ESLSCA University

École Supérieure Libre des Sciences Commerciales Appliquées

MAY 2020

Examination Code: TAKE HOME Total Score: 70 %

Course Title: Marketing Management Time: 24 hours.

MINI CASES.
Please read carefully the following cases and answer the questions associated with each
Your answer for each question should NOT exceed ONE paragraph (6-8 Lines).

1) The year was 2012, and everything seemed to be going

wrong for Best Buy. The CEO had just resigned after
admitting to harassment. Employee engagement seemed to
be at an all-time low. And like many other retailers, Best
Buy stores were bleeding money--as customers came to test
products they wanted, only to buy them online from Amazon at a cheaper price. Best
Buy was dying a slow death.

Q. Based on your understanding standing please explain amazon competitive strategy for
growth?

2) Crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max in Indonesia and Ethiopia offer a window into all that
complexity. Boeing and its CEO Dennis Muilenburg want the story to be simple: a
software problem that can be fixed with a quick patch. But that doesn’t capture the
mistakes made by Boeing and American aviation
regulators in certifying the plane to carry
passengers. The chief executive of Boeing on broke
company leadership’s near silence over two recent
crashes involving the 737 Max aircraft type, as US
federal prosecutors and regulators opened an
inquiry into the plane’s development process.
Dennis Muilenburg issued statements in writing and
via video and said: “The tragic losses of the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air flights
affect us all and we join the world with heavy hearts in grieving”.

Q. In regards to the case mentioned above please explain how the company positioning is
being affected and how this may impact Boeing overall business.
CASE STUDY.
Please read carefully the case below and answer ALL questions associated
Your answer for each of the following question should NOT exceed FOUR paragraphs

The blowout of a college basketball star’s shoe last

month underscored how consumer perception of
safety and quality can weigh heavily on a company’s
reputation.
Duke University forward Zion Williamson’s Nike
basketball shoe appeared to rip apart in the first
minute of a rivalry game against the University of
North Carolina.
Mr. Williamson tried to change direction to shake a Tar Heel defender, but his left foot broke
through the side of the shoe. Mr. Williamson, considered one of best collegiate players, fell to
the ground holding his right knee before limping off the court. He didn’t return to the game.
The prime-time spectacle, which played out on national television, highlighted a delicate dance
between customer expectations and quality assurance, risk consultants said. Shoes take a
beating, and few customers would expect a pair to last forever. But shoes tend to degrade over
time, not in an instant.
“Stakeholders are not expecting the shoes to have a failure; they would be surprised and
disappointed,” said Nir Kossovsky, chief executive of corporate reputation insurance company
Steel City Re.
Nike uses sports icons as a means to convey the quality of the products, he said. The implied
message: If it’s good enough for the athletes, it’s good enough for average consumers. But the
failure of the shoe under Mr. Williamson—a high-profile player who has been projected by
some as a likely future star on the professional level—challenged that premise. “It didn’t hold
up,” Mr. Kossovsky said.
How a company responds in moments after an event like this can help determine the extent of
the damage to its brand reputation. That often includes some form of
acknowledging the issue and reassuring customers that it is an anomaly, and that
the company has controls in place to ensure that this isn’t a failure in its
governance or the company’s mission. Nike attempted that in a statement
Thursday. “We are obviously concerned and want to wish Zion a speedy
recovery,” the company said. “The quality and performance of our products are
of utmost importance. While this is an isolated occurrence, we are working to
identify the issue.”
The lasting effect on Nike will be determined by consumers and investors. Some of the
indicators for the scale of the impact could be the extent of movement in equity value, credit
default share prices and bond prices over time, Mr. Kossovsky said. Nike shares fell 1% to
$83.95 on the following day.
investors are the most sensitive to risks. “Their risk assessment is the most accurate.” Stocks
and bonds are a measure that could suggest material cash flow damage.

Q1. How do you see the Nike brand doing after the above mentioned incident and how will it
reflect on the sports leader’s brand value? Please illustrate your answer using a relevant
diagram.

Q2. What is the recommended marketing mix strategy for dealing with this incident and how
can Nike protect itself from this crisis?
 Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared some information about Tesla’s
recently-revealed Cybertruck and some of the reasons for its
controversial design. The Cybertruck was unveiled on Thursday
to…mixed reviews. The design is certainly polarizing, and a lot of
people are not a fan of how different it looks.
There’s been a lot of memes passed around comparing the truck to the Pontiac Aztek, to bad
early 3D models with few polygons, to strange 1970s concept cars or outdated concepts of
what the future should look like. Others have really liked the design, calling it a refreshing take
on the pickup truck, which hasn’t changed much in a century.
Today on twitter, we got a little more insight into one of the reasons the truck is so angular –
because machines aren’t strong enough to make it curvy:

As Musk and designer Franz von Holzhausen demonstrated on stage, the Cybertruck is built
for abuse. Instead of using stamped aluminum or steel like Tesla’s other cars (and most other
vehicles on the road), Tesla is using 30X cold-rolled steel. Tesla’s Cybertruck design differs
from traditional autos because it uses a stainless steel exoskeleton instead of a traditional body-
on-frame design. In the traditional design, the car body doesn’t have as much structural
integrity and is mainly used for aerodynamic and styling purposes,
and to protect occupants from the elements.
In the Cybertruck’s design, the entire vehicle exterior is used as a
stressed member, allowing it to do double duty as both the body and
the frame. This reduces complexity, and, since Tesla is using ultra-
hard steel, increases sturdiness of the vehicle exterior. This is why
the doors were able to resist a sledgehammer swing from von Holzhausen, and were shown to
be bulletproof in a demonstration video shown by Tesla during the reveal event.
The problem with this hardened steel exterior is that traditional auto-body stamping machines
are made to deal with much smaller, more malleable pieces of sheet metal. These machines
take a flat piece of metal and then smash it against a mold, creating the curve of each body
panel separately.
But since the panels of the Cybertruck are so stiff, machines aren’t strong enough to stamp
them. In order to add curves to the Cybertruck’s body, Tesla would need to build a whole new
type of stamping press – or just design the car without curves. They did the latter.
Answer The Following Questions:
1. A company value proposition reflects all the asspects that really matter for their target
market and association in consumers memory, which represents an important
dimension for a company’s competitiveness. Explain this statement in light of the
practice of Tesla brand introducing their cybertruck. On the consumer
mental/perceptual map

2. Using the customer value hierarchy and product levels and the information provided in
the case please describe how Tesla brand may apply the theory to resolve the impact of
the Cybertruck launch in the future. Please illustrate your answer with a the new product
development process.

KFC Turnaround

New management today is incredibly deliberate about making the KFC brand relevant again.
There’s two big ways for doing that, in the context of this industry: and that is through bold
marketing activations and bold menu innovation. It’s all about making the brand and the
product really relevant to emerging and quickly changing consumer taste. They will do this in
a way that’s grounded in how the brand is currently positioned, yet it has to be dynamic enough
to push out those boundaries. The new assigned CMO is finding ways to take what’s iconic
about the brand to where their customers are to show up in unexpected way that ultimately
make those experiences better for them. Looking out for trends and trying to be there in the
moment when those trends are happening, willing to go outside of what is comfortable.
You need to research trends and insert your brand into them. To be relevant is much harder,
and it starts with really knowing who you are, as a brand. KFC began working in

2014 and that was really the start of the turnaround. Spent months going through the archives
and to realize that when KFC had been at their best as a brand, it was led by the heartbeat of
our brand, Colonel Sanders. The new assigned CMO also chose to put
all those evocative, iconic signifiers – the Red & White Bucket, the
Colonel tie – back into the front and center of the brand. Once re-
grounded on who the brand was, they looked for new ways to show up
and express that. KFC wants to create experiences that people want to
be a part of that elevate what people are already doing. Also like to find
micro-cultures and experiment around how we can embed into them.
Fundamentally, you want to be a brand that people want to be a part of. It’s that simple. You
don’t want to be slapping your logo onto things;
you want to create experiences that people want to
get involved with. For example, if KFC was
concerned with staying conventional, they could
hire a few Instagram influencers and get them
eating and talking about KFC. And that would be
just fine. Instead, they looked at the trend for
Influencers and asked how to embed the brand in
that trend in a way that would invite people in. So,
KFC used Colonel into a virtual influencer and he
struck a chord with the public. People really began
to follow him, engage with him, to such an extent
that, ultimately, we were paid by brands like Dr
Pepper, Casper, and Old Spice to promote their
products. In the end, a quarter of KFC media spend
on this campaign was paid for by other brands. And
the virtual Colonel was out there influencing on
behalf of other brands. You don’t get any more
relevant than when other brands are paying you to
make their brands relevant.

Fast food customers have a lot of choice and are not very loyal, so spending a lot of time
building an innovation program that is highly craveable to customers, so that they want to come
to the brand. There was a time that the KFC brand risked becoming irrelevant, so committing
to becoming a brand that is relevant across generations was the only option. Reconnected with
heritage to understand what of core anchors emotionally to customers, and then looked at how
we could innovate and push boundaries to drive our relevance and deliver this kind of growth.
Menu innovation needs to be exciting and really make people want to come to KFC to try it.
The appearance of this menu innovation program was Chicken & Waffle that launched in the
fall. Waffles are a huge food trend, that most people have heard of but haven’t tried, either
because they couldn’t find it or they couldn’t afford it. By bringing in a delicious waffle that
could serve hot at over 4,000 restaurants around the country, at a price point that people could
afford, that allowed them to be a part of this huge food trend. It’s delivered through a product
that is at the core of our business, our world-famous fried chicken, so we can do it in a way
that’s grounded in who we are – but pushes into a trend that’s happening out in the world.

Q1. Many Companies sometimes choose to return to their roots to recapture lost brand
positions. Please explain how KFC used this strategy to recapture their roots and develop their
competitive ability on all relevant elements of their marketing program.

Q2. Market leaders may sometimes use a flank defense strategy to help protect themselves
from growing competition. Please discuss in regard to what was mentioned in the case how
KFC is using this strategy as part of their approach forward. And how it may reflect on their
marketing program