Services Marketing 7205
Fall 2015
Term 1
Instructions for Case Analysis
For each case, regardless of the topic or setting, your analysis should address three basic issues:
1. What internal and external factors and decisions brought the service organization to the current
situation (at the time the case was written)?
2. Evaluate the current situation, using the tools and frameworks you are learning in class, focusing
always on service-profit chain issues, and how well the organization manages the “four things a service
business must get right.” What goals is the service organization trying to achieve, and how well has it
done in that achievement?
3. Recommendation of actions for the future. If the current situation is conducive to helping the service
organization reach its goals, how does it continue to operate effectively? If the current situation is NOT
conducive to helping the service organization reach its goals, what changes do you recommend?
Note: The recommendation of “do more research before acting” is not an option. You MUST offer a set of
recommendations. Assume you have all the data you are going to have and work with that.
For all cases, the analysis should rely heavily on the foundational readings from Week 1 of class, but also
the reading specific to that case/week (except for “Marketing at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz,” for
which there are no assigned readings).
A. The Ritz-Carlton case examines issues of employee selection, training and support.
B. The &Samhoud case asks you to evaluate client/customer behaviors.
C. The cases of Living Social and Netflix center on the efficacy of the service offering and on the
funding mechanism of the service firms.
D. The Trend Micro case focuses on a service failure and response to that failure.
Each case allows everyone to apply the concepts, tools and frameworks you are learning to a common
set of facts. You must deal ONLY with the facts you are given. Do not engage in additional research and
do not project the case beyond the timeframe of the case. This assures that everyone in class is dealing
with one set of facts. We may not all agree on the way that tools, frameworks and concepts should be
applied (or not!), but we must all agree on the basic facts.
Some of you may have specialized knowledge of the industries in the cases. Be thoughtful about
applying your own experiences to evaluating the cases. Your industry experience may or may not reflect
“best practice” and the organizations which form the basis of your experience may be quite different
from the organizations in the cases. It will be useful for you to share your own experiences in class, but
using your “experience” as the justification for the case analysis recommendations is not the strongest
way to succeed with the analysis.
The cases will be evaluated on how well you integrate what you are learning into the analysis, and on
how well you justify your recommendations based on those tools, concepts and frameworks. There are
multiple ways that you can effectively recommend solutions to most of these cases, so the grade will not
be based on arriving at a certain answer, but on how well you describe and justify the process of arriving
at the answer.
Please submit the cases to the Carmen drop box on or before the 6:00 p.m. deadline. If something
prevents you from using Carmen, you may bring a hard copy to class, but it MUST be delivered by 6:00
p.m. I am a stickler on deadlines, as I think “deadline creep” causes unfairness.
Please make sure your analysis is grammatically correct, and that your writing is clear and concise. Do
not repeat large passages from the case or from the readings, as we can refer to those source materials
at any time. Do NOT summarize the case. Use headings to guide the reader through the analysis. You
may use lists and bullet points where appropriate. Please make sure your name is on your document.
There is no need for a cover sheet, an executive summary or a cover letter.
Please limit your analysis to 2,500 words or less (this is not a target, it is a limit). If you can do the job
effectively in fewer than 2,500 words, do so. You may add whatever charts or tables that are useful, but
DO NOT add text-heavy tables as appendices to effectively ignore the 2,500 word limit!
There is no additional template or formatting instructions. I am interested in your approach to the
issues, not in your ability to work within the confines of a very specific checklist.