INSIDE INFO

Characters: Beth, Assistant Product Manager

Amanda, Beth’s former college roommate, now in advertising

Amy, Group Product Manager and Beth’s supervisor

Beth enjoys most aspects of her first job out of college as Assistant Product Manager for a consumer package goods marketer, except that Amy, her Group Product Manager, is very competitive. Amy would seemingly stop at nothing to achieve a competitive advantage in developing marketing communications programs. In fact, after a recent strategic planning meeting, Amy was complaining to Beth that the next quarter was going to be particularly troublesome given the area economy and that something was needed to stay ahead of the competition.

Coincidentally, that evening Beth received a surprise call from her old college roommate, Amanda, who was in town to pitch a potential new client. As the two talked about what each had been up to since graduation, Beth learned that the company Amanda was presenting to was actually the primary competitor of Beth’s.

Beth thought how much it would mean to her career if she could secure some intelligence on the planned advertising campaign from Amanda, and pass it along to Amy. This might just represent the missing piece Beth and Amy’s product line needed.

Author: Richard F. Beltramini, Associate Professor of Marketing and Advertising, Arizona

State University.

CASE 3

ROBBING PETER TO PAY … PETER

Characters: Maryanne, a divisional manager for a large restaurant chain

Paul, one of Maryanne's store managers

Maryanne, a divisional manager for a major restaurant chain had heard rumors about one of her managers, Paul. Paul is her best manager, by any performance measure. His store has the highest sales volume and growth, positive customer feedback, excellent cost control, and does well on inspections. In fact, Paul consistently is rated higher than the other restaurant managers of the chain’s restaurants. Because of this, Paul is often mentioned as a candidate for promotion.

Maryanne was concerned, however, about reports that Paul was taking in money from customers without ringing the sales into the cash register. As a result, she sent some friends to the restaurant at a number of times, and a few of them reported back that the manager took their money, but, indeed, did not enter the payment into the register.

In the meantime, Maryanne has also discovered that Paul did not seem to be pocketing the money himself, but was using it as unrecorded payments to his crew as performance bonuses, overtime incentives, and off-hours cleaning wages. Though this was clearly in violation of the company’s procedures, he wasn’t actually taking the money out of the store for personal gain, but was using it to achieve the high performance which had become his trademark On the other hand, because the funds are not accounted for as income, the extra “wages” to Paul's employees have no payroll taxes taken out. This means the company is at risk for a tax liability action by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service). Should Maryanne take action against Paul?

Author: G. Scott Erickson, Lehigh University

CASE 4

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