Starbucks loyalty reigns case study

· Chapter 13 provides an example of how the College of Business Administration at Towson University successfully introduced a “live” business case completion across all of it strategic management sections. The “description” and the “case completion checklist” includes many of the elements of the analysis-decision-action cycle in case analysis that we address in the chapter.

· Chapter 13 updates our Appendix: Sources of Company and Industry Information. Here, we owe a big debt to Ruthie Brock and Carol Byrne, library professionals at the University of Texas at Arlington. These ladies have provided us with comprehensive and updated information for the Ninth Edition that is organized in a range of issues. These include competitive intelligence, annual report collections, company rankings, business websites, and strategic and competitive analysis. Such information is invaluable in analyzing companies and industries. We are always amazed by the diligence, competence—and good cheer—that Ruthie and Carol demonstrate when we impose on them every two years!

· We have worked hard to further enhance our excellent case package with a major focus on fresh and current cases on familiar firms. · More than half of our cases are author-written (much more than the competition). · We have updated our users favorite cases, creating fresh stories about familiar

companies to minimize instructor preparation time and “maximize freshness” of he content.

· We have added several exciting new cases to the lineup including Blackberry and Ascena (the successor company to Ann Talyor).

· We have also extensively updated 28 familiar cases with the latest news. · Our cases are familiar yet fresh with new data and problems to solve.

WHAT REMAINS THE SAME: KEY FEATURES OF EARLIER EDITIONS Let’s now briefly address some of the exciting features that remain from the earlier editions.

· Traditional organizing framework with three other chapters on timely topics. Crisply written chapters cover all of the strategy bases and address contemporary topics. First, the chapters are divided logically into the traditional sequence: strategy analysis, strategy formulation, and strategy implementation. Second, we include three chapters on such timely topics as intellectual capital/knowledge management, entrepreneurial strategy and competitive dynamics, and fostering corporate entrepreneurship and new ventures.

· “Learning from Mistakes” chapter-opening cases. To enhance student interest, we begin each chapter with a case that depicts an organization that has suffered a dramatic performance drop, or outright failure, by failing to adhere to sound strategic management concepts and principles. We believe that this feature serves to underpin the value of the concepts in the course and that it is a preferred teaching approach to merely providing examples of outstanding companies that always seem to get it right. After all, isn’t it better (and more challenging) to diagnose problems than admire perfection? As Dartmouth’s Sydney Finkelstein, author of Why Smart Executives Fail,

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PREFACE

notes: “We live in a world where success is revered, and failure is quickly pushed to the side. However, some of the greatest opportunities to learn—for both individuals and organizations—come from studying what goes wrong.”* We’ll see how, for example, why Frederica Marchionni, the CEO that Land’s End hired in 2015, failed to spearhead the revival of the brand. Her initiatives geared toward taking the brand upscale turned out to be too much of a shock to the firm’s customer base as well as the firm’s family culture and wholesome style. As noted by a former executive, “It doesn’t look like Land’s End anymore. There was never the implication that if you wore Lands’ End you’d be on the beach on Nantucket living the perfect life.” We’ll also explore the bankruptcy of storied law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. Their failure can be attributed to three major issues: a reliance on borrowed money, making large promises about compensation to incoming partners (which didn’t sit well with their existing partners!), and a lack of transparency about the firm’s financials.