Teaching note for product 9B10M019.

In late September 2009, the CEO of the Nasdaq-traded solar cell and module manufacturer, Canadian Solar, was at an inflection point in the formation of its international strategy. The company had experienced dynamic growth during the past five years buoyed largely by aggressive incentive schemes to install solar photovoltaic (PV) technology in Germany and Spain. The credit crunch, coupled with changes in government incentive programs, caused a major .....more

Test marketing is an important aspect of market research. This technical note deals with why test marketing is undertaken and how to do it. Topics include test market design, selection of test markets, length of test and interpretation of results.

The chief executive officer (CEO) and owner of Alara Agri, a major Turkish cherry and fig producer, wants to convince retailers in Belgium and Germany (and, later, other parts of Europe) to change cherries from a bulk product to a higher-end luxury product packaged in small carry bags. The move from bulk to small packages has been highly successful in the United Kingdom where retailers reduced waste and increased margins. The German and Belgian retailers .....more

Alara Agri, based in Bursa, Turkey, is one of the world’s foremost cherry and fig producers. The president and chief executive officer (CEO) was concerned about a recurring capacity problem at the end of the process where cherries were packed. On some of the plant’s conveyor belts, piles of cherries of one size waited to be packed while other belts had too few cherries to keep workers busy, and thus delayed order fulfillment. Diverting excess .....more

As of mid-2008, Regio's sole shareholder, chairman and president is leading his team through a strategy refreshing process. Regio, an Estonian company established in 1989 as a map-maker, is now involved in four principle business activities: location-based services for mobile phones, geographical information systems (GIS) software development, the creation of geospatial data and the production of maps. The company's current revenues are .....more

The director of information technology (IT) at Ritcher, a major Hungarian pharmaceutical company with operations throughout Eastern Europe, is in the midst of planning for the IT department for the coming years. The three main considerations for the coming year are: Is the current IT structure appropriate to meet the growing demands of the overall organization? To what extent should IT affiliates be centrally controlled? How can IT best serve the .....more

The executive vice-president of newspapers for Schibsted was about to meet with his colleagues to discuss the company’s plan to release an internally developed free daily newspaper concept called 20 Minutes. Over the past couple of years, Schibsted’s executive team had kept a watchful eye on the free newspaper industry, which was enjoying tremendous popularity. Earlier in the year, Schibsted had launched Avis 1, a free paper with direct delivery .....more

On December 1999, Schibsted, Norway’s largest media company, launched a free daily newspaper, 20 Minutes simultaneously in Zurich, Switzerland, and Cologne, Germany. As of February 2000, the launch of 20 Minutes in Zurich had been considered a success, whereas the Cologne launch had been fraught with difficulty. Schibsted had been caught up in a lawsuit filed by two prominent German publishers. The Cologne edition had been shut down for five weeks. .....more

After successfully issuing a €100 million Eurobond in 2005, executives at Parex Banka (Parex) in Riga, Latvia are considering issuing a second bond with a face value of €200 million and a term of 5 years. In planning the bond issue, the bank is debating the bond’s characteristics, such as the currency (Euro versus U.S. dollar), the spread they would initially offer and how they would approach the meeting with potential investors. Students are tasked .....more