Publications

May 2020
Teaching Note

Shiseido: Reinvesting in Brand

By: Jill Avery

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 519-026. Shiseido was in the midst of a six year corporate turnaround, trying to reverse the effects of decades of under-investment in R&D and marketing that had led to a vicious cycle of declining customer support and brand value. Would... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Marketing ROI; Brand Portfolio Strategy; Growth Strategy; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Growth and Development Strategy; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Japan; Asia

November 1998 (Revised November 1999)
Case

British Sugar in China

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Srinivas Sunder

British Sugar, the first major diversification of Associated British Foods, is entering China as part of the global sweetener, starch, and ingredient strategy. View Details

Keywords: Trade; Food; Globalization; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Diversification; Consumer Products Industry; China; United Kingdom

Find at Harvard

2012
Chapter

Firing Your Best Customers: How Smart Firms Destroy Relationships Using CRM

By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier

With incidences in the 20%–25% range, the practice of firing customers has become increasingly attractive as firms try to maximize the lifetime value of their customer portfolios. This chapter traces the relationship trajectory of a 30-year customer of Filene's... View Details

Keywords: Brands; Brand Management; CRM; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customers; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

Career Coach

Hillary Mann

Hillary Mann (MBA, Babson ’15; University of Michigan ’04) is a Corporate Relations Director who manages relationships with organizations in Consumer Products, Retail & Luxury Goods, Hospitality, Agribusiness, View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

January 2023
Supplement

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)

By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s... View Details

27 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: September 27

specificity at the individual level. We discuss the implications of our results for the study of learning and experience as well as for the providers and consumers of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 1994 (Revised May 1995)
Case

Laura Ashley (B): Defining a Strategy

By: Richard L. Nolan

A turnaround CEO engineers a business transformation and formulates short-term and long-term strategy after assessing the business situation. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Management Teams; Business Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

03 Jan 2017
First Look

January 3, 2017

regulate the industry. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52032 Populism and the Return of the 'Paranoid Style': Some Evidence and a Simple Model of View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

January 1991 (Revised November 1994)
Supplement

Black Caucus Groups at Xerox Corp. (B)

Describes the compromise worked out between Xerox and the black caucus groups. The implications of this arrangement for Xerox and black employees over the next 16 years is also described. View Details

Keywords: Agreements and Arrangements; Employee Relationship Management; Race Characteristics; Consumer Products Industry

08 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

The Startling Percentage of Financial Advisors with Misconduct Records

iStock Even as President Donald Trump and Republican leaders seem set on a course to weaken Obama-administration consumer protection regulations, a soon-to-be-published study reports that 7.3 percent of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

July 1994 (Revised March 1995)
Case

Microsoft: Multimedia Publications (B)

By: Marco Iansiti and Ellen Stein

Microsoft is about to release an apparently successful CD-ROM baseball product. The company is trying to determine what product(s) should be developed next, how it should organize itself, and what role it should play in the development of such products. View Details

Keywords: Product Development; Applications and Software; Product Design; Organizational Structure; Product Launch; Business Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Washington (state, US)

21 May 2019
Cold Call Podcast

If the Key to Business Success Is Focus, Why Does Amazon Work?

Keywords: Re: Sunil Gupta; Retail

April 1994 (Revised May 1995)
Case

Laura Ashley (A): A New CEO Takes Charge

By: Richard L. Nolan

In a turnaround situation, a new CEO must take actions in the short term to gain control and exercise executive leadership and lay groundwork to formulate a long-term strategy to rebuild a viable business. View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Management Teams; Business Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

October 2016
Case

Malenti Strings: Intrapreneurship within FLG, Inc.

By: David A. Garvin and Rachel Gordon

This case follows Jenica Fletcher as she rebuilds her company's guitar strings division from the ground up. Convinced that she could turn the division around if given complete independence from corporate headquarters, Fletcher relocated the group, rebranded it as... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Management Style; Management Practices and Processes; Restructuring; Business Divisions; Consumer Products Industry

Career Coach

Lauren Murphy

Lauren is the Founder and Principal Coach of Pivotal Executive Coaching, partnering with senior business leaders to accomplish their professional and organization goals. She works with executives in... View Details

June 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Revlon India's Turnaround: Navigating Online-Offline Decisions Using a Balanced Scorecard

By: Tatiana Sandino and Samuel Grad

Revlon India was founded as a joint venture in 1995, pairing the industrial conglomerate UMG with the global beauty brand Revlon, Inc. to bring international color cosmetics to India. After growing rapidly and pioneering the Beauty Advisor (BA) model in India, the... View Details

10 Nov 2008
Research Event

Social Media Leads the Future of Technology

capital—anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000—yet get to scale quickly and build new applications on the Web. Sleeping By The Cell Phone Just as technology is influencing society, society is increasingly making View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

June 2003 (Revised August 2003)
Case

Pension Policy at The Boots Company PLC

By: Luis M. Viceira and Akiko M. Mitsui

In early 2000, the trustees of the pension scheme at Boots considered a proposal to move 100% of the pension assets into a bond portfolio, which would be passively managed. The Boots Co. PLC was a leading retailer of cosmetics and toiletries in the United Kingdom, and... View Details

Keywords: Performance Productivity; Employees; Asset Management; Capital Structure; Investment Portfolio; Consumer Products Industry; United Kingdom

April 2016 (Revised July 2019)
Case

"Doctor My Eyes"--The Acquisition of Bausch & Lomb by Warburg Pincus (A)

By: Nori Gerardo Lietz

In early 2010, senior partners at Warburg Pincus met to review a report on Bausch & Lomb Incorporated, the firm's largest investment at the time. Warburg Pincus had led a group of investors in acquiring Bauch & Lomb on October 26, 2007, taking the company private and... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Mergers ＆ Acquisitions; Governance; Buyout; Private Equity; Finance; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Governance; Health Care and Treatment; Reports; Business Model; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States