April 2012

		Coming Summer 2012 ... Coursepack Builder
		Over 150 India-based cases
		New Cases in Marketing
		Award Winning Authors
		ISB-Ivey Global Case Writing Competition Invitation

This content management tool is designed to give our customers the flexibility to assemble custom course packs that can be downloaded instantly from the Ivey Publishing website. More information to follow soon!

Ivey Publishing reached a milestone this month of now having more than 150 India-based cases in our collection.  We now have the largest collection of recent business case studies about the region. Roughly one new India-based case will be added to the collection each week in the future.

With a commitment to providing high quality cases for use in India, our growing collection provides students with comprehensive cases that reflect the changing Indian business environment. For a list of abstracts of our India case collection, please click here.

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

Social Media Content Strategy at Ayojak

Ayojak was the flagship, online event management product solution offered by Signure Technologies Limited (Signure). Launched in September 2008, Ayojak had two operational products (Ayojak Ticketing and Ayojak Social Meets) as of May 2011 and had two more products in the development stage (Ayojak Conference and Ayojak Event Promote). Ayojak provided an end-to-end solution to any event organizer. Essentially, Ayojak acted as an intermediary to both event organizers and event attendees, adding value at both ends of the value chain. To promote its clients' events, Ayojak made extensive use of such social media platforms as Facebook, Twitter and blogs. However, in April 2011, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Signure Technologies realized that Ayojak's social media content strategy had been focusing on promoting its clients' events. Now, with two more products soon to be launched, the CEO needed to rethink Ayojak's content strategy. He wanted to build Ayojak's brand among its stakeholders by using its social media presence, instead of using this presence solely as a promotion platform for its clients' events. The objectives of this case are to: introduce students to the role and challenges of an intermediary in the social media context; help students to understand the crucial aspects of content strategy; promote an understanding of the relevant metrics used to evaluate social media strategy; show how content strategy can help a firm to build its brand identity; illustrate the challenges of building a business using only the online medium, without any offline marketing support.

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COMPFED: The Dairy Cooperative Distribution System

Bihar State Milk Cooperative Federation (COMPFED) had been marketing its milk and milk related products under the brand name of Sudha in the Bihar and Jharkhand regions of India for three decades. They operated through six unions and two dairies to process the milk collected from nearly 4,000 village level cooperatives. On the surface, COMPFED appeared to have a competitive advantage for its supply of milk since it maintained the largest network for milk procurement, which spanned a wide geography over these two regions and was unmatched by its competitors. However, due to various environmental forces, the ability to procure an adequate supply had diminished in the last two years, which negatively affected the overall profitability of the organization. This case exposes students to the intricacies of a special type of distribution system, that is, a cooperative system; brings out the dichotomy between the short run gain of farmers when they accept the higher prices offered by private players compared with long run sustainability through association with the cooperative that provides several other long term benefits; provides a glimpse of the cooperative movement in India; raises issues of determining an optimum balance between the cost of service delivery and procurement of milk and its impact on the pricing of the finished products and illustrates a key strategic task for a business, namely, understanding the suppliers’ and consumers’ need to compete in the market.

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First Energy

In September 2011, the CEO of First Energy Private Ltd, a startup enterprise in the alternative energy industry in India, is facing a flashpoint. The company has commercialized the technology of biomass cooking stoves and has been providing, since 2007, clean and affordable cooking solutions to customers in rural India. A marginal hike in price of biomass fuel in early 2011 has, however, led to a steep fall in demand making the continuance in the rural household market unsustainable. The company does not have a level playing field in the household segment because the competitor product, liquid petroleum gas (LPG), enjoys price subsidy provided by the federal government. First Energy has been quick to find its bearings by targeting a niche market in the urban commercial market consisting of restaurants, eateries and hostels. While the margins are high in this segment, the volumes are low. The company must therefore build scale to be able to service the investments in plant capacity, which is being under-utilized. The case enables students to come up with strategies for market expansion for the CEO. They will also take a call on whether to exit from or hold on to the household segment where the margins are low but the volumes, in the light of the imminent de-subsidization of LPG, would be high. The case provides an opportunity for students to examine issues related to market entry, building scale, and identifying and targeting market niches.

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Authors of Learning with Cases, Teaching with Cases and Writing Cases won the Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method award presented by the European Case Clearing House during the 2012 annual case award ceremony.

Carol Stephenson, Dean of the Richard Ivey School said, “The award of Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method gives worthy recognition to three remarkable individuals who have dedicated so much of their lives to teaching people worldwide how to get the most out of cases. Jim, Mike and Louise have conducted more than 400 case writing and case teaching workshops for thousands of participants in more than 50 countries over the past 40 years. Their work is at the heart of the great case tradition we have developed at Ivey and the school is delighted at this recognition.” Congratulations on their achievement!

In addition, the case entitled Louis Vuitton in Japan, authored by Justin Paul, won an award in the Entrepreneurship case category.

In partnership with the Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Case Development at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Ivey would like to invite you to participate in the ISB-Ivey Global Case Competition 2012.

The objective of this competition is to help build a repository of high-quality, internationally benchmarked cases about Indian businesses. The cases should be original business case studies suitable for use in MBA classrooms across the world and should aim to showcase the unique challenges and issues faced by organizations and business leaders in India. Submissions must also include teaching notes in English.

Winning cases will be published in the Ivey-ISB co-branded case collection available through Ivey Publishing. First place winners will also receive a cash prize of US $4000. Second prize winners take home US $3000 and there are special category prizes of US $2000 per category. A panel of internationally acclaimed subject experts judge each case in a double-blind review process and will provide written feedback on each case.

Download the intent to participate form and email it to Ivey India. Deadline for submissions has been extended to April 30 for international participants.