October 2012

		Coursepack Builder
		New Translated Cases in Marketing
		Best Selling Cases for 2011-2012
		Free Resources and Tips for Learning & Teaching with Cases

The Coursepack Builder was officially launched in September and has proven to be a popular tool with numerous customized coursepacks being created and downloaded daily!

Log In to create your own custom resource that can be downloaded instantly from the Ivey Publishing website. With enough content to create an entire course, you can use the Coursepack Builder tool to assemble cases, articles & technical notes from the Ivey collection, or any of the other collections available through Ivey Publishing.

Need help? View any of the instructional videos below or email for assistance.

Part 1 - Creating Coursepacks

Part 2 - Building Your Coursepack

Part 3 - Finding & Adding Products to a Coursepack

Part 4 - Changing the Order of Items, Editing & Previewing Your Coursepack

Part 5 - Activating & Purchasing the Coursepack

Part 6 - Managing the Coursepacks: Deleting, Re-Using & Archiving

Part 7 - Adding Delegates

The newest cases from the Ivey case collection are available for review. View New Cases for more details on cases registered in your discipline.

Trouble Brews at Starbucks (Simplified Chinese version)
After going public in 1992, Starbucks' strong balance sheet and double-digit growth made it a hot growth stock. The Starbucks vision was coffee culture as community, the Third Place between work and home, where friends shared the experience and exotic language of gourmet coffee. Its growth was fueled by rapid expansion in the number of stores both in the United States and in foreign markets, the addition of drive-through service, its own music label that promoted and sold CDs in stores and other add-on sales, including pastries and sandwiches. In an amazingly short time, Starbucks became a wildly successful global brand. But in 2007, Starbucks' performance slipped; the company reported its first-ever decline in customer visits to U.S. stores, which led to a 50 per cent drop in its share price. In January 2008, the board ousted CEO Jim Donald and brought back Howard Schultz - Starbucks' visionary leader and CEO from 1987 to 2000 and current chairman and chief global strategist - to re-take the helm. Starbucks' growth strategies have been widely reported and analyzed, but rarely with an eye to their impact on the brand. This case offers a compelling example of how non-brand managerial decisions - such as store locations, licensing arrangements and drive-through service - can make sense on financial criteria at one point in time, yet erode brand positioning and equity in the longer term. Examining the growth decisions made in the United States provides a rich context in which to examine both the promise and drawback of further foreign expansion.

One of the overarching objectives of the case is to demonstrate how brand value and positioning can be influenced by seemingly unrelated, non-branding decisions. That Starbucks’ new-product initiatives — from food to music, books and movies — influenced brand meaning is obvious. But the Starbucks story offers a more nuanced appreciation of how brand value is built and maintained. The company’s aggressive expansion through company-owned stores and licensees added millions of new customers, but it also changed the nature of Starbucks’ customer base and eroded its positioning as a destination or Third Place. Its decision to add drive-through windows created customer convenience, but shifted the competitive set from specialty coffee houses to fast-food restaurants. In addition, rising food and gas prices and the entry of McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts into the specialty coffee market created new challenges for Starbucks.

ASIMCO Technologies: 2005 (Simplified Chinese version)
In April 2005, the chairman of ASIMCO Technologies, a company headquartered in China and supplying automotive components to both Chinese and global clients, was trying to decide on his company's reaction to the Chinese government's latest regulations on auto emissions. Guo-san (National Standards III) was to take effect on August 1, 2008. By that date, automakers would not be allowed to supply the Chinese market with non-Guo-san-compliant products. ASIMCO's major diesel engine customers had already sent requests for upgraded engine components to ASIMCO as well as other suppliers. While three technologies seemed to provide the Chinese market with a solution, divergent views existed among the management team as to where ASIMCO should focus to enhance the fuel systems that it supplied. The case can be used in an international marketing course (in sessions on product strategy in developing market or customer relations in industrial marketing).

This case can be effectively used in the product strategy session of a marketing management course at the undergraduate or MBA level. From the case analysis and discussion, students should:

• Recognize the importance of qualitative evaluation for appropriate product decisions
• Develop a set of decision criteria based on qualitative evaluation

7-Eleven in Taiwan: Adaptation of Convenience Stores to New Market Environments (Traditional Chinese version)

This case shows the expansion of 7-Eleven to Taiwan and the adaptation of the store format by its local franchisee to the new market environment. The core issue in this case is the balance between standardization and localization in business-format franchising across national borders. Despite keeping the store logo and convenience concept that was well established in the United States, the local franchisee of 7-Eleven in Taiwan re-formatted almost all aspects of the store chain, including its positioning, location, layout, and product offerings. In addition, 7-Eleven in Taiwan introduced a wide variety of new services for its customers, such as e-commerce (train or movie tickets), e-payment, mobile communications, pickup/delivery, and taxi services. The local franchisee, President Chain Store Corp. (PCSC), seemed to have struck the right balance between standardization and localization that allowed it to use service differentiation to gain competitive advantages over its rivals. In about three decades, it grew from zero to nearly 5,000 stores in Taiwan with over 50 per cent of the market, while expanding its reach to China and Thailand.

Learning Objective:

• International marketing (globalization of convenience stores; global standardization versus local adaptation of store formats and service content across national borders)
• Service marketing (issues related to service differentiation that provide extra value to customers and thereafter increase per-unit store revenues and market shares)
• International business (international expansion of service industries; franchising as mode of entry; optimal level of parent control over foreign operations)

Did you know that over 1.6 million copies of Ivey cases are used at thousands of business schools around the world? With cases written by leading Ivey faculty and by authors from around the world, the Ivey case collection represents a wide range of business issues from a truly global perspective.  We would like to thank all of our authors for their contribution to the Ivey case collection and highlight some of our best selling cases for 2011-2012. 

Molson Canada: Social Media Marketing by Deborah Compeau, Israr Qureshi

FIJI Water and Corporate Social Responsibility - Green Makeover or Greenwashing? by James McMaster, Jan Nowak

Entrepreneurs at Twitter: Building a Brand, a Social Tool or a Tech Powerhouse? by Simon Parker, Ken Mark

Visit our website to view our entire Best Selling Case Collection which includes a variety of case studies across all major business disciplines.

If teaching with cases is new to you, or if you are looking for a way to improve your current methodology, check out these free resources available from Ivey Publishing.

Learning with Cases, 4th Edition
A complementary copy is available upon request. This soft cover book is a concise handbook written specifically for students to enhance their learning with cases. Numerous and helpful suggestions cover the complete case learning process including individual reading and preparation, small group discussion, large group (classroom) discussion, making case presentations and writing case exams and reports ... More

The Business Plan Presentation
This complementary case has been written to help students understand the importance of class management and illustrate the challenges associated with English as a Second Language (ESL) students and how to best approach these students to ensure their language difficulties do not limit their learning. It also emphasizes the need for instructors to be clear about course objectives and class requirements. The case can be used in a course on teaching, ideally in a section on class management, teaching ESL students or teaching in a cross-cultural context. It can also be used as preparation for participants in student-run initiatives in developing countries. Registered academics can Log In to download the accompanying teaching note.

Plagiarism and Discipline
When a professor finds out that one of the groups in her Management Information Systems (MIS) MBA class had plagiarized part of their assignment from other sources, she did not know what to do. Plagiarism was not an unusual situation to her; in the past, she had always reported it. Her university also took plagiarism seriously; students who were caught were expelled from the university. But this situation seemed a little different, and she wondered whether reporting the students and having them expelled was the sensible approach this time.

This complementary case is designed to support workshops and teaching on the subject of teaching and learning with cases. This case emphasizes issues of dealing with student plagiarism on a case analysis assignment.

Read the case teaching tips Christopher Williams, Assistant Professor of International Business at the Richard Ivey School of Business recently shared with the Global Business School Network.