Publications

June 2020 (Revised August 2020)
Supplement

Vanguard Retail Operations (B)

By: Willy C. Shih and Antonio Moreno

The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or... View Details

Keywords: Pooling; Generalist Model; Specialist Model; Service Operations; Management; Financial Services Industry; United States

2018
Working Paper

Need for Speed: The Impact of Website Performance on Online Retail

By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno

The share of e-commerce sales is rapidly increasing and so are the associated losses generated by website outages and slow websites. We leverage novel retail and website performance data to investigate the impact of website performance on online sales. This question is... View Details

Keywords: Online Retail; Quasi-experiments; Abandonment; Synthetic Control; Internet and the Web; Performance; Service Operations

SSRN

20 Oct 2011
News

New Business Ideas for the U.S. Postal Service

Keywords: U.S. Postal Service; Government; Government; Government

November 2014
Teaching Note

Marketing Marijuana in Colorado

By: John A. Quelch

The case, set in the middle of 2014, reviews the first six months of marketplace activity in Colorado, following the legalization of marijuana for recreational use and the expansion of marijuana retailing from medical dispensaries to recreational stores. The case... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Innovations; Retail Government Services; Public Health; Agribusiness; Customers; Goods and Commodities; Government and Politics; Health; Marketing; Society; Consumer Products Industry; Distribution Industry; Health Industry; Public Administration Industry; North and Central America

January 2015
Case

Marie Trellu-Kane at Unis-Cité: Establishing Youth Service in France

By: Julie Battilana, Michel Anteby and Anne-Claire Pache

Marie Trellu-Kane is trying to decide how Unis-Cité should respond to French President Jacques Chirac's announcement in 2005 of a new national voluntary civil service program. Since 1994, Trellu-Kane and her co-founders had been creating and overseeing a civil service... View Details

Keywords: Expansion; Leadership; Non-profit Management; Government And Business; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Design; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Social Enterprise; Paris

January 2021
Article

State and Local Government Employment in the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Daniel Green and Erik Loualiche

Local governments are facing large losses in revenues and increased expenditures because of the COVID-19 crisis. We document a causal relationship between fiscal pressures induced by COVID-19 and the layoffs of state and local government workers. States that depend... View Details

Keywords: Local Government; Municipal Finance; Public Finance; Fiscal Capacity; Fiscal Policy; Governance; Local Range; Health Pandemics; Employment; Finance; Policy; Public Sector

Read Now

April 2002 (Revised March 2006)
Background Note

Economics of Retail Banking Note

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Explains the financial operations of retail banking, highlighting profitability challenges facing the industry. For U.S. banks, it is quite common for more than half of the customer base to be unprofitable and to have relatively few customers make up the vast majority... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Economics; Cost; Banks and Banking; Profit; Revenue; Service Operations; Banking Industry; United States

25 May 2011
HBS Case

QuikTrip’s Investment in Retail Employees Pays Off

It's a much believed assumption in the retail world: If you're going to compete on the basis of low cost, then you can't afford to invest in your employees. Extensive training—who has the time to give? Regularly scheduled hours?—way too... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

19 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Ground-Floor Opportunities for Retail in India

India's economic growth is an exciting new playing field for the retail industry and for entrepreneurs looking to get in on the ground level, a panel of that country's businessmen agreed. Rising incomes, increased advertising, and a jump... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail; Retail

May–June 2023
Article

Need for Speed: The Impact of In-Process Delays on Customer Behavior in Online Retail

By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno

The impact of delays has been widely studied in various offline services. The focus of this study is online services, and we explore the impact of in-process delays—measured by website speed—on customer behavior. We leverage novel retail and website speed data to... View Details

Keywords: Online Retail; Quasi-experiments; Abandonment; Synthetic Control; E-commerce; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Policy; Retail Industry

Find at Harvard

Mikey Dickerson and Haley Van Dyck found themselves far from home and far from certain about where to take the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) next. In the summer of 2015, they had landed in London to meet with Mike Bracken, director of the United Kingdom’s... View Details

19 May 2011
Research & Ideas

Empathy: The Brand Equity of Retail

said. “One of the challenges we face in retail service operations is that the customer is part of the operating process” Raman also talked about empathy in dealing with difficult customers who hurt business... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Health

10 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Retailing Revolution: Category Killers on the Brink

solutions to this issue include membership-only stores or allowing for price matching so that the consumer is unlikely to leave the showroom without making a purchase. Retailers must find ways to get consumers or manufacturers to pay for... View Details

Keywords: by Rajiv Lal & Jose B. Alvarez; Retail

October 2020 (Revised February 2021)
Case

Twiga Foods: Revolutionizing African Retail (A)

By: Shikhar Ghosh, Pippa Tubman Amerding and Wale Lawal

Twiga is a leading agricultural produce supplier in Kenya offering services to mostly informal retailers. Under Peter Njonjo, a co-founder and Twiga’s new CEO, the company is considering multiple options for expanding its business, including offering packaged foods and... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Structure; Retail Industry; Nairobi

07 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Banning Big-box Stores Can Hurt Local Retailers

Sometimes city governments issue zoning requirements prohibiting the construction of giant retail stores. The latest: Swansboro, North Carolina, where town residents are hotly debating an ordinance that, in... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

October 2014
Case

CreditEase: Providing Credit and Financial Services for China's Underclass

By: Lena G. Goldberg, Paul Healy and Nancy Hua Dai

In 2013 Ning Tang, who in 2006 founded CreditEase as a broker of P2P loans to unbanked individuals and small businesses in China, confronts the challenges of rapid growth and expansion in a changing regulatory environment. CreditEase needs to develop technology to... View Details

Keywords: P2P Lending; HNW Products And Services; Business Growth; Business Start-ups; Government Regulation; Change Management; Credit; Microcredit; Banking; Innovation And Management; Developing Countries And Economies; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Social Entrepreneurship; Law; Financing and Loans; Change; China

Fast Answer

Government Contracts

How do I find government contracts? The following resources can be used to find government contracts issued to a... View Details

March 2011
Case

Cash Flow Productivity at PepsiCo: Communicating Value to Retailers

PepsiCo developed a new metric that better measured the value added by Pepsi products than did gross margin, the traditional metric used by retailers to determine shelf space and promotional activity. The new metric, cash flow productivity, captured the value of... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Cash Flow; Measurement and Metrics; Distribution; Performance Productivity; Value Creation; Retail Industry; Retail Industry