EMBA - Marketing Management

Note on Case Analysis

Business schools strive to facilitate student learning on many dimensions. Some topics naturally lend themselves to lecture. Other topics are facilitated by class discussion. Still others require the student to experience the issue to really develop a strong appreciation of the course material. Case instruction is one method of “experiencing” a real world business problem without the overhead of physically participating in a business environment. In the sense of executive education, it gives a real problem in a lab setting to test new academic skills coupled with your own and your teammates’ experiences.

The following are a subset of recent comments taken from student evaluations of case learning at a leading business school.

The case information is ambiguous, redundant, and irrelevant…the real issue isn’t stated clearly…the instructor isn’t directive enough…we never know the right answer…

In a sense these comments are legitimate—they have a basis in fact. For the most part, though, the difficulties associated with case analysis both stem from and reflect real life decision making situations. Cases are designed with real world decision environments in mind. The issues you struggle with in the case are the same dilemmas and problems you face as managers- frequently a world of imperfect information, and a place where others have made decisions with which you must work.

At a fundamental level a case describes a set of internal and external conditions present at some time in an organization’s history. Typically it describes a period where an organization faces a critical challenge. Occasionally the nature of such challenges will be obvious; more likely, though, one has to actively seek them out in order to extract the full range of learning that the case affords.

Much like real world business problems, cases are messy. The cases we use in class describe some, though not all, of the facts known by the key organizational actors at the time of the challenge. They are written so that you must rearrange and interpret the information their pages contain. Much of the information in a case is relevant to the business problem of interest, but some is not. However, always presume that the facts, to the extent that they are presented, are accurate. (How they are used may not be!)

Further, given the relative scarcity of information – albeit an abundance of data - you may sometimes be forced to infer opinions, behavior, and intentions. The untidy presentation of case material is in large part intentional and is employed to mirror the nature of many real world decision environments.

Case study assignments are certainly demanding, but they can also provide significant learning rewards as well. Most importantly, over repetitive case experiences you will develop a structured, disciplined, and entrenched decision making process that you can apply to most any problem solving situation. Cases also reinforce the idea that in most real world problems there is no one right answer. No one—not you, not your instructor, not Phil Kotler, not Jeff Bezos—can “solve” the case.

Several viable options often present themselves, and your task is often to apply a structured logic to determine which option is most likely to lead to desired outcomes. You then must communicate your analysis and recommendation in a clear, succinct fashion.

Preparing a Case

One useful analogy proposed by academics is that case analysis is like a physician attempting a diagnosis.[1] Using this analogue, your first task will be to check for overall “vital signs” to assess the situation. At this stage you are encouraged to “immerse yourself in the case.” Often this will involve simply making notes in the margin regarding the organization’s business model, its core competencies, key customers, the source of its differential advantage, etc. The analysis, strategy, and implementation frameworks we present in class (i.e., 5 C’s, STP, and 4 P’s) are often useful for organizing this basic case information. Next probe more carefully the potential problem areas your initial assessment has uncovered. Often the case will contain a fair amount of quantitative data that one can supplement with reasonable assumptions to reach specific conclusions about the problem of interest. Finally, attempt to confirm or disconfirm your assessment by searching for alternative points of view.

In preparing the case read through the text with an eye toward the main problems that you will address. Develop a rationale for your belief that the problems you identify are in fact the relevant issues and not merely symptoms of other problems. In addition, assemble the factual information presented in the case that addresses the various problems. Once you have assembled all the information provided, develop a framework for analysis.

There is no one correct way to analyze a case and present the results of the analysis. However, most successful analyses include the following components.

·  Background & Problem Identification

·  Statement of Objective(s)

·  Situation Analysis

·  Description and Evaluation of Alternatives

·  Conclusions/Recommendations

The degree of emphasis you place on of the components listed above should differ depending on the specific case in question. The amount of energy and attention to devote to each section are issues with which students frequently grapple when performing case analyses. Unfortunately there are no easy answers to such questions. Recognizing your own strengths as business professionals, give yourself permission to bend and mold the framework whenever you think it is appropriate. The work you do in Analysis is very important to help you develop Alternatives.

Background & Problem Identification

The background and problem identification stage outlines the specific marketing management problems that will be addressed in your report. In this section be sure to identify the root issue that your analysis will address, not merely symptoms of the problem. Be careful at this step to avoid suggesting a solution or to state the problem disguised as a solution (e.g., “Pepsi’s revenue problem arises from it’s inability to allocate money away from trade promotion”). Remember, the actual case itself may suggest one problem, when in fact it is something else.

In your decision regarding the extent of background information to provide, presume that your audience has already read the case and is familiar with basic case facts. Start big. Give a frame of reference. How serious is the problem. USE MEANINGFUL METRICS wherever appropriate to help frame the problem.

Only include those elements of background information that are necessary to support your interpretation of the core case problem. You should succinctly state the core problem or problems and provide a rationale as to why these are the most relevant issues.

This section need not be long; often no more than one-half of 1 page is required.

Statement of Objectives

In the objectives section you should clearly state the operational marketing objective or objectives you set out for your organization as they relate to the specific problem you identified in the prior step. The objective(s) should be specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable, and time bound. If you identify both primary and secondary objectives, be sure to make the relative importance of each obvious to the reader.

Often this section is the shortest in a written case analysis, but arriving at the most reasonable objective often requires a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the case analysts. Your objective statement should flow smoothly and logically from your assessment of the case background and your interpretation of the key marketing management problem the organization faces. Remember, this is how you will evaluate your alternatives, and ultimately measure results.

Situation Analysis

For many cases this section constitutes the backbone of your submission. This section acts as a mechanism for you to filter the case facts into insights that will be useful for decision making. There is often an abundance of data in the case, and your task is to discern what is really important and then to separate out the information that is useful for decision making. Do not question case facts, but DO question what organizational case actors presume to be true or hold as the most important if it is not backed up by case data.

Often 5 C’s opportunity analyses (Customers, Competitors, Company, Collaborators, and Context), positioning maps, or 4 P’s approaches (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) will be useful for organizing and communicating your analyses, but this will not always be true. For example, SWOT analysis from the perspective of the focal organization can also be used to reflect the organization’s situation in a compact manner. Metrics strengthen your analysis, so where you have them, use them.

At this point you need to reach into the “toolbox” that your professional and educational experiences have provided to impose a structure on your analysis. You should feel free to use any of the tools and frameworks we have mentioned in this class, any that you have learned from other courses in the core curriculum, any from your own experience, or any that you develop ad hoc to generate case insights. Chose tools as appropriate –do not just include all the models we have studied. Examine the ability of the tools you use to generate insight that is useful for case decision making. Perhaps most importantly, do not simply look at case facts and expect them to speak to you. Instead you will have to ask them informed questions.

Description & Evaluation of Alternatives

You should use this section to enumerate the various courses of action you would consider to address the problem and satisfy the operational objectives you have set forth. Often several alternatives will be listed in the case, but you should not feel constrained to this set. There are often outside options. So long as you are realistic about what the organization is capable of doing you should feel free to consider unstated alternatives. You should not generate alternatives that violate organizational constraints (time, money, resources, law, etc.), and you should eliminate them on these same grounds if the text of the case suggests them as possible options. Be sure to describe the alternative fully. (One or two sentences should suffice. This is very important for your own options so that the intent is understood.

In terms of evaluation, summarize your findings with regard to the decision alternatives in terms of the pros and cons, or perhaps even the risks and rewards, associated with each option. However, it is also critical that you revisit the specific marketing objective(s) you set in the earlier section and indicate to what degree each alternative considered either does or does not achieve the stated objective. For example, if your objective statement involves acquiring 2,000 new customers in the upcoming fiscal year, each alternative should be evaluated in terms of how it contributes to that goal.

Conclusions/Recommendations

After conducting your assessment of the organization’s situation and its options you need to come to some resolution about how the organization should proceed. The choice of which option to pursue should follow directly from your evaluation of the alternative courses of action that the organization should be considering. A brief statement of why other options were not chosen is a critical component of this section. Your analysis should also indicate how the course of action you do advocate achieves (or comes closest to achieving) the marketing objective you specified previously. Often there will be important unintended consequences of taking a particular course of action, and you should note these as well.

You should also include a timeline for implementation and an outline of the implementation and costs of the plan. The timeline may be as general as ‘short & long term’ (with those defined in years). Some cases give you more specific data about timing and costs, and you should use these if applicable.

The Written Case Submission

The most critical element of a strong case analysis is a rigorous, logical consistency and flow from one element to the next. That is, the problem identification should follow logically from the background assessment. The background and problem identification should lead clearly to your operational objective. Your situation analysis should identify unique strengths or capabilities of the organization that increase the likelihood of achieving the objective. Your selection of alternatives should follow rationally from your situation analysis and review of the organization’s alternatives.

In short, your write-up should be both concise and yet sufficient to persuade someone who is familiar with basic case facts that your recommendation is best able to achieve the marketing objective that you identified and believe is most fruitful for the organization.

Typically, any quantitative or logical support you can provide for your recommendation will strengthen your analysis. However, you should also give yourself permission to make assumptions when necessary—just make sure they are reasonable and defensible. State your assumption clearly and explicitly. This is accepted practice in most real world organizational settings, settings where decision makers routinely lack some portion of the information they would like to make a decision. .

Exhibits can communicate complex material compactly and are often an important part of your written case submission. They should emphasize substance and not style. For example, a line graph that plots sales against time and shows a simple increasing pattern is not a useful exhibit; you can communicate the same information more concisely by including a short statement within the text such as “revenue grew at a compound rate of 7.7% over the 1995-2001 period.” Likewise, summary statistics (e.g., “the correlation between coupon value and coupon redemption is .86”) can often be more informative than detailed charts of multiple items of interest.