Fast-moving Consumer Goods - Publications - Faculty & Research

Research Summary

Consumer's Relationships with Technologies

Susan M. Fournier is involved with two lines of research investigating consumers' relationships with technological products. The first project (with Professor David Mick of the University of Wisconsin) concerns 'everyday technologies' such as... View Details

April 2013
Case

Sterling Household Products Company

By: William E. Fruhan and Craig Stephenson

Sterling Household Products manufactures and markets a broad line of consumer goods from laundry soap and cosmetics to cleaning, disinfecting, and sanitizing products. The company has many highly regarded brand names and consistently reports impressive sales and... View Details

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24 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Reducing Risk with Online Advertising

merchants with these same marketing programs. Q: How should consumers protect themselves from potential fraud? A: It's highly desirable to keep your computer free of the sorts of bad software that I've described. There is a View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Video Game; Web Services

September 2020
Case

Drinkworks: Home Bar by Keurig

By: Sunil Gupta, Jonathan Levav and Julia Kelley

In the summer of 2018, Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis needed to make a number of go-to-market decisions ahead of his company’s upcoming product launch. Formed through a joint venture between Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch InBev, Drinkworks had developed an... View Details

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Educators

Willy Shih is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Management Practice in Business Administration. He is part of the Technology and Operations Management Unit, and he teaches in the MBA and Executive Education Programs. His expertise is in manufacturing, product... View Details

Keywords: industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods; industrial goods

23 Aug 2006
Op-Ed

The Real Wal-Mart Effect

policies in the United States favor consumers and offer fewer protections to other interests than is par for the course elsewhere. Is such proconsumerism a good thing? The answer, at least in relation to... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat & Ken A. Mark; Retail

01 Aug 2018
What Do You Think?

Are Free Trade and Free Markets Quaint Ideas From the Past?

consumers and workers, and the political realities of modern governments. That appears to be a central message conveyed by responses to this month’s column. Ian Brinkley raised the issue of shifting needs of trading partners as a problem... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

20 Aug 2001
Research & Ideas

Making an Ally of Uncle Sam

may not involve government. Value-net games have to do with cooperation and competition among businesses. 7 Public interest games pit coalitions of businesses, and even entire industries, against nonbusiness organizations like unions, View Details

Keywords: by Michael Watkins, Mickey Edwards & Usha Thakrar

September 1992 (Revised July 1994)
Case

MEM Company, Inc.: English Leather

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Laura Goode

In 1992, the president of MEM (a producer of personal care products, including men's fragrances) considered a redeployment of field sales efforts and changes in sales compensation policies. Any changes, moreover, must consider the context of strategic decisions... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Brands and Branding; Product Positioning; Consumer Behavior; Distribution Channels; Business Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

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18 Apr 2005
Research & Ideas

Prosper with Multi-Channel Retailing

customers weren't so different from the seventy million who enter its stores each week; slightly tech savvier, perhaps, and looking for higher-end goods "at Wal-Mart prices." She said the company was careful to do its own price... View Details

Keywords: by Julie Jette; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

23 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

Oil Price Fallout: What Happens Next?

The last six years have proved just how fluid the international oil market is. And if recent support of the Keystone Pipeline by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Nebraska Supreme Court (which approved the pipeline's path through that state) are any indication,... View Details

Keywords: Re: Richard H.K. Vietor; Energy; Utilities

March 2019
Case

Dabur India: Growing Professional Management from Family Roots

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Namrata Arora and Jonah Goldberg

The case opens in December of 2018, with Sunil Duggal, the CEO of Dabur India (a multinational consumer goods conglomerate with a focus in Ayurvedic products) contemplating who should succeed him at the head of the company. The new CEO will have been the first since... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Management Succession; Multinational Firms and Management; Business Growth and Maturation

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August 2012 (Revised August 2012)
Case

HealthAllies (A)

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Michael Sherman

This case describes a "do good and do well" firm that enables individuals to buy health care services at discounted prices. It delineates the characteristics of the uninsured and others who are the primary targets for the firm. "HealthAllies (B)" provides information... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Marketing Channels; Demand and Consumers; Commercialization; Health Industry

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October 2023
Case

Driving Sustainability at AB InBev

By: Ethan Rouen and Antonio Manuel Oftelie

It was the height of the summer in 2022, and Michel Doukeris, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), and Peter Kraemer, the company’s Chief Supply Officer, gazed across the vast desert surrounding Zacatecas, Mexico. They were visiting their Grupo Modelo Brewery,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; Transformation; Decisions; Environmental Sustainability; Leading Change; Growth Management; Business Model; Food and Beverage Industry; Mexico

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August 2020
Case

24M Technologies

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

In early 2020, 24M Technologies (24M) announced that two of its strategic investors had commenced building plants to produce lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries based on 24M’s novel semi-solid electrode technology. This promised to halve the cost of conventional Li-ion... View Details

Keywords: Lithium-ion Batteries; Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy

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25 Oct 2010
HBS Case

Tesco’s Stumble into the US Market

operandi has been to joint venture with a local retailer, acquiring good store locations and local management talent in the process. Tesco deserves credit for not taking a "me-too" approach in its US strategy. Tesco entered the... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

01 May 2009
What Do You Think?

Do Innovation and Entrepreneurship Have to Be Incompatible with Organization Size?

Summing Up Where are the leaders that can help elephants avoid a stall? Like a good case study, this month's question divided respondents nearly down the middle on the question of whether or not organizations naturally "stall"... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

2024
Working Paper

Digital Platforms 2.0: Learnings, Opportunities, and Challenges

By: Shrabastee Banerjee, Ishita Chakraborty, Hana Choi, Hannes Datta, Remi Daviet, Chiara Farronato, Minkyung Kim, Anja Lambrecht, Puneet Manchanda, Aniko Oery, Ananya Sen, Marshall W Van Alstyne, Prasad Vana, Kenneth C Wilbur, Xu Zhang and Bobby Zhou

Platform-based digital ecosystems form the backbone of our interactions with the Internet. Over the past decade, digital ecosystems have witnessed significant growth, both in terms of industry footprint and academic research. Yet, the challenges associated with their... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Technology Adoption; E-commerce; Market Design

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Forthcoming
Article

Economic Integration and the Transmission of Democracy

By: Marco Tabellini and Giacomo Magistretti

In this paper, we study the effects of economic integration with democratic partners on democracy. We assemble a large country-level panel dataset from 1960 to 2015, and exploit improvements in air, relative to sea, transportation to derive a time-varying instrument... View Details

Keywords: Democratization; Institutional Development; Economic Integration; International Trade; Democracy; Political Preferences; Institutions; Trade; Global Range; Economics; Government and Politics

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October 2017 (Revised August 2020)
Case

RB

By: Joshua Margolis, Vincent Dessain and Jerome Lenhardt

As 2016 was approaching its end, Rakesh Kapoor, CEO of RB, one of the world’s major fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, envisioned the prospect of a major acquisition that would add a line of health-related products that promised growth in the developing... View Details