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CardSwap: Converting Unwanted Gift Cards into Cash is a Harvard Business (HBR) Case Study on Sales & Marketing , Fern Fort University provides HBR case study assignment help for just $11. Our case solution is based on Case Study Method expertise & our global insights.
The co-founder of CardSwap.ca sat at his desk in the Toronto office from which he managed the company. CardSwap was an online service that provided consumers with the opportunity to convert unwanted gift cards into hard cash. The co-founder felt convinced that his small Canadian company created great value for its customers. After all there were around a billion dollars of unwanted gift cards entering circulation every year. People who owned these unwanted gift cards would surely want to use the CardSwap service. CardSwap could offer a strong value proposition to consumers while ensuring a healthy return through commissions on every transaction. Problems remained however CardSwap was a relatively small company and had no access to the multi-million dollar advertising budgets that might be needed to get a message out to consumers through an extensive multi-media strategy. How much should the company be willing to spend to acquire a customer? How best could this new company use its limited resources to communicate to customers the benefits that CardSwap had to offer?
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Even before you start reading a business case study just make sure that you have brushed up the Harvard Business Review (HBR) fundamentals on the Sales & Marketing. Brushing up HBR fundamentals will provide a strong base for investigative reading. Often readers scan through the business case study without having a clear map in mind. This leads to unstructured learning process resulting in missed details and at worse wrong conclusions. Reading up the HBR fundamentals helps in sketching out business case study analysis and solution roadmap even before you start reading the case study. It also provides starting ideas as fundamentals often provide insight into some of the aspects that may not be covered in the business case study itself.
To write an emphatic case study analysis and provide pragmatic and actionable solutions, you must have a strong grasps of the facts and the central problem of the HBR case study. Begin slowly - underline the details and sketch out the business case study description map. In some cases you will able to find the central problem in the beginning itself while in others it may be in the end in form of questions. Business case study paragraph by paragraph mapping will help you in organizing the information correctly and provide a clear guide to go back to the case study if you need further information.
My case study strategy involves -
Once you are comfortable with the details and objective of the business case study proceed forward to put some details into the analysis template. You can do business case study analysis by following Fern Fort University step by step instructions -
Once you finished the case analysis, time line of the events and other critical details. Focus on the following -
In our live classes we often come across business managers who pinpoint one problem in the case and build a case study analysis and solution around that singular point. Business environments are often complex and require holistic solutions. You should try to understand not only the organization but also the industry which the business operates in. Porter Five Forces is a strategic analysis tool that will help you in understanding the relative powers of the key players in the business case study and what sort of pragmatic and actionable case study solution is viable in the light of given facts.
Another way of understanding the external environment of the firm in CardSwap: Converting Unwanted Gift Cards into Cash is to do a PESTEL - Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental & Legal analysis of the environment the firm operates in. You should make a list of factors that have significant impact on the organization and factors that drive growth in the industry. You can even identify the source of firm's competitive advantage based on PESTEL analysis and Organization's Core Competencies.
Once you have developed multipronged approach and work out various suggestions based on the strategic tools. The next step is organizing the solution based on the requirement of the case. You can use the following strategy to organize the findings and suggestions.
The goal of the business case study is not only to identify problems and recommend solutions but also to provide a framework to implement those case study solutions. Implementation framework differentiates good case study solutions from great case study solutions. If you able to provide a detailed implementation framework then you have successfully achieved the following objectives -
Implementation framework helps in weeding out non actionable recommendations, resulting in awesome CardSwap: Converting Unwanted Gift Cards into Cash case study solution.
Once you finished the case study implementation framework. Take a small break, grab a cup of coffee or whatever you like, go for a walk or just shoot some hoops.
After refreshing your mind, read your case study solution critically. When we are writing case study solution we often have details on our screen as well as in our head. This leads to either missing details or poor sentence structures. Once refreshed go through the case solution again - improve sentence structures and grammar, double check the numbers provided in your analysis and question your recommendations. Be very slow with this process as rushing through it leads to missing key details. Once done it is time to hit the attach button.