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(634)
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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(634)
- News (106)
- Research (447)
- Events (1)
- Multimedia (2)
- Faculty Publications (255)
Harry B. Cunningham
Cunningham took over S. S. Kresge with a vision to convert the retail chain into a discounter. Cunningham opened the first K-Mart discount store in a Detroit suburb in 1962. When Cunningham embarked on his... View Details
Keywords: Retail
Julius Rosenwald
Though Richard Sears was the genius behind his company’s merchandise success, it was Rosenwald who set up the organizational structure necessary to help grow Sears into the largest retailer of the mid 1900s. Rosenwald established separate... View Details
Keywords: Retail
- 01 Jun 2008
- News
Toy Story
In 2005, a year after the venerable toy retailer FAO Schwartz emerged from bankruptcy, Ed Schmults (MBA ’89) became its CEO. “The company was relying on its glorious past but was without a clear brand direction,” Schmults explained to the... View Details
William T. Grant
Grant had established a chain of 30 stores, the 25 cent-limit on merchandise was raised to one dollar. W. T. Grant Company evolved into one of the largest retailing companies in the nation. By the time of... View Details
Keywords: Retail
- 30 Jul 2019
- News
Turning Around Tesco
The British-based grocery chain Tesco—the third-largest retailer in the world—recently marked its 100th anniversary with a record-setting, 30-hour dance relay in Wembley Stadium. There were other reasons to... View Details
- 03 Feb 2016
- Research & Ideas
The State of Customer Service Leadership
Southwest Airlines, for instance, has continued as a legendary US-based service provider since its inception in 1971, IKEA of Sweden has evolved to teach the world’s retailers about the power of a well- defined and well-executed service... View Details
- 15 Dec 2014
- Research & Ideas
Deconstructing the Price Tag
sentiment, the researchers conducted six lab experiments in which participants answered questions about a simulated website of a fashion retailer selling T-shirts. The research also included a field study of sales figures at a real online... View Details
Edward W. Carter
Carter developed the first suburban shopping center in 1947 in Los Angeles and popularized regional chain stores. Carter started with three regional stores in Los Angeles in 1946, and by 1980, had grown that number to 47. Carter expanded... View Details
Keywords: Retail
- 01 Jun 2017
- News
Case Study: Something New
expertise in various parts of a complex supply chain and high efficiency (to keep lead times down and costs manageable). But that is valuable precisely because it is difficult and thus very hard to replicate. —Ankur Daga (MBA 2005) What... View Details
Keywords: April White
Howard Schultz
Not only did Schultz foresee that a large-scale coffee shop chain was a lucrative business, but he maintained Starbucks lead through a combination of customer and employee satisfaction plans. Schultz’s plan to offer part-time employees... View Details
Keywords: Restaurants & Lodging
Charles E. Merrill
Merrill created the main street brokerage by founding the Merrill-Lynch Company. He was the first investment banker to realize that chain stores would one day dominate retailing and handled underwriting for... View Details
Keywords: Finance
- 27 Aug 2014
- Lessons from the Classroom
Learning From Japan’s Remarkable Disaster Recovery
Clinic, a provider of medical services; Fast Retailing Group, which owns a chain of apparel stores; and Lawson's, which operates more than 40,000 convenience stores. The cases underscore disaster recovery... View Details
Curtis L. Carlson
Carlson was the first entrepreneur to develop a loyalty program for the grocery chain through the issuance of Gold Bond trading stamps. What began as a simple loyalty program for grocers in the Midwest grew into one of the largest service... View Details
Keywords: Services
Sebastian S. Kresge
Kresge built the precursor to K-Mart, one of the first mass discounters. He started with ten-cent stores and developed full-fledged variety stores. By his retirement, his chain had almost 600 United States stores, a Canadian subsidiary,... View Details
Keywords: Retail
- 22 Feb 2016
- Research & Ideas
The ‘Mother of Fair Trade’ was an Unabashed Price Protectionist
California pharmacist and drugstore owner who balked at the price-slashing practices of chain store competitors and spearheaded a local price-control movement to protect her own bottom line—a crusade that would ultimately gain such... View Details
Samuel H. Kress
Kress built a discount chain store based on an economies of scale model. He started offering fewer items than traditional 5- and 10- cent stores, in order to offer bargain prices to a lower-income clientele. Kress’ stores were a great... View Details
Keywords: Retail
- 26 Jul 2010
- Research & Ideas
Yes, You Can Raise Prices in a Downturn
industry. But research at HBS and other places1 shows that within-industry differences in profitability and returns are typically much greater than across industries. Buffett knows this, investing in "bad" industries like furniture View Details
Charles R. Walgreen III
Rico, owned nearly 300 restaurants, most of which were adjacent to the drugstores, and manufactured over 400 Walgreens branded products. Walgreen’s became the first drug-store chain to earn revenues of a billion dollars. View Details
Keywords: Retail
- 15 Jul 2015
- Research & Ideas
Amazon Prime Day: The Logic Behind a Retailer’s Made-up Holiday
revenue for Amazon, in addition to the additional value the online retailing giant gets from the loyalty customers feel once they are enrolled. "THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT PRIME MEMBERS ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT FOR AMAZON, AND IT GIVES... View Details
- 01 Sep 2010
- News
Faculty Books
The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance by Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman (Harvard Business Press) Professor Raman and his coauthor explain how to use analytics to better... View Details