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- December 2019
- Case
Walmart Ecommerce (B): Omnichannel Pursuits
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case is an abridged version (part 2 of 2) of "Walmart's Omnichannel Strategy: Revolution or Miscalculation?" HBS Case No. 720-370. The (B) case describes Walmart’s omnichannel strategy in 2018 as it battled Amazon for online retail market share. Walmart aimed to... View Details
- September 2019 (Revised August 2020)
- Case
Engineering an Inclusive Bioeconomy
By: Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma
In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Emerging Markets; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Science; Genetics; Natural Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Social Enterprise; Strategy; Strategic Planning; Information Technology; Ownership; Social Psychology; Trust; Society; Biotechnology Industry; South America; Amazon Basin
- 2019
- Article
More Amazon Effects: Online Competition and Pricing Behaviors
By: Alberto Cavallo
I study how online competition, with its shrinking margins, algorithmic pricing technologies, and the transparency of the web, can change the pricing behavior of large retailers in the U.S. and affect aggregate inflation dynamics. In particular, I show that in the past... View Details
- August 2019
- Case
Walmart's Omnichannel Strategy: Revolution or Miscalculation?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes Walmart's omnichannel strategy in 2018 as it battled Amazon for online retail market share. The case discusses Walmart's early forays into online retail, as well as its 2018 strategy, which aimed to integrate Walmart's enormous brick and mortar... View Details
- May 2019 (Revised August 2019)
- Teaching Note
X Fire Paintball & Airsoft: Is Amazon a Friend or Foe? (A) and (B)
By: Feng Zhu
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 617-046 and 617-047. View Details
- 2019
- Book
Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream: How Technology Is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity
By: Karen G. Mills
Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream describes the needs of small businesses for capital and demonstrates how technology—novel data sources, artificial intelligence, machine learning—will transform the small business lending market. This market has been... View Details
Keywords: Fintech; Big Data; Data; Technology; Artificial Intelligence; Great Recession; Regulation; Innovation; Banks; Lending; Loans; Access To Capital; American Dream; Community Banking; Small Business Administration; Entrepreneur; Government; Public Policy; API; Policy Making; Small Business; Financing and Loans; Technological Innovation; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Policy; AI and Machine Learning; Analytics and Data Science; United States
- February 2019
- Teaching Note
Whole Foods under Amazon
By: Dennis Campbell, Tatiana Sandino and Kyle Thomas
- October 2018
- Article
Competing with Complementors: An Empirical Look at Amazon.com
By: Feng Zhu and Qihong Liu
Platform owners sometimes enter complementors' product spaces to compete against them directly. Prior studies have offered two possible explanations for such entries: platform owners may target the most successful complementors so as to appropriate value from their... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised February 2019)
- Case
Shindigz
By: Frank Cespedes
Shindigz provides party and celebratory items for various occasions and events through its branded online channel, through third-party retail and wholesale channels, and external online marketplaces. The case focuses on pricing challenges facing a venture with an... View Details
- June 2018 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Voice War: Hey Google vs. Alexa vs. Siri
By: David B. Yoffie, Liang Wu, Jodie Sweitzer, Denzil Eden and Karan Ahuja
By early 2018, voice-controlled intelligent assistants had become a major new front in the battle between the giants of the technology sector. "Voice War" focuses on Alphabet’s strategy for Google Assistant, its entrant in the voice assistant space, and asks how the... View Details
- April 2018
- Supplement
Flipkart (B): The Ongoing Battle for India's E-Commerce Market
By: Sunil Gupta, Das Narayandas and Rachna Tahilyani
In 2017, both Flipkart and Amazon claimed leadership position in India's recently concluded key annual festive season sale, but it was too early to declare victory. Amazon continues to invest heavily in India. Competition from newer players is increasing. Media reports... View Details
- March 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Case
Whole Foods Under Amazon
By: Dennis Campbell, Tatiana Sandino, James Barnett and Christine Snively
In August 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion. Whole Foods was struggling with high costs and faced growing competition from traditional supermarkets offering more organic products. Prior to the acquisition, Whole Foods began rolling out a new... View Details
- February 2018
- Case
Amazon, Google, and Apple: Smart Speakers and the Battle for the Connected Home
By: Rajiv Lal and Scott Johnson
Amazon, Google, and Apple all offer their own smart speaker. The devices represent each firm's entry point into the connected home market. All three companies come into the space with their own strengths and weaknesses. Who will win? View Details
Keywords: Apple; Apple Inc.; Google; Amazon; Amazon.com; Google Home; Homepod; Echo; Smart Home; Connected Home; Voice; Artificial Intelligence; Machine Learning; Internet Of Things; Smart Speaker; Connected Speaker; Intelligent Assistants; Virtual Assistants; Voice Assistants; Alexa; Google Assistant; Siri; Technological Innovation; Disruptive Innovation; Competitive Strategy; Business Strategy; Adoption; Information Infrastructure; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Digital Platforms; Household; AI and Machine Learning; Electronics Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- February 2018 (Revised August 2019)
- Case
Amazon's HQ2 (A)
By: Karen Mills and Jan W. Rivkin
In September 2017, the Internet giant Amazon announced that it aimed to open a second headquarters in some city other than Seattle, its current home base. By 2032, the company projected, this “HQ2” would be home to as many as 50,000 high-paying tech jobs and up to $5... View Details
- January 2018 (Revised March 2019)
- Teaching Note
Jumia Nigeria: from Retail to Marketplace (A) and (B)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
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
- January 2018
- Supplement
Jumia Nigeria PowerPoint Supplement
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
- Article
Popular Acceptance of Inequality Due to Innate Brute Luck and Support for Classical Benefit-based Taxation
U.S. survey respondents' views on distributive justice differ in two specific, related ways from what is conventionally assumed in modern optimal tax research. When expressing their preferences over allocations in stylized, hypothetical scenarios meant to isolate key... 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
- March 2017 (Revised February 2018)
- Case
VMware and the Public Cloud
By: Raffaella Sadun and Christine Snively
In 2015, VMware, a pioneer in server and network virtualization and a member of parent company EMC’s “federation” of companies, had set its sights on becoming a leading public cloud provider. Two years prior, VMware first entered the public cloud market with its vCloud... View Details