual-quant approach to unravel the why behind member termination.

Business Challenge A well-known, dominant health insurance company asked TRC for research help to gain clarity as to why members were canceling insurance, despite a history of positive experiences with the plan. Prior research demonstrated that t...

Community Proved Valuable

A health insurance carrier wanted to establish on-demand access to its target audience of current and prospective members.

Digital Wallet Product Uncovers Key Targets Holding Most Growth Opportunity

Well-known FinTech client with digital wallet product needed to understand market share potential, unmet needs, and which features and services provided inroads toward new products.

Food and Beverage

Defining and refining a beverage category.

A beverage company was investing in new product lines, and wanted to determine the best way to configure retail space for the new offerings.

How to Mix 100+ Product Lines of House Paint

A paint manufacturer wanted to reduce the number of SKUs while ensuring offerings that would appeal to all segments of the paint contractor market. 

Digital Payment Service Optimized Their Strategic Roadmap with Two-Dimensional Max-Diff

Long-established FinTech client looking to evolve their offerings asked us to help identify features and services of greatest importance so they could direct R&D and inform future market strategies.

Segmentation to Optimize Digital Imaging Market

Our robust segmentation methodology identified six new actionable segments.

Choosing the Most Effective Campaign Messaging

A health insurance company needed to understand: Which positioning statements and messaging resonates best with my purchasing audience? Qualitative and quantitative methods gave us a more complete picture.

Not Just Segments, but Deeply Personified Segments

A modern bank wanted to know how to segment and define their target audience, and also how to communicate to each segment mirroring their language, attitudes, feelings, etc.

Van Westendorp Technique and Price Points

With more than 40,000 auto dealer clients, this service provider needed us to help identify potential, optimal price points for their online vehicle remarketing services.

Price Laddering Sized the Market Potential

A pharma company asked: "what price would be the highest price?" at which a consumer would no longer ask about their new drug? Why price laddering worked.

Medical Procedures Priced Correctly?

A major healthcare provider asked us: "evaluate the price sensitivity of 200+ procedural codes" to understand if the fees aligned to patient perceptions.

Guiding Consumers to Build Their Own Health Insurance Plan

Our client wanted to identify the most appealing benefits, and the trade-offs consumers make when considering specific levels of the healthcare benefits, and to profile consumers interested in specific features and levels so that the client could cus...

Global Service Gaps Identified

In-language feedback from consumers across the globe revealed important differences in overall satisfaction levels across countries.

Consumer Pkg Goods

Is this unique enough turning failure into success.

Conjoint and TRC Simulator allowed this CPG heavyweight to understand how their new breakfast product idea could meet consumer preferences in five different markets across four continents.

Would You Buy This?

Idea Audit™ delivered fundamental concept metrics, difficult-to-quantify information, and purchase likelihood estimates for the makers of EVO Oil Sprayer — all at a low cost.

Making the Most of Hospital's Prestigious Brand

Prestigious hospital needed to understand: In a competitive market, what perceptions do the locals recall and use when seeking nearby treatment and care?

One of the more actionable segmentation insights we uncovered: Food is only part of good pet care.

Mixing Emotional and Rational

Discrete-choice created 'gut-feeling' scenarios and delivered emotionally driven results.

Creating a Right Variety of "Yum!"

Consumer packaged goods manufacturers often struggle with selecting the right products or combination of products for their "multi-pack" offerings.

Do We Buy the Product or the Brand?

A well-known, legacy retail giant needed to understand the brand equity (perceived value) of their bestselling power and hand tool brands.

Business-to-Business

Priced to market.

Bracket™ and discrete-choice conjoint analysis helped this legal services provider prioritize the features and benefits that attorneys would pay for.

Object-Based Segmentation Found Four New Audience Segments

This health insurance provider couldn't understand why many in their target didn't even want insurance policies. Qualitative defined the survey. Quantitative revealed four new segments.

Best Combination of Medicare Plans

We identified the best combination of medicare plans using Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency (TURF) and discrete-choice conjoint.

Designing a Credit Card for High-End Travelers

A growing regional bank is looking to expand its product line by offering a premium credit card, designed for the population of affluent travelers.

Hospitality

Hotel happy.

CHAID segmentation told us which guests checked out happy and why.

Insurance Claims Improved

Key driver analysis identified room for big improvements at the claims level, where it mattered most.

Improving Radisson's Guest Satisfaction

Historical data and a simulator told us that making just one small change in quest satisfaction right away would increase monthly revenue.

Medical Devices

Medical device firm going international.

Discrete-choice conjoint helped Covidien medical device company expand globally with very tough target.

Identifying Consumer Preferences in Healthcare

Bracket™ prioritized a large number (64) of consumer interactions, generated based on the qualitative phase, to identify those most critical to a positive consumer experience.

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Monitoring content quality and readership.

Time 100 (often written in all-caps as TIME 100) is an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world assembled by the American news magazine Time. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, politicians, and journalists, the list is now an annual event. Although appearing on the list is often seen—incorrectly—as an honor, Time makes it clear that entrants are recognized for changing the world, regardless of the consequences of their actions.

"We use Key Survey to create questionnaires to send out to the teachers and students - asking what they think of our material and how we can improve on it," says Gordon Wilson, Operations Director of The Times 100, a business-education supplement to the London Times.

Customer and audience feedback is critical for making decisions.

The Times 100 is sent for free to every high school, college and university in the United Kingdom, where it’s used to help with business-studies and commerce classes. With such a wide audience, feedback is critical. Do teachers find the Times 100 material to be helpful in the classroom? Do students consider the website a useful resource? And where should resources be allocated for improvement?

Key Survey answers specific questions.

"One recent survey, for example, was aimed at teachers," Gordon said. "The questions were asking how they rated the following areas of our site, and we had different things like quality of content, amount of content, navigation, et cetera. The big question was, which areas did we want to improve, and the clear conclusion was that navigation and interactivity were the two biggest draws to our site. So we decided to focus more resources on those."

And targets specific demographics.

The Times 100 conducts between six and a dozen surveys a year, many of them to specific groups - for example, to students of a particular age, or teachers doing a certain course. The surveys are accessed through email; Gordon decides who a particular survey is going to, selects the address groups, and Key Survey mails them the link. It’s not The Times 100’s only source of user feedback; there’s a paper questionnaire that goes out with the supplement. But it’s their fastest, and their best way of getting specific information on specific area of interest.

The information is easy to share and distribute.

The information gathered isn’t just used internally - it’s shared with other stakeholders, including the writers, designers and teachers. This enables everyone involved to see what the users think of it - often by directly presenting them with the results produced by Key Survey.

Branching allows you to dig for more detailed, more useful information.

The Times 100 makes use of Key Survey features like branching. "I’m able to ask the question ‘are you a student or teacher’, and depending on the answer, it causes the questions they get. If they answer a question a certain way, you can dig further and ask them why they answered it that way, without them realizing that you’re digging," says Gordon.

And it’s easy to use - you can get started immediately.

"It was the ease of use," Gordon says of why he chose Key Survey. "I’d never created a survey like this before, but I created this one in maybe an hour. And it was quite complex - it wasn’t just a straightforward survey. It was very intuitive; I didn’t really need to call tech support. And also, the ability to bring in my own list of email addresses. If you’re sending an email to 10,000 people, you don’t want to key every address in. I could import them directly from Excel."

Presentation tools generate graphics automatically.

Information exists to be presented, and Key Survey’s powerful reporting tools make this job easier - displaying the information not just as lists and numbers, but graphically. In preparation for a meeting, Gordon doesn’t have to spend time moving the data to another application so as to create charts and graphs; he can simply print the report Key Survey has generated.

"We’ve used it widely, because the reports that you do are fantastic. It’s easy to read, and to share them around. It helps us make decisions and to move forwards," he says.

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The Times 100 Business Case Studies Edition 15

Nov 02, 2012

120 likes | 554 Views

The Times 100 Business Case Studies Edition 15. Discovering customer needs through research Barclays. Introduction. Barclays provides services for different markets Personal customers Business banking The personal customer market has segments, e.g. Families Mature people Students

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The Times 100 Business Case StudiesEdition 15 Discovering customer needs through research Barclays

Introduction • Barclays provides services for different markets • Personal customers • Business banking • The personal customer market has segments, e.g. • Families • Mature people • Students • Market research helps Barclays to identify what each segment needs and wants.

Purpose of market research • To ensure assumptions are correct • Barclays discovered students were an important segment • To understand what customers think of existing products • Barclays found its existing student account could be improved • To identify what new and existing customers want • Students gave their views directly • To help develop existing/create new products to meet the needs of target market • Insights helped to increase market share

Barclays research findings • Students wanted separate accounts to manage borrowing and spending • Often needed to own high-tech equipment, e.g laptops • They relied heavily on credit whilst at university • E.g. an overdraft • Incentives were expected • Would not alone persuade students to choose a particular banking product • An incentive based on mobile phone or broadband had most appeal

Implementation of new student proposition • Barclays set up working group • Insight from research established key features and benefits • Partnership with Orange to develop new incentive • Providing discounted mobile broadband • Marketing campaign • Word of mouth – www.100voices.co.uk • Literature in branches • Online promotion through www.barclays.co.uk • Direct mail to prospective students during summer

Evaluation of research • Examination of internal data proved students were a valuable market • Secondary research showed the size of the potential student market • Primary research identified what students wanted from an account • The new proposition increased the overall number of student accounts by 34% (target 25%) • Barclays moved from 3rd to 2nd in terms of market share

Primary – finding new information for a specific purpose Qualitative – opinions, feelings - taken from e.g. interviews, opinion panel or focus group Quantitative – numerical data – from e.g questionnaire May be expensive/time consuming to carry out Secondary – focuses on existing information from published sources Research reports, competitor literature or government publications, e.g. national statistics May be quicker/less expensive but results less specific to company or question Types of market research

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The Times 100 Business Case Studies. UNISON Use of PEST analysis at UNISON. Introduction UNISON. UK’s biggest public sector trade union Members in e.g. NHS, transport, education, local government Represents employees in the workplace

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Case Studies:  Market Research

Commercial Strategy

Market Research

Payer Strategy/ Reimbusement Planning

Business Development

Competitive Intelligence

Portfolio Planning/ Indication Scans

1. Case Study

Demand modeling and scenario planning for a novel, mass-market cardiovascular agent, the problem.

• A small but highly-valued biopharma client sought to quantify the opportunity for a new hypercholesterolemia product across 6 patient segments and 3 physician specialties
• More specifically, they wanted to know which product attributes will drive share uptake vs. the market-leading statins and the classes in late-stage development (PCSK9i and CETPi)

What We Did

• Hypothesized most likely competitive sets to orient around strategically
• We conducted a quantitative conjoint study with n=300 physicians across 3 specialties; as well as 20 qualitative payer interviews
• Using this primary data, we created an annual revenue forecast capable of flexible scenario planning

Our Results and Insights

• Understand baseline patient segmentation
• The benefit of LDL lowering was shown to vary by drug class (statins vs. non-statins) – a critical, new insight
• Conjoint design recognized strong awareness of entrenched and pipeline competition
• Conjoint sensitivity analyses showed that outcomes data and LDL reduction had different upsides across segments
• Using this new insight, respondents were re-segmented, unlocking new insights about commercial strategy
• The net share difference between a downside and an upside profile was larger than initially thought; the drivers of this difference were used for commercial resource allocation

2. Case Study

Patient journey for an orphan disease state with multiple stakeholder touch points.

• A small public biotech company wished to increase their understanding of the patient experience for an orphan indication – including emotions and needs across the disease lifecycle
• In addition, they wished to identify sources of information patients use (pre- and post-diagnosis) and assess patients’ preferences for corporate resources
• Qualitative primary research with patients was conducted to elucidate emotions and motivations around disease burden, financial pressures, flow through the healthcare system, and relationships with health care providers
• Secondary research was conducted to quantify the market characteristics
• Results were used to inform future pre-commercial investment decisions
• Respondents were recruited to represent a fair balance across the spectrum
• Diagnosis was often delayed; the patient-physician relationship varied by specialty
• The emotional impact of patient symptoms were mapped
• Patient fear and uncertainty was due to HCP under-education, siloed treatment, and lack of effective options
• Mapped the financial burden across the patient lifecycle; identified high leverage areas for improvement

3. Case Study

Demand modeling for a novel rna technology in a mass market: using conjoint to inform partnership discussions.

A small, privately held clinical stage biotech sought to quantify the dynamics at play in a mass market cardiovascular indication in the US, with an emphasis on a recently launched franchise that they would be competing against with their RNA technology

Their goal was to inform a launch forecast, clinical development decisions, and help in partnership negotiations

• Designed and executed an Internet survey with academic and community cardiologists in the US
• Used conjoint to create a user-friendly “what-if” scenario modeling tool to forecast scenarios across various patient and physician segments in 2 and 3 and 4 product markets
• Uncovered the dynamics behind a key relationship between 2 product attributes that had previously been hidden, leading to a re-thinking of clinical development
• Identified key attributes at play; structured conjoint scheme to run parallel studies spanning 3 patient types
• Designed a concise conjoint grid spanning attributes and levels of highest competitive importance
• Modeled a series of 2, 3, and 4 product markets across various patient types, uncovering unexpected pockets of opportunity
• Conducted sensitivity analyses to uncover hidden relationships between product attributes across segments
• Integrated sensitivity analyses across patient segments in visually compelling ways
• Synthesized data into a series of actionable insights; uncovered the dynamics behind a key relationship between 2 attributes that had previously been hidden, leading to a re-thinking of clinical development

4. Case Study

Launch messaging and positioning for an orphan specialty product.

• A mid-sized pharma client wanted to evaluate quantitatively the impact of launch messaging and positioning for an orphan specialty product (messages spanned efficacy, safety, reimbursement, and enrollment)
• In addition, they wanted to ensure the messaging is complementary to the messaging for related products in their portfolio
• Quantitative market research study with high-volume prescribing physicians, nurses, and pharmacy directors
• Maxdiff methodology was chosen to collect the large amount of feedback needed with low respondent fatigue 23 messages across 5 categories were examined and a positioning statement was devised
• Motivation scores were first determined at the message category level across respondent segments
• Detailed quantitative feedback (what score and why) was collected for all messages
• Scores showed significant variation across segment, suggesting the need for segment-level positioning and messaging
• Feedback was integrated with existing messages (for other products) and customized by stakeholder segment

New launch messaging insights:

Messages in the “Convenience” category received the highest overall scores, with “Formulation” and

“Administration” messages receiving the lowestThe decision was made to position the drug based on convenience rather than efficacy or tolerability – a decision counter to the team’s initial hypothesis

Messages were tweaked for nurses and payers; a single positioning statement spoke to all

Launch beat internal forecasts and minimal cannibalization of the franchise was observed

5. Case Study

Reimbursement support services optimization for orphan specialty product portfolio.

• A mid-sized pharmaceutical client desired multi-year support to help define, implement, and market a suite of reimbursement support services for their portfolio of premium-priced orphan specialty products
• Support services included enrollment, financial/ reimbursement, patient education, and monthly lab monitoring
• Therapeutic area highly competitive with multiple competitive launches expected during the project timeframe
• 12 primary market research projects over a 3-year period across 4 stakeholder groups (physicians, nurses, payers, patients)
• Recommendations integrated findings across multiple channels (online, specialty distributor, and nurse visits)
• Helped increase compliance with treatment and lab monitoring
• Helped client maintain leadership position in highly competitive area
• Clarified landscape of needs and satisfaction levels with current offerings
• Optimized branding for portfolio of services to increase awareness and use
• Identified set of competitively differentiated service messages
• Recommended focusing lab monitoring services on top accounts with differentiated set of online offerings
• Determined mix of service outreach that would maximize convenience at low investment to client
• Quantified the impact of service changes on product switch rates; worked with client to devise tactics to minimize this

6. Case Study

Diagnostic strategy for novel oncology drug (focus on next-generation sequencing (ngs) vs. ihc).

• A mid size biotech company was developing a drug targeting a rare, pan-tumor cancer mutation and wanted a go-to-market diagnostic test strategy
• Specifically, they wanted to map the current usage and likely future adoption of different molecular diagnostic platforms (single analyte (IHC, ISH), NGS and liquid biopsy)
• They also wanted to quantify the impact of each of the future adoption scenarios on uptake of their agent, and who would need to be influenced for each
• Determined treatment flow and current use of molecular diagnostics platforms
• Conducted primary market research with broad array of US stakeholders (oncologists, pathologists, and payers across several clinic business models)
• Mapped the adoption rate of diagnostic platforms (single analyte, NGS, liquid biopsy) in academic vs commercial laboratories, and how each scenario would affect product uptake of their novel agent
• Delivered a comprehensive companion diagnostic strategy to support launch in a pan-tumor indication
• Mapped the patient flow and diagnostic test process across several clinic business models
• Determined the drivers and barriers for NGS adoption
• Hypothesized likely future use of NGS, liquid biopsy, and IHC
• Companion diagnostic strategy recommendation and alternatives

7. Case Study

Global oncology demand study and biomarker testing strategy for indication expansion.

• A large international pharmaceutical client wanted to measure and maximize demand for their novel targeted agent based on the completion of a Phase 3 global study in a new tumor type
• They wanted to estimate their product share by line of therapy, determine the source of business, develop a biomarker testing strategy and an attitudinal battery for customer typing. Their goal was to optimize how to position their product amidst a growing set of powerful competitors targeting overlapping biomarker profiles, including immunotherapy agents

Mixture of global quantitative and qualitative research, spanning 7 countries (US, Asia, EU) and more than 400 respondents

Quantitatively determined across geographies: current practice patterns, anticipated share by line of therapy, source of business, biomarker testing rate, full attitudinal battery, drivers and barriers, and a physician and patient segmentation for use in future promotional targeting and positioning

Results informed future resource investment allocation decisions as well as future messaging and positioning efforts

• Mapped the current 2nd line landscape, with pros and cons by treatment by geography
• Quantified the key determinants of treatment selection in each geography
• Quantified gain of share by patient segment, physician segment, line of therapy, and geography
• Synthesized attitudinal battery into a typing tool to identify likely early adopters and high prescribers
• Devised a strategic map of the competitive landscape, identifying key battleground areas by geography and how to win in each
• Results provided insight for future resource investment allocation decisions as well as future messaging and positioning research

8. Case Study

Patient journey in a therapeutic area spanning cash-pay and insurance-pay drugs.

• A newly-public clinical stage biotech client desired a detailed patient journey to map the important touchpoints in a market that is highly patient driven and a mix of cash-pay and insurance-pay
• Client wanted to understand the high-leverage touchpoints, clinical decision-makers, and a high-level buying process in order to guide future clinical and pre-commercial investment decisions
• Mapped the patient flow from symptoms to diagnosis to therapeutic treatment to surgery
• Devised a semiquantitative flowchart of treatments to understand sequencing
• Uncovered a novel mapping of patient segments and prioritized their relative value to client given their unique offering
• Put the patient flow and segmentation into a buying process context to understand the financial drivers
• Placed client’s product in the treatment algorithm to visualize potential future positioning options
• Crafted a set of actionable, pragmatic recommendations for the clinical development team as well as to inform future commercial investment decisions
• Combined primary and secondary data sources (qualitative market research with clinicians, payers and patients, scientific literature and payer literature) to triangulate on a semi-quantitative patient journey map
• Uncovered a complex flow that spanned several clinician types, several broad classes of competitors (devices and drugs, OTC and prescription), and 2 main reimbursement models (cash-pay and reimbursed)
• Identified opportunities to position client’s drug. Results served to inform future clinical and commercial investment decisions

9. Case Study

Launch demand study in niche hematology oncology indication.

• A small biotech client had recently completed Phase 3 study of their lead asset and was preparing to file for FDA approval in a niche hematology oncology indication
• The company sought to clarify patient segments, quantify expected treatment outcomes, assess physician reactions to the asset and the importance of its mechanism of action, and understand what drives physician decisions to taper dose
• Conducted 32 qualitative, in-depth KOL interviews and 150 quantitative on-line surveys with hemoncs, segmented by location of care
• Analysis included: patient segments and lines of therapy, treatments and response rates, likelihood to prescribe, and drug attribute importance by segment
• Final recommendations were pragmatic and helped guide launch investment allocation decisions
• Identified which physician segments expected to treat new patients in a year
• Assessed physician perceptions about their likelihood to prescribe the client’s therapy to different patient subpopulations
• Gained insights into duration of patient responses to different therapies
• Identified and ranked important drivers of decisions to taper

10. Case Study

Global quantitative study to optimize advertising concepts for wound care support services.

• A global leader in wound care wanted to assess three advertising concepts globally and determine which was most effective at communicating key messages related to service and support
• Concept needed to be effective across a variety of HCP types and across multiple geographies

Conducted quantitative research to determine best concept across 7 metrics across all geographies along with overall preference

Analyzed open-ended responses to identify most important areas for concept improvement

Identified country-level and segment level differences that informed more targeted campaigns; concept was considered a significant driver of future

• Presented 3 concepts to respondents across 3 segments (MDs, RNs, Administrators) and 8 countries
• Aggregated potential areas of improvement for each concept
• Overall segment level differences were meaningful and suggested need for closer scrutiny
• Identified preferred concept overall and across 7 key metrics and 5 respondent segments
• Identified best concept for each region and specialty as well as key overall areas for concept improvement; concept was considered a significant driver of future sales

11. Case Study

Franchise positioning and messaging: unlocking the power of a portfolio using a linchpin product.

• A mid-sized medical device client sought to understand the drivers of product selection in wound care and how to leverage its portfolio to increase product usage across categories
• To achieve this, they wanted to understand how physicians and nurses assess and treat wounds across a wide range of patient segments and locations of care
• In addition, they sought to develop a series of core messages and visuals to differentiate their portfolio and increase share
• Conducted a brainstorming workshop with client to generate a series of hypotheses regarding customer pain points, the product selection process, and messaging / positioning of both the franchise and products
• Executed 25 qualitative interviews across 2 treater segments (MDs and RNs) and 2 locations of care (acute and post-acute)
• Uncovered a key dynamic in the product selection process that could be used to guide messaging, positioning, and portfolio strategy
• Clarified the disconnect between the stages of wound healing and product selection
• Understood customer motivation by mapping a hierarchy of needs
• Mapped the wound lifecycle and clarified its impact on wound care treatment
• De-mystified the complexity of product selection by uncovering the “linchpin product” that dictated treatment path
• Using this key insight, generated a series of portfolio-level and product-level messages and prioritized their impact
• Recommended a specific set of messages for a “linchpin product” that could serve as a foundational treatment and unlock the potential of the portfolio

12. Case Study

Integrating physician and payer dynamics in infectious disease to arrive at a realistic peak year revenue.

• A top 50 global pharma company wanted to know how they could reach $500MM US peak sales for a Phase 2/3 asset treating latent tuberculosis infections (LTBI)
• In addition, they sought advice on how to re-frame the large and ill-defined literature prevalence to a more realistically addressable number of patients
• Primary qualitative and quantitative market research (conjoint design) with physicians across 6 specialties (n=350), and payers (n=50)
• Market, revenue forecast, and business case (NPV) analysis Analytically combined conjoint preferences across physicians and payers to represent the full buying process; identified a realistic path to $500MM
• We identified the most attractive patient segments
• Mapped gatekeepers and high prescribing physician segments over time
• Identified opportunities to increase product demand
• Quantified MD demand across various product profile scenarios
• Integrated MD demand with payer utilization management to forecast uptake and prioritize the key obstacles…
• …and recommended actionable steps to overcome those obstacles

13. Case Study

War gaming (competitive simulation), view the case.

A mid-sized biopharma company with a successful specialty product was facing a competitive launch for the first time from an aggressive competitor and wanted to refine and pressure-test their messages and objection handlers in a real-world simulation. Aquest designed and moderated a series of 90 minute 1-on-1 sessions with physicians, playing the role of moderator, sales rep A, and sales rep B sequentially, for a truly controlled experiment. Recommendations were rolled out at the next POA meeting, ensuring a well-prepared field force.

14. Case Study

Publication strategy.

A large biotechnology company decided to re-evaluate the investments it made in publications, both advertising and research articles. They commissioned Aquest to conduct a large quantitative survey with community oncologists, nurses, and clinical pharmacists to learn not only the publications they respected most, but also the publications they read most. The research uncovered new avenues for more productive advertising and article placement, offering the potential for hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings on publication investments.

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Prime energy, sports drinks contain PFAS and excessive caffeine, class action suits say

YouTubers Logan Paul and KSI founded Prime Hydration in 2022, and while their products have become increasingly popular and profitable, the company continues to face class action suits over the ingredients in their energy and sports drinks.

Prime Hyrdation LLC was sued April 8 in the Southern District of New York over "misleading and deceptive practices" regarding the company's 12-ounce energy drinks containing between 215-225 milligrams of caffeine as opposed to the advertised 200 milligrams, according to the class action suit.

Lara Vera, a Poughkeepsie, New York resident, filed the suit in federal court on behalf of herself and others who bought Prime products across the U.S., the complaint says. Vera purchased Prime's Blue Raspberry products several times in August 2022 for about $3 to $4 each, but she would have never bought the drinks if she had known the actual caffeine content, according to the suit.

Vera's suit is seeking $5 million from the company owned by Paul and KSI, real name Olajide Olayinka Williams "JJ" Olatunji, court records show.

Court records do not say whether Prime Hydration retained legal counsel for Vera's suit.

How much caffeine is in Prime energy drinks?

Prime's advertised 200 milligrams of caffeine is equivalent to "half a dozen Coke cans or nearly two (12-ounce) Red Bulls," Vera's class action suit says.

A 12-ounce can of Red Bull energy drink contains 114 milligrams of caffeine, and a cup of coffee contains around 100 milligrams of caffeine, according to the suit.

The suit continues to say that "there is no proven safe dose of caffeine for children." Side effects of kids consuming caffeine could include rapid or irregular heartbeats, headaches, seizures, shaking, upset stomach and adverse emotional effects on mental health, according to the complaint.

Sen. Charles Schumer , D-N.Y., called on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate Prime energy drinks in 2023 because of dangerously high caffeine levels. Schumer alleged in a letter to the FDA that vague marketing targeting young people influenced parents to buy a “cauldron of caffeine" for their kids.

Schumer's call to action to the FDA is referenced in Vera's suit.

USA TODAY contacted Prime Hydration's attorneys Tuesday afternoon but did not receive an immediate response.

What are the Prime Hydration lawsuits?

Vera's legal battle is beginning, but Prime is still dealing with another class action suit from 2023 alleging a flavor of the company's sports drinks contains PFAS, or "forever chemicals."

Independent third-party testing determined the presence of PFAS chemicals in Prime Hydration grape flavor, according to a class action suit filed Aug. 2, 2023, in the Northern District of California by the Milberg law firm on behalf of Elizabeth Castillo and others similarly affected.

"Lead plaintiff Elizabeth Castillo, a resident of California, purchased Prime Hydration on multiple occasions but says she would not have bought it at all if the product had been accurately marketed and labeled as containing PFAS," the Milberg law firm said in an August 2023 news release . "These chemicals were not reasonably detectible to consumers like herself."

Castillo's suit is seeking a $5 million judgment, court records show.

As of April 18, the judge in the case has heard Prime's argument to dismiss the suit due to Castillo not alleging "a cognizable injury" and her not alleging "facts showing a concrete (and) imminent threat of future harm," according to the drink company's motion.

Paul addressed Castillo's claims Wednesday in a 3-minute TikTok video.

"First off, anyone can sue anyone at any time that does not make the lawsuit true," Paul said in the TikTok video. "And in this case, it is not… one person conducted a random study and has provided zero evidence to substantiate any of their claims."

What are forever chemicals?

PFAS are called forever chemicals because they "bioaccumulate, or accrue in the body over time," the Milberg law said in its news release.

"These man-made chemicals are well-studied and have been found to have adverse effects on the human body and environment," the New York City-headquartered law firm said.

Many PFAS are found in people's and animal's blood and can be detected at low levels in a variety of food products and in the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said. Forever chemicals can be found in water, air, fish and soil at locations across the nation and the globe, according to the EPA.

"There are thousands of PFAS chemicals, and they are found in many different consumer, commercial, and industrial products," the EPA said. "This makes it challenging to study and assess the potential human health and environmental risks."

Who made Prime energy drinks?

Before founding Prime Hydration LLC, Logan Paul, 29, and KSI, 30, were YouTubers who turned their millions of subscribers into supporters of their boxing, wrestling, music, social media content and other endeavors.

Going into the drinks business proved to be profitable for both YouTubers as "Prime Hydration generated more than $250 million in retail sales in its first year, including $45 million in a single month," according to the Milberg law firm.

Paul and KSI continue to keep Prime products in the spotlight whether it is paying for an ad during Super Bowl 57 , having livestreamer IShowSpeed dress up in a Prime sports drink bottle during Wrestlemania 40 or signing athletes including Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Judge, Israel Adesanya, Tyreek Hill, Kyle Larson, Alisha Lehmann and others to sponsorship deals.