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Filed under: Truck, Work, GM, GMC, Misc. Auto Shows, Diesel

2011 GMC Sierra Denali HD - Click above for high-res image gallery
For the first time in its history - and considering that the company has been around for over 100 years, that's significant - GMC decided to make an official appearance at the National Truck Equipment Association show in St. Louis. And the Professional Grade brand brought along the heavies... specifically, the 2011 GMC Sierra Denali HD.

When the truck hits the market later this year, it will be the first time that GMC has offered a Denali version of its Heavy Duty truck platform. After giving the truck a thorough once (and even twice) over, we have to say that the Denali, even with all of its drilled-out chrome highlights, looks rather subdued and classy in all-black paint. And, though we certainly appreciate the in-your-face attitude of General Motors' two main competitors in the pickup wars, we'd say that understated appearance is a good thing.

Inside, you'll find the expected luxury trimmings, including heated and cooled leather seats and a matching wood-trimmed heated steering wheel, along with some nice details like Denali-specific door sill plates. All that is well and good, but the big news resides under the truck's big black hood: a revised 6.6-liter Duramax V8 diesel engine, which is mated up to a stout Allison 1000 six-speed automatic transmission.

For those who like to keep track of these thing, which is to say every single person who's actually interested in purchasing one of these earth-moving behemoths, GM's latest Duramax beats out the 2011 Ford Super Duty in the all-important horsepower and torque wars with 397 horsepower and 765 pound-feet. Wanna pull a ten-ton load? No problem. That powerplant is also more fuel efficient (by 11 percent) and cleaner than the unit it replaces.

Interestingly, GM representatives tell us that they had a bit of a back-and-forth with the Feds regarding how best to handle the required refilling of the diesel exhaust fluid tank, which won't run dry for about 5,000 miles between fill-ups. It seems that when the truck gets dangerously low on the exhaust treatment, its speed will be capped at 55 miles per hour. If you run out, the computer nannies will keep you to just a four mph crawl so that you'll never be stranded completely. Want more? Check out our gallery of high-res images below and click here for the rest of the details.

Gallery: 2011 GMC Sierra Denali HD

Gallery: 2011 GMC Sierra Denali HD

NTEA 2010: 2011 GMC Sierra Denali HD puts the Heavy in Heavy Duty originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today’s photo comes from Steve Brandon.

Be sure to look at all of Steve Brandon’s photos and our other albums. And if you would like to recommend your favorite photo with a GM car or truck in it, put it up on Flickr and tag it with “gmfyi.”

By Will Stewart
SXSW Road Trip Challenge Correspondent

With all eight teams now on the road, the Chevy’s SXSW Road Trip Challenge is now in full swing.

Team San Diego hit the road this morning, meaning that each of the teams is now on the road and on the scoreboard.

Team Detroit continues to hold down a commanding lead, but all the teams are scoring well, completing challenges gaining followers – as well as their followers’ valuable retweets. Even more importantly, the teams are obviously having a great time as they make their way to the SXSW Conference on Austin, Texas.

Here are some highlights from Tuesday’s activities:

• Team Detroit managed to get pictures each time it crossed from one state to another
• Team New York sent one member to the top of a rock-climbing wall
• Team Lansing found the funniest sign of the trip so far
• It took a little convincing, but Team Chicago was able to purchase drive-thru meals for the customers behind them at a McDonalds. Better yet, they got it on video

We’ll be back tomorrow with another update. Meantime, be sure to follow the teams on Twitter and give them your support.

Driving a Zamboni ice resurfacer isn't as easy as you might think.

Published:March 10, 2010Paper Released:February 2010Authors:Jordan I. Siegel and Prithwiraj Choudhury Executive Summary:

"Tunneling" refers to efforts by firms' controlling owner-managers to take money for themselves at the expense of minority shareholders. Looking at emerging economies in general and at India in particular, HBS professor Jordan I. Siegel and doctoral student Prithwiraj Choudhury argue for a simultaneous analysis of corporate governance and strategic activity differences in order to reveal the quality of firm-level corporate governance. The development of rigorous methodology in corporate governance is not merely an academic issue but has enormous real-world consequences. It is critical that scholars gain deeper empirical and theoretical insights into the question of whether these business groups serve primarily as theft devices for the controlling owners, or whether they serve primarily as a positive force that enables the creation of scale and scope efficiencies. Key concepts include:

• It is too simple to say that business groups are the primary culprits of bad governance in emerging economies. Scholars need to analyze strategic activity differences across firms.
• In contrast to prior views, Indian business groups are not, on average, engaging in tunneling, but are on average exhibiting good corporate governance, especially in light of the markedly different business strategies they typically undertake.
• Business groups, through knowledge-based capabilities, have grown larger and more diversified with market liberalization, and they continue to tower over stand-alones in their marketing and technological capabilities.

Abstract

The last decade of corporate governance research has been focused in large part on identifying what leads to superior or deficient corporate governance in emerging economies, and we think the conventional wisdom about the economically important topics of tunneling and business groups will need to be significantly questioned and reformulated in light of new findings, data, and methodology presented here. We propose the idea that firms' corporate governance and firms' strategic business activities within an industry are interlinked, and that only by conducting a simultaneous economic analysis of business strategy and corporate governance can scholars fully discern the quality of a firm's governance. We advance this idea by taking a fresh look at one of the most rigorous extant methodologies for detecting "tunneling," or efforts by firms' controlling owner managers to take money for themselves at the expense of minority shareholders. We show that efforts to discern which firms have superior or deficient corporate governance in the important emerging economy of India turn critically on whether one does a simultaneous economic analysis of business strategy and corporate governance. We find in contrast to prior views that Indian business groups are not, on average, engaging in tunneling, but are on average exhibiting good corporate governance, especially in light of the markedly different business strategies they typically undertake. Moreover, unlike many past conceptions of business groups from financial economics, sociology, and strategy, we find evidence for a knowledge-based "recombinative capabilities" view of business groups-that such groups have done the most to invest in R&D and other skills necessary to combine inputs in ways that lead to greater added value. Moreover, our finding that Indian business groups have grown larger and more diversified since liberalization and since broad-based corporate governance reforms were implemented, goes expressly against the prediction of prior schools of thought about business groups. 52 pages.

Paper Information

• Full Working Paper Text
• Working Paper Publication Date: February 2010
• HBS Working Paper Number: 10-072
• Faculty Unit: Strategy 

Filed under: Truck, Chevrolet, Ford, GM, GMC, Diesel

2011 GMC Sierra Denali HD - Click above for high-res image gallery
Not even a month ago, at the end of our post on the 2011 Ford Super Duty engine specs, we wrote: "General Motors, there's a big ass ball in your court." Someone at GM has apparently grabbed their big ass racket and said, "Oh, I got this...", then smacked the ball right back into play. The Ford's measurements 390 horsepower, 735 pound-feet of grunt. The General has just announced that its 6.6-liter Duramax turbo diesel has 397 horsepower and 765 lb-ft. of torque, a jump of 32 horsepower and 105 lb-ft. over the previous Duramax.

A closer look at the numbers does reveal some give-and-take, however. The Ford's maximum tow rating is 21,600 pounds, while GM's is 20,000 pounds. And while not exactly engine related, the Ford truck also has a higher max payload than the GM twins. Still, the RenCen pickups take the power crown, and the new Duramax is more efficient than the previous one - GM didn't put a specific mileage number to it, but claims 680 miles of highway going possible from the 36-gallon tank. You'll find GM's press release on the new engine after the jump.

In related news, GM has released the first image of its GMC Sierra Denali HD pickup, mechanical and sheetmetal twin of the Chevrolet Silverado HD. There's an additional press release after the jump for it as well.

So... anyone else want to take a swing at that even bigger ass ball?

Gallery: 2011 GMC Sierra Denali HD

[Source: General Motors via PickupTrucks.com]

Continue reading GM quickly one-ups Ford with 2011 Duramax diesel ratings, shows off GMC Sierra Denali HD

GM quickly one-ups Ford with 2011 Duramax diesel ratings, shows off GMC Sierra Denali HD originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two drivers reported problems with Priuses that they said were not related to a sticking mat.

As awareness spreads that lithium is an ingredient for hybrid cars, a hunt is under way for sources of the metal.

After imploring drivers to be more aggressive on the racetrack this season to help rebuild fading fan support, Nascar issued a probation to Carl Edwards.

Wednesday, March 10 at 1:00 p.m. EST, the president of General Motors North America, Mark Reuss will host a live Webchat to talk about the state of GM North America.

Mark and his team are focused on creating innovative products with exciting design, high quality, and great fuel efficiency. He stands behind GM’s commitment to deliver the world’s best vehicles to our customers. He will answer as many questions as he can and looks forward to receiving your comments.

Web Chat with Mark Reuss, GM North America President

Filed under: Car Buying, Marketing/Advertising, GM, Toyota

Recently, General Motors has been offering special buying incentives specifically tailored to steer people away from Toyota and Lexus dealerships, and even get current Toyota owners out of their cars. And while most people look at this as just a clever marketing technique to promote other automakers in the wake of Toyota's recall wound, a group of dealers are none too happy about the marketing campaign. What's more, because the U.S. government currently owns a 60 percent stake in GM, Toyota dealers have made accusations that American taxpayer dollars are being used to fund these incentives.

The Toyota National Dealer Council, which represents approximately 1,250 Toyota dealers across the United States, claims that using taxpayer dollars for this purpose is "reckless, unfair and detrimental to the entire auto industry." And while we believe it's a potentially rational argument for the TNDC to make, we must remember that no specific evidence has been presented to completely prove their point. GM may be mostly owned by the U.S. government, but it's still an autonomous company, and no one can say for sure if its marketing decisions are, in any way, influenced by the officials in Washington, D.C. Hit the jump to read the entire TNDC press release.

[Source: Toyota National Dealer Council | Image: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images]

Continue reading Toyota dealer group peeved over tax dollar use for GM incentives targeted at Toyota owners

Toyota dealer group peeved over tax dollar use for GM incentives targeted at Toyota owners originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Will Stewart
SXSW Road Trip Challenge Correspondent

Seven of the eight teams taking part in the Chevy SXSW Road Trip Challenge are on their way to Austin, Texas, documenting their crazy solutions to the challenges they have to accomplish on their journeys.

Not that they haven’t taken some time to pamper themselves. In fact, pedicures anyone?

Team North Carolina managed to score an interview with CNN Marketing VP Scot Safon and Team Detroit was interviewed via Skype by WXYZ-TV’s Stephen Clark.

Meanwhile Team South Florida found a happy, new Chevy owner to share her thoughts on her brand new Equinox.

The teams are clearly having a blast and we wish we were along for the ride.

Team Detroit is off to an early and commanding lead, although scores are literally changing by the second as the teams tweet their successes and their supporters retweet their accomplishments. And one team – Team San Diego – won’t be leaving until Wednesday, due to the shorter distance it has to the SXSW Conference.

Have fun, teams. And stay safe!

Today’s photo comes from sjb4photos.

Be sure to look at all of sjb4photos’ photos and our other albums. And if you would like to recommend your favorite photo with a GM car or truck in it, put it up on Flickr and tag it with “gmfyi.”

Early in the development of the CR-Z, the president of American Honda said that Americans did not want a sporty hybrid.

Filed under: SUV, Plants/Manufacturing, GM, Hummer, Off-Road

Hummer H3T - Click above for high-res image gallery
Unless a buyer for Hummer materializes in the next few months, General Motors will continue to wind-down its environmental group dart board. The slow death of Hummer has actually been in process since before The General announced that the sale of the brand to China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery fell through, as the company's Shreveport, LA facility stopped making H3 and H3T models in January.

But while Shreveport has been down for two months, it looks like the plant could dust off the H3 tooling to fill one more big order. Brandcentric site Hummerguy.net is reporting that GM is ramping up production of the H3 from April 12 to May 13 to fill a 849 unit order. The General reportedly didn't announce the purchaser of the reported mega Hummer order, but the Detroit, MI-based automaker did say that the order was not related to the brand's wind-down or sale.

We're thinking this news won't stop Hummer from off-roading into the sunset, but it does at least prove that there are still people that like Hummers. Now all GM needs is a Hummer lover with a spare $150 million laying around the compound to step up and buy the withering brand.

Gallery: Review: 2009 HUMMER H3T Alpha

[Source: Hummer Guy]

Hummer plant coming back online to fill 849-unit order? originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Daimler says it has sold all of its shares in India's Tata Motors to various groups of investors through the capital markets.

How should companies survive a recession and do well afterward? Empirical research into the activities of 4,700 public companies during three recent recessions makes clear that the healthiest survivors simultaneously deployed both defensive and offensive maneuvers. Writing in the March issue of Harvard Business Review, HBS professors Ranjay Gulati and Nitin Nohria and Kellogg School doctoral student Franz Wohlgezogen advise a multi-pronged strategy to reduce costs selectively and invest wisely in marketing, R&D, and new assets.

The study provides sobering news as well. Seventeen percent of the companies went bankrupt, were acquired, or turned private in the wake of a recession. "Firms that cut costs faster and deeper than rivals don't necessarily flourish," the researchers explain. "Businesses that boldly invest more than their rivals during a recession don't always fare well either. They enjoy only a 26 percent chance of becoming leaders after a downturn. And companies that were growth leaders coming into a recession often can't retain their momentum; about 85 percent are toppled during bad times." Their article, "Roaring Out of Recession," suggests ways to avoid that fate.

Other new work on tap examines, among other topics, the building of the Panama Canal and the varying influence of business groups in India. And a "Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Breakeven Analysis" case note launches this week.

— Martha Lagace

Publications One Report: Integrated Reporting for a Sustainable Strategy Authors:Robert G. Eccles and Michael Krzus Publication:John Wiley and Sons, Inc., forthcoming

An abstract is unavailable at this time.

Book Abstract: http://www.amazon.com/One-Report-Integrated-Reporting-Sustainable/dp/0470587512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266436753&sr=1-1

The Big Ditch: How America Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal Authors:Noel Maurer and Carlos Yu Publication:Princeton University Press, forthcoming Abstract

On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal was officially opened for business, thus changing the face of both world trade and military power and playing a pivotal role in the rise of the United States on the world stage. Today we view the creation of the Panama Canal as a story of U.S. triumphalism; but the true story is a bit murkier. The first study of the Panama Canal to make use of both conventional historical methods and the tools of quantitative analysis, The Big Ditch examines the impact of the Panama Canal on the Republic of Panama, the United States, and the world. Noel Maurer and Carlos Yu deftly chronicle the economic history of the Canal, from the very earliest proposals made by Spain in 1529, through an abortive French attempt in the 19th century, to the construction, opening, and operation of the Canal by the U.S., and finally the turning over of the Canal to Panama, which was promised by the Carter administration in 1977 and made effective December 31, 1999. The true story of the Canal upends the more conventional tale of U.S. triumphalism and its shepherding of one of the largest infrastructure works ever built. First, the Canal produced great economic dividends for the first quarter-century following its opening, despite massive cost overruns and delays. Second, the United States captured most of these economic benefits, partially because of its geographical situation and partially because it could leverage its military might to obtain a better agreement than would have otherwise been reached. Finally, the U.S. agreement to give ownership of the Canal back to Panama in the 1970s was not a gesture of magnanimity, but because the strategic and economic value of ownership had since disappeared. In a surprise to those who argued that it was impossible for a fledgling Latin American nation plagued by corruption to manage the Canal better than its powerful patron to the north, the story of the Canal since its handover has been that the Panamanians have ultimately proved better at running it. Under the distant governance of a large country not particularly vested in the Canal's operation, the Panama Canal was run as a public utility. The Panamanian government, in contrast, has run the Canal as a for-profit corporation, increasing safety and decreasing costs along the way. Maurer and Yu's nuanced analysis of the contribution of the United States to state-building, economic development, and democratization of Central America does more than just advance our understanding of the national and global consequences of the Panama Canal and the imperialist motives and influences of the United States. In an age where everyone is looking for new models to capture the benefits of private enterprise under conditions of state ownership, the tale told by The Big Ditch serves as a vital and object lesson for those who question the ability of governments to run companies effectively.

Bold Retreat: A New Strategy for Old Technologies Authors:Ron Adner and Daniel C. Snow Publication:Harvard Business Review 88

An abstract is unavailable at this time.

Download the paper: http://hbr.org/2010/03/bold-retreat/ar/1

Lawsuits and Empire: On the Enforcement of Sovereign Debt in Latin America Authors:Laura Alfaro, Noel Maurer, and Faisal Ahmed Publication:Law and Contemporary Problems (forthcoming) Abstract

The re-occurring phenomenon of sovereign default has prompted an enormous theoretical and empirical literature. Most of this research has focused on why countries ever chose to pay their debts (or why private creditors ever expected repayment). The problem originates from the fact that repayment incentives for sovereign debts are minimal since little can be used as collateral and the ability of a court to force a sovereign entity to comply has been extremely limited, especially given the lack of a supranational legal authority capable of enforcing contracts across borders. In this paper we contrast the market reaction to attempts to enforce sovereign debt contracts via U.S. "dollar diplomacy" in Latin America in the pre-World War II period and by legal action in the 1990s and early 2000s. We argue that dollar diplomacy created an effective and credible Roaring Out of Recession Authors:Ranjay Gulati, Nitin Nohria, and Franz Wohlgezogen Publication:Harvard Business Review 88

An abstract is unavailable at this time.

Download the paper: http://hbr.org/2010/03/roaring-out-of-recession/ar/1

Think Outside the Building Author:Rosabeth Moss Kanter Publication:Harvard Business Review 88

An abstract is unavailable at this time.

Download the paper: http://hbr.org/2010/03/column-think-outside-the-building/ar/1

Changing Landscapes: The Construction of Meaning and Value in a New Market Category—Modern Indian Art Authors:Mukti Khaire and R. Daniel Wadhwani Publication:Academy of Management Journal (forthcoming) Abstract

Stable category meanings act as institutions that facilitate market exchange by providing bases for comparison and valuation. Yet little is known about meaning construction in new categories or how meaning translates into valuation criteria. We address this gap in a descriptive study of these processes in an emerging category-modern Indian art. Discourse analysis revealed how market actors shaped the construction of meaning in the new category by reinterpreting historical constructs in ways that enhanced commensurability and enabled aesthetic comparisons and valuation. Analysis of auction transactions revealed greater inter-subjective agreement about valuation over time, as the new category institutionalized.

Measuring the Perpetrators and Funders of Typosquatting Authors:Tyler Moore and Benjamin G. Edelman Publication:Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security (forthcoming) Abstract

We describe a method for identifying "typosquatting," the intentional registration of misspellings of popular web site addresses. We estimate that at least 938,000 typosquatting domains target the top 3,264 .com sites, and we crawl more than 285,000 of these domains to analyze their revenue sources. We find that 80% are supported by pay-per-click ads, often advertising the correctly spelled domain and its competitors. Another 20% include static redirection to other sites. We present an automated technique that uncovered 75 otherwise legitimate web sites, which benefited from direct links from thousands of misspellings of competing web sites. Using regression analysis, we find that web sites in categories with higher pay-per-click ad prices face more typosquatting registrations, indicating that ad platforms such as Google AdWords exacerbate typosquatting. However, our investigations also confirm the feasibility of significantly reducing typosquatting. We find that typosquatting is highly concentrated: of typo domains showing Google ads, 63% use one of five advertising IDs, and some large name servers host typosquatting domains as much as four times as often as the web as a whole.

Download the paper: http://www.benedelman.org/typosquatting/typosquatting.pdf

Working Papers Location Strategies for Agglomeration Economies Authors:Juan Alcácer and Wilbur Chung Abstract

Geographically concentrated industry activity creates pools of skilled labor and specialized suppliers and increases opportunities for knowledge spillovers. The strategic value of these agglomeration economies may vary by firm, depending upon the relative value of each economy, and upon firm and agglomeration economy traits. To better determine when a firm will be attracted to agglomeration economies, we develop a three-layer framework. The first layer assesses the relative importance of skilled labor, suppliers, and knowledge spillovers. The second layer considers whether firms can benefit from geographic concentration without co-locating. The final layer examines why some firms are more inclined to co-locate than others based upon firm and agglomeration economy traits. We test our framework on the U.S. location choices of new manufacturing entrants between 1985 and 1994 and find that firms are far more attracted to skilled labor and specialized suppliers than they are to potential knowledge spillovers, even in R&D intensive industries. We also find that leading firms will be more attracted to pools of labor, suppliers, and potential knowledge spillovers when their own contributions are less fungible, and cannot be easily leveraged for strategic advantage by proximate competitors.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-071.pdf

Matching Firms, Managers, and Incentives Authors:Oriana Bandiera, Luigi Guiso, Andrea Prat, and Raffaella Sadun Abstract

We provide evidence on the match between firms, managers, and incentives using a new survey that contains information on managers' risk preferences and human capital, on their compensation schemes, and on the firms they work for. The data is consistent with the equilibrium correlations predicted by a model where firms with different ownership structure and managers with different risk aversion and talent match endogenously through incentive contracts. The model predicts and the data support that, compared to widely held firms, family firms use contracts that are less sensitive to performance; these contracts attract less talented and more risk-averse managers, and these managers work less hard, earn less, and display lower job satisfaction.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-073.pdf

Equity-Debtholder Conflicts and Capital Structure Authors:Bo Becker and Per Strömberg Abstract

We use an important legal event as a natural experiment to examine equity-debt conflicts in the vicinity of financial distress. A 1991 Delaware bankruptcy ruling changed the nature of corporate directors' fiduciary duties in that state. This change limited incentives to take actions favoring equity over debt. We show that, as predicted, this increased the likelihood of equity issues, increased investment, and reduced risk taking. The changes are isolated to indebted firms (where the legal change applied). These reductions in agency costs were followed by an increase in average leverage and a reduction in interest costs. Finally, we can estimate the welfare implications of agency costs, because firm values increased when the rules were introduced. We conclude that equity-bondholder conflicts are economically important, determine capital structure choices, and affect welfare.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-070.pdf

A Reexamination of Tunneling and Business Groups: New Data and New Methods Authors:Jordan Siegel and Prithwiraj Choudhury Abstract

The last decade of corporate governance research has been focused in large part on identifying what leads to superior or deficient corporate governance in emerging economies, and we think the conventional wisdom about the economically important topics of tunneling and business groups will need to be significantly questioned and reformulated in light of new findings, data, and methodology presented here. We propose the idea that firms' corporate governance and firms' strategic business activities within an industry are interlinked, and that only by conducting a simultaneous economic analysis of business strategy and corporate governance can scholars fully discern the quality of a firm's governance. We advance this idea by taking a fresh look at one of the most rigorous extant methodologies for detecting "tunneling," or efforts by firms' controlling owner-managers to take money for themselves at the expense of minority shareholders. We show that efforts to discern which firms have superior or deficient corporate governance in the important emerging economy of India turn critically on whether one does a simultaneous economic analysis of business strategy and corporate governance. We find in contrast to prior views that Indian business groups are not, on average, engaging in tunneling but are, on average, exhibiting good corporate governance, especially in light of the markedly different business strategies they typically undertake. Moreover, unlike many past conceptions of business groups from financial economics, sociology, and strategy, we find evidence for a knowledge-based "recombinative capabilities" view of business groups-that such groups have done the most to invest in R&D and other skills necessary to combine inputs in ways that lead to greater added value. Moreover, our finding that Indian business groups have grown larger and more diversified since liberalization and since broad-based corporate governance reforms were implemented goes expressly against the prediction of prior schools of thought about business groups.

Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-072.pdf

Cases & Course Materials Introduction to Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE)

Catherine S.M. Duggan, Aldo Musacchio, and Matthew C. Weinzierl
Harvard Business School Course Overview 710-045

An abstract is unavailable at this time.

Purchase this course overview:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/710045-PDF-ENG

Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Breakeven Analysis

Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Harvard Business School Note 510-080

Marketing managers are often called upon to make recommendations for or against programs that cost money to implement. Before expenditures are made, managers want to be sure that they will be getting a return on their investment. One way of assessing this is by calculating the breakeven point. In this note, we introduce the concept of breakeven analysis and show how it is used to guide marketing decision making. This analysis helps students assess the feasibility of proposed fixed and variable marketing expenditures, the feasibility of permanent pricing changes, and the feasibility of a new product introduction. The note gives students a foundation for analyzing marketing cases, as well as providing an analytical structure and process for completing a marketing plan. The note is accompanied by a free Excel worksheet that contains sample problems, pre-built Excel models to calculate breakeven, and charts and graphs that help visualize the results.

Purchase this note:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/510080-PDF-ENG

Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Breakeven Analysis

Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Harvard Business School Note 510-080

Marketing managers are often called upon to make recommendations for or against programs that cost money to implement. Before expenditures are made, managers want to be sure that they will be getting a return on their investment. One way of assessing this is by calculating the breakeven point. In this note, we introduce the concept of breakeven analysis and show how it is used to guide marketing decision making. This analysis helps students assess the feasibility of proposed fixed and variable marketing expenditures, the feasibility of permanent pricing changes, and the feasibility of a new product introduction. The note gives students a foundation for analyzing marketing cases, as well as providing an analytical structure and process for completing a marketing plan. The note is accompanied by a free Excel worksheet that contains sample problems, pre-built Excel models to calculate breakeven, and charts and graphs that help visualize the results.

Purchase this note:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/510080-PDF-ENG

Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Market Size and Market Share Analysis

Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Harvard Business School Note 510-081

Marketers frequently need to estimate the size of their markets—both for existing products so that sales forecasts can be developed and for new products so that market opportunities can be assessed. This toolkit enables students to size a market and generate a sales forecast using a market build-up methodology. Students learn to measure market demand and company demand and calculate market and product penetration rates and market share. The note gives students a foundation for analyzing marketing cases, as well as providing an analytical structure and process for completing a marketing plan. The note is accompanied by a free Excel worksheet that contains sample problems, pre-built Excel models to calculate market size, market penetration, and market share, and charts and graphs that help visualize the results.

Purchase this note:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/510081-PDF-ENG

Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Situation Analysis

Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Harvard Business School Note 510-079

Before managers can begin to formulate marketing strategies for their businesses, they must have a strong understanding of the internal and external marketing environments in which they are operating. In this note, we present three methods for collecting and analyzing information about the internal and external marketing environments firms face: Five C's Analysis, Porter's Five Forces Industry Analysis, and SWOT Analysis. These analyses help students understand the analytical processes by which managers understand themselves, their consumers, and the marketplaces in which they compete. The note gives students a foundation for analyzing marketing cases, as well as providing an analytical structure and process for completing the situation analysis section of a marketing plan.

Purchase this note:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/510079-PDF-ENG

The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time

Stefan Thomke and Mona Srivastava
Harvard Business School Case 610-059

Describes the Mumbai-based Dabbawala organization, which achieves very high service performance (6 Sigma equivalent or better) with a low-cost and very simple operating system. The case explores all aspects of their system (mission, information management, material flows, human resource system, processes, etc.) and the challenges that the Dabbawala organization faces in a rapidly changing environment. An outside consultant proposes the introduction of new technologies and management systems, while the leading logistics companies (e.g., FedEx) come to Mumbai to learn about the Dabbawala system.

Purchase this case:
http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/product/610059-PDF-ENG

The vision of smart, eco-savvy cars free from the threat of congestion, crashes, pollution and parking spats could soon become reality, according to the authors of a new book, "Reinventing the Automobile."

One result of Nascar’s focus on aggressive driving came when Carl Edwards deliberately hit Brad Keselowski on Sunday.

The carmaker said reports of continued acceleration problems after a repair could be traced to improper work.