Publications

November 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods

By: Jill Avery

Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods, offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3 price point that promised an... View Details

October 2017 (Revised October 2022)
Case

Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A)

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Namrata Arora

Founded in 2012, Jumia Nigeria, a startup effort by Germany-based Rocket Internet, aimed to become an African Amazon. The company entered the nascent market and immediately enjoyed an uptick in consumer spending fueled by the strength of Nigeria’s oil-based economy. By... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Marketplace; Inventory; Ecommerce; Funding; Business Ecosystem; Business Ecosystems; Competition; Business Model; Globalization; Emerging Markets; Expansion; Logistics; Competitive Strategy; E-commerce; Retail Industry; India; Nigeria; Africa

May 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Teaching Note

Angie's List: Ratings Pioneer Turns 20

By: Ayelet Israeli and Robert J. Dolan

Teaching Note for HBS No. 517-016. View Details

Keywords: Ratings; Marketing; Conjoint Analysis; Market Research; Pricing Strategy; Product Line Management; Two Sided Markets; Freemium; Ecommerce; E-commerce

February 2017
Teaching Note

The Tate's Digital Transformation

By: Jill Avery

John Stack was the visionary Head of Digital Transformation at the Tate, a collection of four major art galleries in the UK, including Tate Modern, the most visited gallery devoted to modern and contemporary art in the world. Stack was the architect of the Tate’s... View Details

January 2017 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Paytm: Building a Payments Network

By: Sunil Gupta, Das Narayandas and Rachna Tahilyani

By January 2017, Paytm, a mobile payments company that started in 2010, became India’s largest mobile payments platform with over 142 million users and $5 billion valuation. Could Paytm become a $100 billion company its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma envisioned it be? View Details

Keywords: Mobile Payments; Ecommerce; Mobile App; India; Entrepreneurship; Expansion; Service Operations; Mobile and Wireless Technology; E-commerce; Service Industry; India

January 2017
Case

Expanding Ecommerce at Technos

By: Thales Teixeira, Rohit Deshpandé, Ruth Costas and Priscilla Zogbi

Technos was the market leader in the Brazilian watch market. Its CEO had made a firm commitment to evolve the company’s marketing and commercial practices by focusing less on pushing product to retail clients and more on branding to end consumers to pull watches from... View Details

September 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Angie's List: Ratings Pioneer Turns 20

By: Robert J. Dolan and Ayelet Israeli

In 1995, before people “googled” or “yelped,” Angela Hicks (HBS, 2000) was establishing her Angie’s List as a pioneer in the accumulation and dissemination of consumer rating information. Hicks focused on the home repair and maintenance market and, as she put it,... View Details

Other Article

Online Discounting: Who is Leading the Race to the Bottom?

By: Ayelet Israeli, Eric Anderson and Anne Coughlan

A short review of the finidings in: Israeli, Ayelet, Eric Anderson, and Anne Coughlan. "Minimum Advertised Pricing: Patterns of Violation in Competitive Retail Markets." Marketing Science 35, no. 4 (July–August 2016): 539–564. View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Price Policies; Pricing Policies; Discounting; Retailing; Retailing Industry; Minimum Advertised Price; Ecommerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Price; Distribution Channels; Distribution; Digital Marketing; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; Advertising Industry; United States

2014
Book

Retail Revolution: Will Your Brick & Mortar Store Survive?

By: Rajiv Lal, Jose B. Alvarez and Dan Greenberg

In Retail Revolution, the authors go beyond the common belief of retail as a monolithic industry and provide a framework that any brick-and-mortar retailer can use to respond to the eCommerce threat. Through six examples, this book demonstrates how this... View Details

Keywords: Business Ventures; Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Distribution Channels; Retail Industry

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Article

Integration of Online and Offline Channels in Retail: The Impact of Sharing Reliable Inventory Availability Information

By: Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

Using a proprietary data set, we analyze the impact of the implementation of a “buy-online, pick-up-in-store” (BOPS) project. The implementation of this project is associated with a reduction in online sales and an increase in store sales and traffic. These results can... View Details

Keywords: Retail Operations; Inventory Availability; Empirical Operations Management; Business Analytics; Online Retail; Ecommerce; Operations; Management; Distribution Channels; Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Retail Industry

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