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Publications
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- November 2022
- Case
The Battle Among Channels for Marketing Pharmaceuticals: UpScript, Pharmacy Benefit Managers, and Direct-to-Consumer Sales
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Tiffany Farrell
Can an online pharmacy both improve the quality and speed of care for patients who need branded drugs and stabilize profits for pharmaceutical manufacturers? UpScript, after years spent achieving legal and regulatory compliance and simultaneous technological innovation...
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- November 2022
- Background Note
The Future of E-Commerce: Lessons from the Livestream Wars in China
By: Ayelet Israeli, Jeremy Yang and Billy Chan
This note explores the emerging multi-billion dollars commerce trend of livestream commerce. Livestream commerce is the sale of goods or services directly to consumers via live shows on digital platforms (such as social media or e-commerce platforms). It is a form of...
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Keywords:
Retail;
Retailing;
E-commerce;
E-Commerce Strategy;
Ecommerce;
Channels Of Distribution;
Marketing Communication;
Livestream Commerce;
Marketing;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Advertising;
Brands and Branding;
Media;
Consumer Behavior;
Social Media;
Retail Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Advertising Industry;
China;
United States;
United Kingdom
- September–October 2022
- Article
Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price
By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant
Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers.
In this article, the authors present a scorecard to...
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Keywords:
Retail;
Retailing;
Online Business;
Ecommerce;
E-commerce;
E-Commerce Strategy;
Omnichannel Retail;
Omnichannel Retailing;
Amazon;
Amazon.com;
Sales;
Digital Marketing;
Internet and the Web;
Business Model;
Retail Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Fashion Industry;
Advertising Industry;
Battery Industry;
Apparel and Accessories Industry;
Beauty and Cosmetics Industry;
Distribution Industry;
Electronics Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
United States
- August 2022
- Exercise
Joy4Home Brands: Pricing Matters
By: Elie Ofek, Oded Koenigsberg and Marco Bertini
Joy4Home Brands, the maker of novel houseware items, was gearing up for its launch. The company would be introducing two lines: kitchenware products and storage containers. The initial go-to-market plan called for a direct to consumer (DTC) channel strategy. While...
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- June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Background Note
Digital Commerce and Delivery: Preparing Food and Retail Value Chains for a 50-50 World
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor, Paige Boehmcke and Will Ensor
Increasing digitalization of grocery retail and quick commerce reveals insights about managing complex supply chains at scale and shifting revenue streams from product sales to data monetization. How are the roles of retailers changing? What happens if marginal cost...
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Keywords:
Grocery Delivery;
Grocery;
Digitalization;
Fulfillment;
Delivery;
Supply Chain;
Disruption;
Food;
Supply Chain Management;
Market Design;
Trends;
Value Creation;
Goods and Commodities;
Customer Value and Value Chain;
Digital Transformation;
Retail Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
United States;
China
- Article
Do the Right Firms Survive Bankruptcy?
By: Samuel Antill
In U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, firms are either reorganized, acquired, or liquidated. I show that decisions to liquidate often reduce creditor recovery, costing creditors billions of dollars every year. I exploit the within-district random assignment of...
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- March 2022
- Case
Natura: Weathering the Pandemic at Brazil's Cosmetic Giant
By: Brian Trelstad, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira
Brazil's Natura, a purpose-driven, multi-brand cosmetics group, closed the acquisition of iconic rival Avon just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The deal more than doubled Natura's revenues to over $7 billion and cemented its position as Latin America's biggest...
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Keywords:
COVID-19 Pandemic;
ESG Reporting;
Acquisition;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Decision Making;
Social Entrepreneurship;
Environmental Sustainability;
Environmental Management;
Climate Change;
Ethics;
Moral Sensibility;
Values and Beliefs;
Global Strategy;
Corporate Governance;
Health Pandemics;
Human Resources;
Human Capital;
Crisis Management;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Marketing;
Distribution Channels;
Supply Chain;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Mission and Purpose;
Organizational Culture;
Customer Ownership;
Relationships;
Business and Community Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Networks;
Partners and Partnerships;
Science-Based Business;
Reputation;
Human Needs;
Social Issues;
Strategy;
Equality and Inequality;
Beauty and Cosmetics Industry;
Brazil;
Latin America
- March 2022
- Article
Estimating the Effectiveness of Permanent Price Reductions for Competing Products Using Multivariate Bayesian Structural Time Series Models
By: Fiammetta Menchetti and Iavor Bojinov
Researchers regularly use synthetic control methods for estimating causal effects when a sub-set of units receive a single persistent treatment, and the rest are unaffected by the change. In many applications, however, units not assigned to treatment are nevertheless...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
CRM and AI in Time of Crisis
By: Michelle Y. Lu and Navid Mojir
A crisis can affect the incentives of various players within a firm’s multi-layered sales and marketing organization (e.g., headquarters and branches of a bank). Such shifts can result in sales decisions against the firm’s best interests. Motivated by the backlash to...
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- October 2021 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Bodega Aurrera: eCommerce at the Base of the Pyramid
By: Michael Chu, Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui, Carla Larangeira and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
Bodega Aurrera, serving the base of the pyramid and Walmart’s main Mexican format, is considering launching a full eCommerce channel as Covid-19 has erupted in the country. In 2019, Bodega Aurrera accounted for 45% of revenues and 2,748 of Walmex’s 3,416 stores. Having...
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- September 2021
- Case
On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb
Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high...
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Keywords:
Business Startups;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Disruption;
Transformation;
Trends;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Customer Relationship Management;
Decision Making;
Cost vs Benefits;
Decisions;
Entrepreneurship;
Venture Capital;
Equity;
Executive Compensation;
Recruitment;
Selection and Staffing;
Disruptive Innovation;
Technological Innovation;
Job Interviews;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Ownership Stake;
Opportunities;
Applications and Software;
Technology Adoption;
Technology Industry;
Web Services Industry;
New York (city, NY);
California;
France
- April 2021
- Case
Distinct Software
By: Das Narayandas, Arijit Sengupta and Jonathan Wray
Distinct Software (disguised name), a global enterprise software company, is at an important point in its growth trajectory where the luster of its mantra of “grow and win at any cost” has dimmed with increasing competition and margin pressures. To help navigate its...
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- March 2021 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Seeding and Selling Asana
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal
In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and...
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Keywords:
SaaS;
Customer Journey;
Business Model;
Business Organization;
Change Management;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Growth Management;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Product Marketing;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Structure;
Digital Platforms;
Internet and the Web;
Technology Industry;
United States
- March 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
M-KOPA: Empowering Lives
By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Wale Lawal and Pippa Tubman Armerding
The Pay As You Go solar power company in East Africa had sales of $71 million in 2019. It wished to grow to $300 million by 2025. M-KOPA, founded by three entrepreneurs in 2011, had grown nicely in Kenya and Uganda to reach nearly 750,000 households with an...
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- Article
Selling After the Crisis
Like perishable goods in grocery stores, sales models have a sell-by date. As product standards evolve and new entrants emerge, buyers have more choices and demand more in terms of quality and performance across vendors. Firms that fail to adjust to changing customer...
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- Article
New Sales Realities
Business leaders need to understand that it’s the fit of People, Process, Pricing, and Partners that drives sales effectiveness. As firms confront new buying processes, required sales competencies affect hiring, training, and development (People). Without a coherent...
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- February 2021
- Case
Threadless: The Renewal of an Online Community
By: Shane Greenstein, Karim Lakhani and Christian Godwin
Threadless, an online apparel company and artist community which Jake Nickell founded in 2000, continued to maintain its status as a top company in the online apparel industry during its second decade. From 2010 to 2020, Threadless continued to operate its...
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Keywords:
Business Model;
Decision Making;
Entrepreneurship;
Innovation and Invention;
Leading Change;
Management;
Marketing;
Product Launch;
Operations;
Supply Chain;
Distribution;
Networks;
Sales;
Strategy;
Adaptation;
Information Technology;
Applications and Software;
Digital Platforms;
Apparel and Accessories Industry;
Technology Industry;
North America
- Article
How Real Sales Learning Happens: In the Flow of Work
By: Yuchun Lee, Mark Magnacca and Frank V. Cespedes
Most learning in sales is through peer learning in task-specific contexts, and the effects are cumulative because modeling behavior is a big driver of how salespeople develop. This is very different from the experience in most training seminars, especially if the...
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- February 2021
- Case
Yellow Digital Retailers: Providing Solar Electricity to Transform Rural Africa
By: Lynda M. Applegate, Frank V. Cespedes and Michael Norris
In 2020, Mike Heyink and Maya Stewart, co-founders of the Pay-as-you-Go Solar company Yellow were considering how to grow their startup. They had achieved some success in their first market, Malawi, and had recently entered Uganda, where business was slower. What did...
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- September 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
d.light
By: Michael Chu, Krishna G. Palepu and Dilyana Karadzhova Botha
Kenyan off-grid-solar pioneer d.light can power entire homes in rural Africa but must now decide how to fund the growth of its asset-heavy business model. Ned Tozun and Sam Goldman founded d.light in 2006 to transform lives through solar solutions enabling access to...
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