...CASE STUDY III FAIRHOLME Ignore the crowd. Fairholme Ignore the crowd. This presentation uses Sears Holdings Corporation (“Sears” or the “Company”) as a case study to illustrate Fairholme Capital Management’s investment strategy for the Fairholme Fund. In the pages that follow, we show Fairholme Fund shareholders why we “Ignore the crowd” with regard to our portfolio positions that are currently out of favor in the market. However, nothing in this presentation should be taken as a recommendation to anyone to buy, hold, or sell certain securities or any other investment mentioned herein. Our opinion of a company’s prospects should not be considered a guarantee of future events. Investors are reminded that there can be no assurance that past performance will continue, and that a mutual fund’s current and future portfolio holdings always are subject to risk. As with all mutual funds, investing in the Fairholme Fund involves risk including potential loss of principal. Opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Fairholme Capital Management, L.L.C. and should not be considered a forecast of future events, a guarantee of future results, nor investment advice. The Fairholme Fund’s holdings and sector weightings are subject to change. As of May 31, 2012, Sears securities comprised 10% of the Fairholme Fund’s total net assets. The Fairholme Fund’s portfolio holdings are generally disclosed as required by law or regulation on a quarterly basis through reports to shareholders...
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...management case by academicians and practitioners Infosys Technologies Ltd.: Growing Share of a Customer’s Business James A Narus and D V R Seshadri Case Analysis I Janaki Anant Principal Solution Architect i-flex solutions Ltd e-mail: janaki.anant@iflexsolutions.com his case has multiple dimensions of analysis to it. While there is certainly an immediate short-term issue of winning the Ariba® e-procurement project of the existing client, Prairie Four Square (PFS), and gaining an increased share of the customer’s business that the Infosys team is trying to address, there is also an overall long-term strategic issue that needs to be addressed as well – that of the pricing mechanism based on value that needs to be deployed for long-term sustainability and growth of the relationship. This case offers an insight into the various dimensions of moving up the value chain and increasing the economic value of a customer relationship, identifying the differentiation strategy, communicating the positioning effectively, and the impact of local competition in the global scenario. The case also effectively illustrates the general growth path followed by most Indian software services companies, the issues they face in this progression, the changing scenarios in the global competitive arena, and the relentless pressure to lower costs in a diminishing labour cost arbitrage advantage scenario. T The April-June, 32(2), 2007 issue of Vikalpa had published a Management Case titled “Infosys...
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...9 -5 1 2 -0 8 5 REV: MAY 25, 2012 ANAT KEINAN JILL AVERY FIONA WILSON MICHAEL NORTON EILEEN FISHER: Repositioning the Brand Hilary Old, vice president for communications, was one part excited and one part nervous, so she took a moment to adjust her scarf before she entered the meeting. It was January of 2010 and she and her colleagues were about to review the first retail sales results following a major strategic initiative to reposition and evolve the EILEEN FISHER brand. 2009 marked the 25th anniversary of EILEEN FISHER and the occasion gave the company the impetus to pause and assess its history. The company had enjoyed phenomenal success in its first quarter century: its growth in revenues and profits had been driven by both the strong brand loyalty of its core customers, and the opening of fifty retail stores dedicated to the brand. The company was consistently recognized as one of the best companies to work for and had an impressive environmental sustainability and social responsibility record. However, a startling discovery had emerged. The median customer age was currently at 59 and increasing each year, keeping pace with the age of the company’s visionary founder, Eileen Fisher. Despite the company’s best efforts to design age-less clothing to appeal to multiple generations, as Fisher herself aged, so too had the customer base. The company found itself stereotyped as a brand for older, and, to some extent, customers with larger body types. Old...
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...PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTRODUCTION TO PRODUCT MANAGEMENT Role and Scope of Product Manager Role of Product Manger Responsible for marketing of individual products or product lines • Creation and conceptualization of strategies for improving and marketing the assigned product line or brands. • Projection and determination of financial and operating plans for such products. • Monitoring execution and results of plans, with possible adaptation of tactics to evolving conditions. Scope of Product Manager: • Has no control over the functional departments that execute the plan • Lately, advertising function at micro level is being held by product managers Interfaces of a Product Manager Functions of a Product Manger 1. Market Planning Process SLEPT Customer (MKT Segmentation) Competitor (PDCT Segmentation) Sales Potential and Market Forecasting 2. Product Strategy Positioning / Branding Leveraging CBBE (LE / BE) NPD 3. Marketing Decisions Pricing Packaging Promotions (includes ADVT) Channels of Distribution Service 4. Monitoring Marketing Metrics Financial Metrics How is Product Manger different from Marketing Manger? • • • Focus Level of Operation Time frame of decision Making How is Product Management different from Brand Management? Differences • • • • • Brand can exist independent of product Brand has value on balance sheet Brand can deal with multiple product lines but still be coherent Brand is extendable Brand is a covenant or a promise of performance ...
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...CHAPTER - 1 INTRODUCTION Introduction: In their 1981 book, Positioning: The Battle for your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout describe how positioning is used as a communication tool to reach target customers in a crowded marketplace. Regular use of the term dates back to 1972 when the same authors published a series of articles in Advertising Age called "The Positioning Era." Not long thereafter, Madison Avenue advertising executives began to develop positioning slogans for their clients and positioning became a key aspect of marketing communications. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind has become a classic in the field of marketing. The following is a summary of the key points made by Ries and Trout in their book What is Positioning? Positioning is a platform for the brand it facilitates the brand to get through to the target consumers. Positioning is act of fixing the locus of the product offer in the minds of the target consumers. In positioning, the firm decides how and around what parameters, the product offer has to be placed before the target consumers. The significance of product positioning can be easily understood from David Ogilvy’s words; the results of your campaign depends less on how we write your advertising than on how your product is positioned. Most authors define positioning as the perception that a target market has of a brand relative to its competitors. This definition raises two points. First, positioning is perceptual. In other...
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...TO THE BRINK AND BACK December 6, 2011 Students: Yu (Cherry) Chen, Kevin Connolly, Bill Davis, Stephen Duncan, James Faello, Michael Hazinski, Noah Johnson Faculty Supervisor: Joseph L. Pagliari, Jr. Copyright © 2011 The Real Estate Group at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business All Rights Reserved This case study has been prepared solely for academic purposes. It should not be construed as a judgment about or an endorsement of any particular business matter. Moreover, the information contained herein has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable; however, we make no representation or warranty as to its accuracy. TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................... - 1 GENERAL GROWTH BACKGROUND ............................................................................ - 7 2004: A Historic Year for General Growth........................................................................ - 9 2005-2006: Secured Mortgages and Increasing Debt ..................................................... - 16 Simon vs. GGP - Capital Markets Strategy ..................................................................... - 24 IMPACT OF THE CREDIT CRISIS .................................................................................. - 31 GGP Faces Liquidity Challenge ....................................................................................... - 37 Management Changes...
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...Blockbuster Analysis Company Background Information The first Blockbuster store opened in 1985 in Dallas, Texas and has now expanded to operate 6,500 video rental stores (“Blockbuster Inc.,” n.d.). The chain began as a competitor to smaller video rental stores with a much wider selection in movie and eventually game rentals (“Blockbuster Inc.,” n.d.). Blockbuster quickly grew and opened stores across the nation along with its first stores in London and Canada in the late 1980s (“Blockbuster Inc.,” n.d.). In 1994 Viacom bought out Blockbuster after the company had acquired two music companies, Sound Warehouse and Music Plus, making it a very successful corporate giant in the video rental business (“Blockbuster Inc.,” n.d.). Although Blockbuster has faced many challenges with its “new ownership, increased competition, and a relatively soft market for videos,” Blockbuster has been able to remain in the movie rental industry (“Blockbuster Inc.,” n.d.). Despite the company’s struggles and dwindling cash flow in the late 1990s, Blockbuster decreased its rapid expansion, but slowly continued to open stores so that it featured a store close to every large neighborhood in the country (“Blockbuster Inc.,” n.d.). Currently, Blockbuster is still facing struggles in the video rental industry but is working to compete against its newer main competitors, Netflix and Redbox (Merced, 2010). After filing for bankruptcy in late September of 2010, Blockbuster was purchased by...
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...Evaluation Pick n Save is owned by Roundy’s who is in turn owned by Willis Stein & Partners, an equity investment firm based in Chicago. This paper will focus on the relationship between Roundy’s and Pick n Save and briefly touch on the influence of the parent company. Some parts of the paper wills stress areas fo the Pick n Save store because it is the largest of the four banners of Roundy’s. We have determined the current market and geographic location to be concentrated in southeast Wisconsin and moving West to Minnesota. A long term object of Willis Stein & Partners is to create a distribution chain from Chicago to Milwaukee. Our evaluation of Roundy’s strategic goals have resulted in identification of several grand strategies that Roundy’s uses in its daily operations as well as short and long term goals. An interesting note is that in the supermarket environment, Roundy’s and similar companies will sell their own brand of goods along with there competitors goods side by side. So Roundy’s is a distributor of grocery goods, health and beauty, and other household items, as well as a manufacturer of the about items....
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...Staples Equity Valuation and Analysis David Lecky Chad Loudermilk Bennett Matkins Kara Reynolds Amanda Rhodes David.Lecky@ttu.edu Chad.loudermilk@ttu.edu Bennett.Matkins@ttu.edu Karereyddd@yahoo.com Amanda.b.Rhodes@ttu.edu Table of Contents Executive Summary……………………………………………………….. 2 Overview of Staples and the Industry………………………………... 7 Five Forces Model……………………………………………………………………….. 9 Rivalry among Existing Firms……………………………………………………….. 9 Threat of New Entrants……………………………………………………………….. 15 Threat of Substitute Products………………………………………………………. 17 Bargaining Power of Buyers………………………………………………………... 17 Bargaining Power of Suppliers…………………………………………………..... 18 Classifying the Industry………………………………………………………………. 18 Key Success Factors……………………………………………………………………. 19 Competitive Advantage Analysis………………………………………………….. 19 Accounting Analysis………………………………………………………. 25 Key Accounting Policies………………………………………………………………. 25 Accounting Flexibility………………………………………………………………….. 26 Evaluation of Actual Accounting Strategy……………………………………… 29 Quality of Disclosure…………………………………………………………………… 30 Screening Ratio Analysis….…………………………………………………………. 33 Revenue Diagnostics………………………………………………………………….. 34 Expense Diagnostics…………………………………………………………………… 37 Potential “Red Flags”………………………………………………………………….. 39 Undo Accounting Distortions……………………………………………………….. 41 Ratio Analysis………………………………………………………………. 44 Liquidity Ratio……………………………………………………………………………. 44 Profitability Ratio……………………………………………………………………….. 56 Capital Structure...
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...2.0 Part Two: Analysis and Findings [pic] 2.1 Background/History of Bata Shoe Co. Bd. Ltd.: [pic] The business that became the Bata Shoe Organization was established on August 24, 1894 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia by Tomas Bata, and included his brother Antonin and sister Anna. Although this business was new, the Bata name had been part of a tradition of shoemaking for eight generations, spanning three hundred years. It was one of the first modern-day shoe 'manufacturers', a team of stitchers and shoemakers creating footwear not just for the local town, but also for distant retail merchants. This departure from the centuries-old tradition of the one-man cobbler's workshop was a brand new concept, creating an entirely new industry. The Bata enterprise revolutionized the treatment of employees and labor conditions. Tomas consistently maintained a human focus, creating opportunities for development and advancement, and added compensation for employees based on achievement. As the enterprise prospered, so did the communities where it operated. Tomas believed that a focus on people and public service was critical for business success. The enterprise built housing, schools and a hospital near the shoemaking plant in Zlin. It provided food and inexpensive rent during very difficult times. Bata companies later provided rail services, construction, insurance, publishing and a tannery in Zlin. "The Bata System" devised by the Zlin team, and later applied in other Bata Shoe...
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...nd swFactors behind the brand switching in telecom industry The issue of Customer’s switching to other service providers have been the cause of intensive research from many years now and have given rise to many theories.Due to the increased competition in the telecommunication industry it has become extremely important for the companies to pay attention towards retaining of the customers.This research study particularly investigated the causes of customer switching behavior.A prolific way to gain the knowledge about the switching behavior of customers is basically to examine the various factors that play imtegral role in switching behavior. This qualitative research study has offered new insights by defining and identifying the customer’s rationale to switch from one service provider to another. The model is estimated using the data set on the number of switching behavior. A total of 100 respondents were surveyed to identify the factors that have a greater effect on the customer satisfaction.The data were analyzed by the Optimal Scaling (Categorical Regression)to test the hypothesis. The model identified that… CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION This research tried to find out the underlying factors that made the customer to switchover to another service provider in telecom industry. The telecommunication industry is one of the most important industries of the world. In order to gain competitive advantage as competition is getting more and more intense, the companies are compelled to...
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...BU Basic M.B.A. International Master of Business Administration |Index | Accounting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Business Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Entrepreneurship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Finance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Marketing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Statistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Strategic Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...
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...DRAFT The Waitrose Modular MBA in Retailing Management Waitrose Stores and its Key Management Decisions Waitrose A Guide for Trainee Graduate Retail Managers and Middle-Level Managers March 2003 by http://www.andidas.com/ Contents: Abstract Terms of Reference Introduction UK Grocery Market Waitrose History Waitrose Strategy Waitrose Location Map: Waitrose Stores in the UK PEST Analysis, Grocery Industry Waitrose Ansoff Matrix Waitrose SWOT Analysis Importance of Store Location Site Evaluation Market Segmentation Introduction to Own Brands Own brands pricing and economies Popular Own Brand Categories Central Control Local Variation UK Online Market Online Target Market Benefits of Online Shopping Technical Issues Success Evaluation of the Online Activity Conclusion Bibliography & References Appendix 3 3 3 4 5 5 6 7 8 10 11 13 17 17 20 21 22 21 22 24 25 26 26 28 28 29 30 ff 2 Waitrose - Key Management Decisions http://www.andidas.com/ Abstract Waitrose’s differentiation strategy, and its competitive industry were analysed. The selection of the location can be identified as one of the most influential decisions in the life of a store. Various methods are described in order to help identify the most suitable location. Factors influencing the selection of the Waitrose in Kingston are identified. Own brands are important products because they give retailers high level of control of these products and generally have a higher profit margin. The merits and...
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...Varkaus Degree Programme, option Degree Programme in International Business. BBA, International Marketing Management. Author(s) Tania Afrin Title of study SUBSTITUTION OF PLASTIC BAG BY JUTE BAG -CASE COMPANY redQ Support on sustainable development Type of project Date Pages Thesis April 2011 70 + 5 Supervisor(s) of study Executive organisation Anneli Savolainen Business and Administration Abstract Sustainable development is one of the most important issues in the world today. People can play an important role in the sustainable development in different ways regardless of their own position. This study focuses on finding out how plastic bags could be substituted by jute bags and how it would contribute to the sustainable development. In addition, the study focuses on answering the question if the idea of substituting plastic bags by jute bags would be a profitable business innovation. For the study, it was examined how some Finnish customers liked the jute bag as a shopping bag and what was their attitude towards sustainable issues. The information collected in connection with this thesis work will be provided to the case company so that the company can utilise it in their business operations in the future. The case company is redQ, which is a Swedish company and has a production unit for jute carpets and decorative items in Bangladesh. The company's market area is Europe and specially Sweden. In the research, 20 pieces...
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...DRAFT The Waitrose Modular MBA in Retailing Management Waitrose Stores and its Key Management Decisions Waitrose A Guide for Trainee Graduate Retail Managers and Middle-Level Managers March 2003 by http://www.andidas.com/ Contents: Abstract Terms of Reference Introduction UK Grocery Market Waitrose History Waitrose Strategy Waitrose Location Map: Waitrose Stores in the UK PEST Analysis, Grocery Industry Waitrose Ansoff Matrix Waitrose SWOT Analysis Importance of Store Location Site Evaluation Market Segmentation Introduction to Own Brands Own brands pricing and economies Popular Own Brand Categories Central Control Local Variation UK Online Market Online Target Market Benefits of Online Shopping Technical Issues Success Evaluation of the Online Activity Conclusion Bibliography & References Appendix 3 3 3 4 5 5 6 7 8 10 11 13 17 17 20 21 22 21 22 24 25 26 26 28 28 29 30 ff 2 Waitrose - Key Management Decisions http://www.andidas.com/ Abstract Waitrose’s differentiation strategy, and its competitive industry were analysed. The selection of the location can be identified as one of the most influential decisions in the life of a store. Various methods are described in order to help identify the most suitable location. Factors influencing the selection of the Waitrose in Kingston are identified. Own brands are important products because they give retailers high level of control of these products and generally have a higher profit margin. The merits and...
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