Marketing
October 2020
Brand Value and Valuation – Technical Note
By Nader Tavassoli
Brand valuation is the process of estimating the financial value of a brand. The valuation of brands as intangible assets emerged in the 1980s, when brands were first capitalized on post-M&A balance sheets. Brands are also valued for non-reporting purposes...
October 2020
The World Trade Organization and Tobacco Plain Packaging: Is Packaging Adverting and Does It Influence Consumption?
By Nader Tavassoli
On June 29, 2020, a dispute settlement panel convened by the World Trade Organization (WTO) rejected the appeal regarding its findings in the report “Australia – Certain Measures Concerning Trademarks, Geographical Indications and other Plain Packaging Requirements Applicable to Tobacco Products...
October 2013
Nokia Siemens Networks: Branding a Global Merger from the Inside Out
By Simona Botti, Nader Tavassoli, Gudrun Herrmann
A handful of global players dominated the telecommunications infrastructure industry in 2007. The benefits to scale were significant: substantial funding requirements were necessary to sustain continuous innovation and development of networks, products and services; key customers themselves were glo...
January 2019
Brand Valuation: What, How and Why?
By Nader Tavassoli
As Chief Marketing Officer of a privately held Swiss luxury goods company, Lena Müller was tasked with valuing the company’s brand, whose products traded under the same name as the company itself. The reason her CEO gave for the valuation exercise was to better understand “this strange animal c...
January 2008
Silverglide Surgical Technologies (B)
By John Mullins
This is a two-case series. From a rocky perch above the city of Boulder, Colorado, Jon Thorne gazed across the city and onto the great plains that stretched eastward before him. 'There's nothing like a vigorous mountain bike ride into the hills,' Thorne thought, 'when crucial decisions have to be de...
January 2008
Silverglide Surgical Technologies (A)
By John Mullins
This is a two-case series. From a rocky perch above the city of Boulder, Colorado, Jon Thorne gazed across the city and onto the great plains that stretched eastward before him. 'There's nothing like a vigorous mountain bike ride into the hills,' Thorne thought, 'when crucial decisions have to be de...
August 2018
M-Pesa & Nick Hughes
By Lisa Duke, Rajesh Chandy
It was February 2009, and Nick Hughes, head of Global Payment Solutions at Vodafone, contemplated his notes as he waited to enter the company’s Executive Meeting at its headquarters in Newbury, amid the Berkshire countryside outside London. M-PESA (M for mobile, Pesa meaning ‘money’ in Swahili...
December 2018
M-KOPA Solar: Using Digital Disruption to Connect the World’s Poor
By Nader Tavassoli
Launched in East Africa, M-KOPA is an innovative pay-as-you-go solar system that provides reliable energy to low-income households. To serve these customers profitably, M-KOPA’s solution relies on digital innovation and the integrated adaptation of every element business model, including a new pro...
January 2012
Nespresso: What Else?
By Nader Tavassoli
In 2011 Nespresso, the premium single-serve coffee brand of the multinational Swiss company Nestle, found itself at a crossroads. Between 2006 and 2010 Nespresso had managed to nearly triple sales - from CHF1.16 billion to well over CHF3 billion. But despite its meteoric growth in recent years, comp...