Students should take up a 15 days internship between 1st June and 30th June, 2011 in

any of the Business/Industrial establishment and should have visited personally.

Students should submit the photo copy of internship acceptance letter by the

organization and internship completion certificate at the deans office during First Review.
The case writing work should not contain any of the downloaded or any printed materials

i.e. reproduction of others work (plagiarism) summarily punishable. If students found doing plagiarism in case writing will be awarded fail mark and they have to redo it after one year.
It should be 100% original work. Should be written in their own style of writing in

English.
Students should contact their respective guides at regular interval for any doubts and

clarifications. Poor quality of work will be rejected. Students should attend all the three review without fail.

Case Writing

What is a Case in Management?

Case is a narrative description of a real life situation, incident or event involving one or more decisions. Case presents all the relevant background information

What Is Case Writing?

A case has to include what happened to a business or industry over a number of years. Case chronicles the events that managers had to deal with, such as changes

in the competitive environment, and charts the managers' response, which usually involved changing the business or corporate level strategy.

CASE STUDY FORMAT

1.Cover Page

The cover page should give the title of the report, the names of the student and faculty. This page is not numbered. 2. Executive Summary: Identify the major problem/key issues of the management and summarize your findings and recommendations. 3. Main Body of Report Introduction

Background information about the industry, the company and the executives involved

Problem statement/Key issues: Start with a statement of the problem/key management issues you have identified through your analysis. Concentrate on the critical issues facing the organization. Supporting argument: Next, you should explain why you have concluded that this is the key issue or issues. To do this,

Analyze the Competitive Environment

General Environment: National or global economy within which the firm operates

Business Environment: The business environment is determined by the industry in which the firm competes. How is the industry creating value? Analyze the industry structure and competitive position. Describe the major strategic groups. What are the basic economics of the industry and its key success factors?

Analyze the firm

Mission, Long Range Objectives, Current Strategy, and Performance Organizational Analysis

How is the firm creating value? How is the firm organized?

Structure Leadership People: Culture: Technology Business Processes

What are the firm's strengths, distinctive competencies and weaknesses? Identify key change drivers

Identify the key change drivers underlying the issue(s). What are the forces driving change? What forces are maintaining the status quo? Do they originate externally or internally? What will the firm's probable future environment look like? What are the implications for the firm? Your analysis must be supported by the facts in the case Identify key management issues Identify what you believe are the key management issues. Definition of the key issues establishes your hypothesis. Identify the key issues you need to compare the opportunities and threats arising from the firm's present and probable future environments against its strengths and weaknesses both current and in the future. Test your hypothesis: Select appropriate frameworks and theoretical models Select the appropriate frameworks or theoretical models to interpret data available Forecast future scenarios Frame action plans.

Alternative strategies

You can now lay out the alternative strategies available to the organization Recommendation

Identify which alternative strategy you recommend. Explain your recommendation 4.References: Provide complete citations for any concepts or facts from sources other than your textbooks, the case study, or class lectures and discussions. 5. Appendices (if any): Tables, charts, diagrams, financial analyses, etc. to support your report. However, the mere replication of diagrams from the readings or from the case provides little insight. Be sure that any appendices are referenced in the body of your report. If you are not going to reference them in the body of the paper, don't include them.

FORM OF THE REPORT Must adhere the following guidelines

The length of the report may not exceed 15 pages double-spaced (not including references, appendices or the one-page executive summary). Use only a 12 point font (preferably Times Roman). Use 1-inch margins all around. All tables, graphs, charts, spreadsheets, and computations should be presented in appropriately labeled appendices and must be referenced in the body of the report. Number the pages: Include a running footer with sequential page numbers.

Guidelines for Case Writing

Tips to make a beginning:

 Decide the functional area in which you want to write a case. It could be in Strategic

Management, Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, Sales and Distribution, Consumer behavior and others.
The cases will emerge from the secondary as well as primary sources. You will have to

continuously look for germ of an idea for writing a case. Look for data from newspapers, business magazines, annual reports of companies as well as from audio-visual media which you feel can be developed in a Case. Management Consultants are also good sources of data for case writing.
When you visit an organization, interact with managers and CEO of the organization;

ask them about any peculiar situation they are facing. It could be about launch of a new product/ service, handling a difficult customer, how they won an order against tough competition, looking ahead in the future, handling issues like attrition of personnel, matters of intellectual property rights (IPR), overcoming problems of rejection & quality control and many others.
Compile data both on external as well as internal environments. Case studies can use one participant, or a small group of participants. However, it is

important that the participant pool remain relatively small.

Put this data in an interesting manner which will arouse the curiosity of the reader, a

dramatized presentation will make a case more attractive.

Please remember that a Case is not Arithmetic where there will always be only one

answer. A case analysis can give rise to different alternatives and all of them could be correct.

Sample Case study

Philips electric shaver

The Problem How do you dare redesign an icon? When the Dutch company Royal Philips Electronics pioneered the rotating blade electrical razor in 1939 and sold it in 1947 in America as the Norelco Shaver, it designed a brand as much as a product. Norelco stood for modern, industrial and technological vibrant brand. In the early 1960s, Norelco launched the first fully cordless razor and had 18% of the electric shaver market. By 1978, it controlled 60% of the US market. But, in most recent years, electric shavers have been overshadowed by the blade wars of the wetshaving world. Gillette has captured the high-tech high ground with its multi-bladed razors. By 2004, though Phillips held 50% of the electric shavers market, only 18% of all men used solely electric shavers, according to companys market research. Last year, Phillips decided to talk to consumers to figure out how to redesign the Norelco electric shaver to give as close a shave as possible. The Research Phillips interviewed 5000 men in the US, Europe and China. Its target customer was between the ages of 35 and 54, an experienced shaver who is likely to spend more for a premium razor that will last six to seven years. The company searched for some undiscovered consumer need that might be met with a dynamic product- and found an opportunity in an unlikely place. It learned that one of the most common frustrations of shaving has nothing to do with the face: its those pesky few flat lying hairs on the neck under the chin. The men interviewed by the company had to shave over those hairs six or seven times, often irritating their skin and leaving welts or spawning in-grown hairs. Phillips decided to develop a razor that closely shaves those neck hairs the first time. To do so, it needed to design an electric shaver with much greater maneuverability to navigate the tricky area around the jugular vein. Its research also led the company to a name for the new model: Arcitec, a combination of the arch of the neck and technology.

Prototyping Phillips team of engineers, and business strategists led by Nico Engelsman, a senior vicepresident for business management, and senior design director Tammo de Ligny also studied consumer trends among potential customers. They learned from interviews that their customers wanted materials that radiated strength, like stainless steel in razor head. The teams also looked in hundreds of magazines, and ads showing cars, phones and mens accessories. For color, they drew inspiration from the silver Motorola RAZR phone, the BMW Z4 Coupe, and the Volant silver series skis. They made the Architect models black, charcoal and silver. The designers began working up rough pictures of solutions to tackle that neck-shaving. Then they started proto-typing and testing plastic models with consumers, iterating very quickly. To make electric shaver more flexible and maneuverable than previous models, they created a bigger separation between the shaving head and the handle that men grasp as they shave. That allowed the head to pivot 360 degrees. Their testing also made clear that they had to miniaturize the moving parts to make the grip easier as men moved the shaver under their chins along their necks. In the final testing in October 2006, the designers tried out the razors in four sessions with four different panels of 50 participants each. In the first, the blades did not protrude enough to give a close shave. The designers raised the blades, but went too far. The blades were too high, irritating the skin. On the third try, they got it right. They also tested the razors performance using what they call as paint brush test. They shaved paint brush bristles made of the thickest synthetic hair possible to evaluate how the shaver would perform on the toughest whiskers. Marketing Phillips started selling Architect in US and Britain in July 2007 and in the rest of the world in September 2007. Prices ranged from USD 169 to 249, depending on the model. The company decided not to market it as aggressively in India or China yet. Why? In India people can get a shave at the corner stand at Rs.20 or 50 cents! So that huge market is not yet primed for a premium product like Arcitec, Phillips learned. Chinese men, the company found in its research generally has less hair, and Asian hair tends to be rounder in shape and thicker in diameter than the Caucasian hair, making it stronger but slower growing. So the Chinese dont necessarily need a razor with three rotating blades like

Arcitec. Electric shaving is growing in popularity with young men in China. However, Phillips will launch a double-headed razor there along with Architect to give customers some options. And what about female consumers? Phillips research shows nearly half of electric shavers purchased are gifts and 75% of them are bought by women for men. Yet, wives, girl friends, and moms dont know much about mens razors and are terrified of choosing the wrong one, the company found. So Phillips will create a special marketing campaign for female shoppers , and will have video demos online through Amazon.com showing typical male shaving dilemmas, like getting at those nasty little neck hairs. The Architects packaging will represent Phillips broader attempt to unify all its products under one brand name worldwide. For decades, the company sold its products in the US market under many brands, including Norelco. The Phillips logo will appear above the Norelco logo on the packaging. And in the future, Phillips plan to phase out the name Norelco. Present market data The price ranges for shaving products in the US markets are as follows: Electric shavers: USD 150 to 250 Razors: USD 10 cents disposables to 1.50 per blade for higher end.In the other markets, the prices can be considered proportionate in local currencies. ====================================================================