PASHA Holding OJSC was based in Baku, Azerbaijan, with subsidiaries in insurance, banking, property development, construction, and tourism sectors. The most important subsidiary of the holding was PASHA Bank OJSC since its establishment in 2007. It offered all major financial services, including investment banking, trade financing and asset management. Being the largest private bank in its original market by total equity, PASHA Bank launched Baku-based financial institutions in Georgia and Turkey as of year 2013 and 2015, respectively. Swift growth that spread to three countries demanded for a strategy to align and differentiate the dynamic capabilities of the markets and efforts. This case focuses on the development of the PASHA Bank Turkey’s Marketing Strategy, and its learning outcomes encompass business insights valuable for emerging markets regarding geographical expansion, and integration to international financial system.

Purpose: Twitter usage during Gezi Park Protests, a significant large-scale connective action, is analyzed to reveal meaningful findings on individual and group tweeting characteristics. Subsequent to the Arab Spring in terms of its timing, the Gezi Park Protests began by the spread of news on construction plans to build a shopping mall at a public park in Taksim Square in Istanbul on May 26, 2013. Though started as a small-scale local protest, it emerged into a series of multi-regional social protests, also known as the Gezi Park demonstrations. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: The authors sought answers to three important research questions: whether Twitter usage is reflective of real life events, what Twitter is actually used for, and is Twitter usage contagious? The authors have collected streamed data from Twitter. As a research methodology, the authors followed social media analytics framework proposed by Fan and Gordon (2014), which included three consecutive processes; capturing, understanding, and presenting. An analysis of 54 million publicly available tweets and 3.5 million foursquare check-ins, which account to randomly selected 1 percent of all tweets and check-ins posted from Istanbul, Turkey between March and September 2013 are presented. Findings: A perceived lack of sufficient media coverage on events taking place on the streets is believed to result in Turkish protestors’ use of Twitter as a medium to share and get information on ongoing and planned demonstrations, to learn the recent news, to participate in the debate, and to create local and global awareness. Research limitations/implications: Data collection via streamed tweets comes with certain limitations. Twitter restricts data collection on publicly available tweets and only allows randomly selected 1 percent of all tweets posted from a specific region. Therefore, the authors’ data include only tweets of publicly available Twitter profiles. The generalizability of the findings should be regarded with concerning this limitation. Practical implications: The authors conclude that Twitter was used mainly as a platform to exchange information to organize street demonstrations. Originality/value: The authors conclude that Twitter usage reflected Street movements on a chronological level. Finally, the authors present that Twitter usage is contagious whereas tweeting is not necessarily.

Diageo, the world’s spirits giant, acquired the Turkish spirits market leader Mey Icki in 2011. By the time, Diageo had approximately 30% market share globally, while Mey Icki had approximately 70% domestic market share. Mey Icki had enjoyed benefits and perks of being a state-owned company, until TGP Capital, a US based private-equity firm, bought Mey Icki for $800 million in 1996 from the privatization administration of Turkey. Five years later, TGP Capital sold Mey Icki to Diageo PLC for $2.1 billion.

Enduring two M&As, on top of being previously state-owned, brought along many managerial and strategic issues to Mey Icki despite its dominant position in the market via Yeni Rakı (a.k.a. the Lion’s Milk), also renown as the national spirit of Turkey. On the other hand, Diageo had its own agenda for differentiation throughout its international markets, and the comprehensive distribution network that it was able to lay its hands on in Turkey, ship Yeni Rakı to different markets of the world, or rose appetite for its world-known brands, such as Johnnie Walker whisky, Smirnoff vodka and Captain Morgan’s rum in Turkey, one of the largest and fastest growing markets of Europe.