Individual Written Assignments
You will be assigned two cases for which you will write a four-page case analysis. You may include up to seven pages of additional exhibits (tables, charts, diagrams, financial analyses) to support your written analysis. Your case report is due at the beginning of the class during which we discuss the case. Late submission of written case analyses will not be accepted (see Late Assignments below). You should not discuss the individual case write-ups with anyone else. All analysis, writing, and appendices must be your own (see Academic Offences below).
The goals in preparing a written case analysis are: (1) to identify the problems faced in a management situation; (2) to summarize the key issues and insights critical to understanding the problems; and (3) to outline a specific action plan for the decision maker(s) in the case. A successful case write-up will highlight the key facts and constraints in the case, integrate and interpret that evidence, and develop a detailed set of recommendations that follow logically from those insights. A page limit on the write-ups may seem quite restrictive, but it will force you to assess the relative importance of the ideas developed in your analysis. It is extremely important to learn how to distinguish central ideas from peripheral details. You may assume that the reader of your paper has knowledge of the general issues in the case. When preparing a case analysis, you should avoid: (1) simple fact recitation without interpretation, and (2) speculation without evidence or analyses to support your insights.
The case write-up should also include up to seven additional pages of exhibits that provide conceptual or quantitative analyses to support your interpretations and recommendations. Exhibits should provide clear and compelling elaboration or support for the issues addressed in the main body of the analysis. It is often effective to provide a one sentence summary on each exhibit to help readers understand what they should “take-away” from the exhibit. Assumptions should be explicitly identified in the exhibit. In addition, any exhibits must be referred to in the written analysis.
Individual cases and their due dates will be quasi-randomly assigned to students during the second class session. If you are unable to attend this session, it is your responsibility to check the course website to determine your individual case assignments.
Please observe the following administrative guidelines for written case analyses:
All assignments should be printed on standard-sized white paper and should have a word count (for the text only) at the bottom of the final page of text.
The text of the written analysis must not exceed four pages. You should use a 10 point font with 1 inch margins on all sides of the paper. Please double-space the text and number the pages. The page limit will be strictly enforced, and you will be penalized 15% for submitting text beyond four pages.
A maximum of seven pages of exhibits may be appended to your analysis to provide further conceptual or numerical analysis, and these should be used only to support your analysis (do not use the appendices for additional passages of text or simply to “bulk-up” an analysis). In addition, the implications of any exhibits must be discussed in the written analysis.
The text of the analyses should be in prose form. Bullet points and outlines should be avoided.
Put your University of Toronto student ID number on the front page of all assignments. Do not put your name on the written assignments.
Finally, keep a copy of your analysis when you turn in the paper to protect yourself in the event of an administrative problem. You should also have a copy available for the class discussion.
For additional information on analyzing, discussing, and writing-up cases in marketing, see “The Case Method of Instruction” and “Note on Low-Tech Marketing Math” in your required readings packet.