ABSTRACT
The crisis of sudden market shift is the hardest for a manager to predict and one of the most difficult to control. Few markets have shifted as quickly as that for video games, as Steven Ross of Warner Communications discovered to his chagrin. Ross had built Warner into a conglomeration of businesses that sold leisure-time products ranging from movies to computers to perfumes. Ross hired a cigarette marketer, who was thoroughly unfamiliar with Warner, as his savior, and Morgan failed. Levi Strauss had diversified somewhat from its core blue jeans market; about a third of its sales came from such items as slacks, skirts, jackets, hats, and accessories. Levi Strauss has since changed its focus, broadening from a blue jeans company into an apparel company that will have a wide variety of products to protect it from sudden changes in fashion.
