Analysis Case Study

Marketing Management

Case Study Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to help students in the preparation and analysis of case studies. The guidelines that follow are based on experience of using case studies for teaching purposes and the work of various academic authors.

You should be aware that there is usually no “right” or “wrong” answer to a case study; there are only good and not-so-good answers. The way that you develop your answer will depend on two things:

    1. The analysis of the case
    2. The strategies and tactics that you recommend

The two areas are linked: if your analysis fails to identify the key issues in the case, then your recommendations are unlikely to be suitable for the organisation or the circumstances depicted in the study.

1. General guidelines for Case Studies

• Read the case from beginning to end without trying to absorb too much detail. All you need at this stage is an overview of the issues within the case.

• Read the case again, but this time try to identify the main issues. At this point, you will begin to realise what is really important and what is not. At this stage you may find it helpful to use a highlight pen to identify the most important points.

• Go through the case even more carefully and identify the specific information you will need in order to analyse the organisation’s strategy and tactics.

• Make sure that you take advantage of information which is given to you '   it’s much easier that way! For example: if you read that a company has sales of £2 million per year, then you can work out that it is a very small company. Perhaps its net profitability (at about 7% of sales) is about £140,000.   Clearly, it would be totally unrealistic to suggest that such a company could spend £1 million on advertising!!

• Always focus clearly on the questions that have been asked. In most instances on this module, the cases are chosen because they have some relevance to the lecture topic of the... [continues]

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