Publications

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February 2001
Case

BarnesandNoble.com (C)

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Dickson Louie and William A. Sahlman

At the end of 1999, Steve Riggio, the vice chairman and acting CEO of barnesandnoble.com, wonders what his company should do next against Amazon.com, the online retailer who is the leading online book seller in the United States. While barnesandnoble.com has been... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Internet and the Web; Diversification; Brands and Branding; Retail Industry

31 Oct 2018
News

Decline of Book is a Fake News

2020
Working Paper

Machine Learning for Pattern Discovery in Management Research

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury

Supervised machine learning (ML) methods are a powerful toolkit for discovering robust patterns in quantitative data. The patterns identified by ML could be used as an observation for further inductive or abductive research, but should not be treated as the result of a... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Theory Building; Induction; Decision Trees; Random Forests; K-nearest Neighbors; Neural Network; P-hacking; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis

SSRN

January 2018 (Revised March 2020)
Case

SAP: Branding in the Digital Age

By: Das Narayandas and Amram Migdal

By 2017, digital, social, and mobile technologies were rapidly changing the way many of SAP’s traditional customers did business over the last decade. In response to this trend, SAP had acquired companies with capabilities in e-commerce, human capital, workforce... View Details

Keywords: Brand Positioning; Marketing; Sales; Brands and Branding; Strategy; Technology Industry

August 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Paktor: Designing a Dating App

By: Michael Luca, Stephanie Chan and Essie Alamsyah

Paktor is a popular mobile-based online dating app from Singapore, where a user can swipe right or left on a profile to indicate her interest in a potential match. The case is designed to explore issues related to pricing, market design, and launch strategies in the... View Details

Keywords: Mobile and Wireless Technology; Design; Price; Product Launch; Global Strategy

31 Mar 2015
News

How to Launch Your Digital Platform

21 Mar 2020
News

No quarter: Coronavirus is killing pinball halls—and all the other communal spaces we call ‘home’

2022
Working Paper

E-commerce During COVID: Stylized Facts from 47 Economies

By: Joel Alcedo, Alberto Cavallo, Bricklin Dwyer, Prachi Mishra and Antonio Spilimbergo

We study e-commerce across 47 economies and 26 industries during the COVID-19 pandemic using aggregated and anonymized transaction-level data from Mastercard, scaled to represent total consumer spending. The share of online transactions in total consumption increased... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Health Pandemics; Spending; Internet and the Web; Global Range; Analysis; E-commerce

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December 2000 (Revised July 2001)
Case

Ventro: Builder of B2B Businesses (Condensed)

By: Lynda M. Applegate and Meredith Collura

Enables a condensed analysis of Ventro (formerly known as Chemdex), which builds and operates multiple B2B marketplace companies. Part of the Building-E-Business Online series. View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Management; Strategy; Business Strategy; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry

July 2016
Teaching Note

Launching Yelp Reservations

By: Michael Luca, Kevin Mohan and Patrick Rooney

This teaching note accompanies "Launching Yelp Reservations (A) and (B)," which present a multi-party negotiation among Yelp, current partner OpenTable, and two startups in the online restaurant reservation industry. View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Negotiation; Business Startups; Acquisition; Technology Industry; United States

Youngme Moon is the Donald K. David Professor of Business at Harvard Business School. Professor Moon's research sits at the intersection of brand strategy and culture, with a particular focus on the emergent AI economy. She is the author of the bestselling book, View Details

26 May 2013
News

An Auction? Most EBay Users Don't Have Time for That

August 10, 2019
Editorial

E-Commerce Promised the World. Are We Happy With Our Purchase?

By: Louis Hyman and Kwelina Thompson

It has been 25 years since the first online transaction, but we are still struggling with the balance between convenience and security. View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Technology Adoption; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Internet and the Web

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August 2022 (Revised October 2023)
Case

Bajaj Finance: Building an Omnipresent Financial Services Firm

By: Das Narayandas and Rachna Tahilyani

Bajaj Finance, India’s largest consumer finance firm with $20.9 billion of assets across 50.5 million customers, is on a journey to transform itself from a traditional firm that sells loans and other financial products through brick-and-mortar outlets to an omnipresent... View Details

Keywords: Financial Institutions; Transformation; Financial Instruments; Customer Satisfaction; Internet and the Web; Customer Focus and Relationships; India

24 Feb 2015
News

Culture Clash: Silicon Valley vs. the U.S. Government

December 2010 (Revised June 2014)
Supplement

eBay Partner Network — slide supplement

By: Benjamin Edelman

eBay considers adjustments to the structure and rules of its affiliate marketing program, eBay Partner Network (ePN). In particular, eBay reevaluates affiliate compensation structure, the role of bonuses for especially productive affiliates, and the overall rationale... View Details

Keywords: History; Job Cuts and Outsourcing; Internet and the Web; Markets; Marketing Channels; Negotiation Participants; Marketing; Compensation and Benefits; Service Industry

March 2017 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Ant Financial (A)

By: Feng Zhu, Ying Zhang, Krishna G. Palepu, Anthony K. Woo and Nancy Hua Dai

Headquartered in Hangzhou (China), Ant Financial has grown into a fintech “Unicorn.” The fintech empire that the company established spanned verticals such as mobile and online payment (Alipay), money market fund (Yu’e Bao), wealth management (Ant Fortune),... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Global Strategy; Finance; Opportunities; Technology Industry; Technology Industry

December 2018
Supplement

Amazon Acquires Whole Foods (B)

By: Rory McDonald, Sarah Mehta and Shaye Roseman

This short case, meant for pairing with HBS No. 615-013, “AmazonFresh: Rekindling the Online Grocery Market,” explores Amazon’s rationale for acquiring Whole Foods. View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Growth and Development Strategy; Technology Industry; Technology Industry

January 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Index

By: Jose Alvarez and Julia Kelley

In December 2017, Marc Freed-Finnegan and Jonathan Wall, the co-founders of retail technology company Index, had to discuss the company’s direction as they entered 2018. Five years earlier, Freed-Finnegan and Wall had founded Index after observing the technological... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Product Positioning; Sales; Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Technology Industry; Technology Industry