Publications

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January 1998 (Revised June 1999)
Case

Chemdex.com

By: William A. Sahlman, Michael J. Roberts and Laurence E. Katz

An Internet start-up company is developing an online marketplace for specialty chemicals and reagents. David Perry has been named a runner-up in the 1st annual HBS Business Plan contest and now faces seed-stage financing questions--how much money to raise, at what... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Internet and the Web; Chemicals; Business Startups; Capital; Chemical Industry

June 2006 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Tech Data Corporation

Tech Data is a global supplier of logistics management services and one of the world's largest distributors of information technology equipment. Operational execution is key for the company, which has gross margins in the 5% range. At the end of 2005, the company had... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Information Infrastructure; Operations; Growth and Development Strategy

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10 Jan 2024
Research & Ideas

Technology and COVID Upended Tipping Norms. Will Consumers Keep Paying?

the COVID pandemic, and to recognize that a lot of them didn’t work for six months, a year, a year and a half during the shutdowns. It was like making up for the lack of tipping that we all did while we... View Details

Keywords: by Anna Lamb, Harvard Gazette

17 Oct 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, October 17, 2017

impressions they make. In field and online experiments in which participants take, share, and evaluate “selfies” (self-photos), we show that paradoxically, these challenges can... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September 2017
Teaching Note

Marketing Transformation at Mastercard

By: Sunil Gupta and Srinivas K. Reddy

Teaching Note for HBS No. 517-040. View Details

Keywords: Mastercard; Financial Services; Ingredient Brand; B2B2C; Experiential Marketing; Digital Marketing; ROI; Marketing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Brands and Branding; Internet and the Web; Investment Return; Financial Services Industry

02 Aug 2016
First Look

August 2, 2016

Russia’s car services industry positioned them well to truly understand their customers and ultimately expand to other major cities. But with limited budgets to acquire... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2002 (Revised July 2002)
Case

NTT DoCoMo: Marketing i-mode

By: Youngme E. Moon

i-mode is a wireless Internet service offered in Japan by NTT DoCoMo. In just three years, the service has won over 30 million subscribers and achieved a 60% share of Japan's mobile Internet market, making it the most successful mobile data service in the world. It is... View Details

Keywords: Price; Marketing; Marketing Channels; Market Entry and Exit; Market Participation; Success; Competition; Internet and the Web; Technology Adoption; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; Japan

February 2002 (Revised April 2002)
Case

Chengwei Ventures and the hdt* Investment

By: G. Felda Hardymon, Josh Lerner and Ann Leamon

Bo Feng, cofounder and principal in Chengwei Ventures, one of the first sovereign venture capital firms in China, is trying to decide on the proper business model for hdt, the product of a merger between two portfolio companies. This case discusses the best way for the... View Details

Keywords: Venture Capital; Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Relationship Management; Sovereign Finance; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Applications and Software; Markets; Business Model; Financial Services Industry; China

01 Jun 2004
News

Cyberposium: Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

point of view, it will create a new paradigm,” said Gupta. Radio frequency ID tags, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and online gaming were among the other topics covered.... View Details

Keywords: cyberposium; cost; Corporate Services

Fast Answer

Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise

investors and service providers across the private investment lifecycle. LSEG Workspace - provides public and private company profiles and strong... View Details

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... View Details

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January 2017
Case

Expanding Ecommerce at Technos

By: Thales Teixeira, Rohit Deshpandé, Ruth Costas and Priscilla Zogbi

Technos was the market leader in the Brazilian watch market. Its CEO had made a firm commitment to evolve the company’s marketing and commercial practices by focusing less on pushing product to retail clients and more on branding to end consumers to pull watches from... View Details

Web

Strategy & IT - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

resource planning. See below for “How Information Gives You Competitive Advantage.” The rise of the internet unleashed the second wave of IT-driven transformation in the 1980s and 1990s. The View Details

November 2000 (Revised July 2001)
Case

Intuit QuickBooks

By: Rajiv Lal and Punima P Kochikar

Internet QuickBooks, a successful product with a strong brand and an 85% share of retail sales, was faced with the challenge of meeting market growth expectations in a mature, slowing market segment. Generating recurring revenues by providing value-added online... View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Decisions; Growth and Development; Brands and Branding; Market Participation; Problems and Challenges; Internet and the Web; Value; Web Services Industry

16 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

to give them a better chance of surviving. In contrast, industries with increasing customer demand—grocery stores, online entertainment, teleconference providers, and their... View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim; Service; Service

March 2017 (Revised September 2017)
Case

Facebook Fake News in the Post-Truth World

By: John R. Wells and Carole A. Winkler

In January 2017, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was surrounded by controversy. The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States in November 2016 had triggered a national storm of protests, and many attributed Trump’s victory to... View Details