Publications

June 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Hennes & Mauritz, 2000

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In 2000, Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) was the second-largest and most global player in the fashion retail business. It operated 682 stores, 80% of them outside its home country of Sweden, and achieved revenues of $3.0 billion and operating profits of $375 million. In 1999,... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Strategy Alignment; Strategic Planning; Fashion; Risk Management; Competition; Problems and Challenges; Management Teams; Globalized Firms and Management; Expansion; Distribution Channels; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Sweden

14 May 2018
Research & Ideas

Amazon vs. Whole Foods: When Cultures Collide

critics referred to the store as “Whole Paycheck.” The acquisition was initially met positively by Wall Street, amid hopes that Amazon’s data-driven mindset might be just the thing to enable Whole Foods to scale up and add more View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

Web

Middle East & North Africa - Global

strategic choices about offline expansion and globalization. Founded in 2015, Boutiqaat combined social commerce, localized logistics, and private label products to build a differentiated digital platform. Students must evaluate whether Boutiqaat should establish... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Consumption: The Impact of Access and Value

By: Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson and Georgia Perakis

The goal of this paper is to leverage household-level data to improve food-related policies aimed at increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables (FVs) among low-income households. Currently, several interventions target areas where residents have limited... View Details

Keywords: Food Deserts; Food Access; Food Policy; Causal Inference; Food; Nutrition; Poverty; Government Administration

SSRN

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November 2015
Case

Katherine Schuler at Boxes & Bins, Inc.

By: Linda A. Hill and James Kindley

This case is about Katherine Schuler, soon to become senior vice president of marketing at a fast-growing retail organization, Boxes & Bins (B&B). Part of Schuler's success has been due to her "fit" into a company with clear values and principles. In particular, B&B... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Personal Development and Career; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry

22 May 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Testing Strategy with Multiple Performance Measures Evidence from a Balanced Scorecard at Store24

Keywords: by Dennis Campbell, Srikant M. Datar, Susan L. Kulp & V.G. Narayanan; Food & Beverage

April 2015 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Transformation of NCR

By: David Collis, Raffaella Sadun and Matthew Shaffer

During his tenure as CEO since 2005, Bill Nuti had moved NCR Corporation (originally National Cash Register) from its historical competence in hardware to become a provider of hardware and software for managing transactions across a range of industries and payments... View Details

Keywords: NCR; Hardware; Software; Acquisitions; Financial Services; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Transformation; Acquisition; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry

January 2015 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Nasty Gals Do It Better

By: David Collis, Diane Chang, Matthew Shaffer and Ashley Hartman

In 2006, Sophia Amoruso started Nasty Gal, an eBay boutique selling vintage clothes. With a strong sense of style and personality, Amoruso poured herself into building the brand and developing relationships with her customers—typically the slightly edgy 18–24 year old.... View Details

Keywords: Business Growth; Brand Management; Online Retail; Clothing; Apparel; Expansion; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Management; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning; Social Media; E-commerce; Digital Marketing; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States

Web

Podcast - Business & Environment

redesigning iconic products like the Billy bookcase to make them easier to disassemble and repair, how secondhand retail pilot programs at IKEA stores are reaching new customers, and how investments like RetourMatras are developing... View Details

August 28, 2018
Article

How Intermittent Breaks in Interaction Improve Collective Intelligence

By: Ethan Bernstein, Jesse Shore and David Lazer

People influence each other when they interact to solve problems. Such social influence introduces both benefits (higher average solution quality due to exploitation of existing answers through social learning) and costs (lower maximum solution quality due to a... View Details

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May 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Gap, Inc., 2000

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

From humble beginnings as a Levi jeans store, by 2000 Gap, Inc. had grown to become the world's leading specialist clothing retailer. Its CEO, Millard S. Drexler, the "merchant prince," was credited with transforming Gap into a global empire, leading the company... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Change; Fashion; Risk and Uncertainty; Competition; Performance Consistency; Problems and Challenges; Globalized Firms and Management; Competitive Strategy; Business Growth and Maturation; Strategy; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; United States