Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,188)
- Faculty Publications (480)
- June 2023
- Supplement
Clash of Two Giants Simulation Exercise
By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti
Many markets are organized around platforms that connect consumers with complementary applications and services. These platforms are two-sided because both sides - consumers and those providing applications or services - need access to the same platform to interact. A... View Details
- June 2023
- Exercise
Clash of Two Giants Simulation Exercise Instructions
By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti
Many markets are organized around platforms that connect consumers with complimentary applications and services. These platforms are two-sided because both sides - consumers and those providing applications or services - need access to the same platform to interact. A... View Details
- June 2023 (Revised October 2024)
- Teaching Note
Clash of Two Giants Simulation Exercise Teaching Note
By: Feng Zhu
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 623-092. Many markets are organized around platforms that connect consumers with complimentary applications and services. These platforms are two-sided because both sides—consumers and those providing applications or services—need access... View Details
- June 2023 (Revised November 2024)
- Case
Collaboration Wars: Slack vs. Microsoft Teams 2023
By: David B. Yoffie, Kriti Gupta, Mehek Punatar, Poonam Sacheti and Poorvi Vijay
What's the future of corporate communications? Email? Corporate messaging? The battle for corporate messaging in 2023 was stacking up as a fight between Slack, which had been recently acquired by Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams. This case explores a classic judo... View Details
- March–April 2023
- Article
Pricing for Heterogeneous Products: Analytics for Ticket Reselling
By: Michael Alley, Max Biggs, Rim Hariss, Charles Herrmann, Michael Lingzhi Li and Georgia Perakis
Problem definition: We present a data-driven study of the secondary ticket market. In particular, we are primarily concerned with accurately estimating price sensitivity for listed tickets. In this setting, there are many issues including endogeneity, heterogeneity in... View Details
- February 2023
- Case
Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse
By: Ayelet Israeli and Nicole Tempest Keller
In 2022, Roblox had 58.8 million daily active users, including over half of all children and teens under the age of 16 in the United States. Roblox, a free-to-use “co-experience platform”, allowed users to come together in immersive 3D experiences to socialize, work,... View Details
Keywords: Entertainment; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Market Design; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Business Strategy; Economics; Economy; Economic Systems; Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Digital Platforms; Markets; Price; Innovation and Management; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Video Game Industry; Technology Industry; United States; California; North America; South America; Asia; Europe
- December 2022 (Revised September 2024)
- Case
Sword Health
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Annelena Lobb and Carin-Isabel Knoop
Virgilio “V” Bento, CEO of Sword Health—a startup that provided virtual physical therapy to patients in self-insured firms via AI and sensor technology with supervision by a physical therapist with a doctorate—considered how to increase its U.S. market share. To do so,... View Details
- December 2022
- Case
The Magic of Marks & Spencer Food
By: David E. Bell, Natalie Kindred and Damien McLoughlin
- December 7, 2022
- Article
Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash
By: Shai Bernstein and Scott Duke Kominers
In the past year, crypto markets dropped from $2.9 trillion in value to around $800 billion. In the wake of the collapse, crypto lenders and exchanges have been accused of fraud and other wrongdoing. What went wrong? One factor is competition. In theory, competition... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market
By: Yanhui Wu and Feng Zhu
A growing number of people today are participating in the gig economy, working as independent contractors on short-term projects. We study the effects of competition on gig workers' effort and creativity on a Chinese novel-writing platform. Authors produce and sell... View Details
- December 2022
- Article
When and How Should Firms Differentiate? Quality and Advertising Decisions in a Duopoly
By: Dominique Olié Lauga, Elie Ofek and Zsolt Katona
A prominent hallmark of competitive interaction is the desire to differentiate from rivals. In this article, the authors examine under what conditions firms will differentiate through product quality versus advertising intensity. Firms select quality in a first stage,... View Details
- November 2022 (Revised March 2023)
- Case
OneSmart
By: Nien-he Hsieh, Meg Rithmire and Shu Lin
At the end of 2021, Xi “Steve” Zhang was facing an existential crisis for himself and his business. OneSmart was a premium educational company founded in 2008 offering K-12 afterschool tutoring for students nationwide under a number of brands. The company was founded... View Details
- November 2022 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
The Globalization of Manchester City Football Group
By: Maria P. Roche, Tiona Zuzul, Exequiel Hernandez and Amy Klopfenstein
This case describes the efforts of City Football Group (CFG) to purchase Esporte Clube Bahia (Bahia), a Brazilian professional soccer club. CFG’s strategy was to acquire under-performing clubs worldwide, invest money in high-profile players, and improve the teams’... View Details
Keywords: Business Ventures; Acquisition; Business Conglomerates; Geography; Geographic Location; Geographic Scope; Globalization; Global Strategy; Globalized Markets and Industries; Markets; Demand and Consumers; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Organizations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Sports; Strategy; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Diversification; Expansion; Sports Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; England; South America; Brazil
- 2024
- Working Paper
Adjusting Prices in the Long-tail: The Role of Competitive Monitoring
By: Ayelet Israeli and Eric Anderson
Most e-commerce retailers offer a long-tail of very low demand products. Individually, these items may have low sales but collectively they are critical to the overall e-commerce business model. Because of their minimal sales, pricing is a constant challenge. The... View Details
- September–October 2022
- Article
Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price
By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant
Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers.
In this article, the authors present a scorecard to... View Details
Keywords: Retail; Retailing; Online Business; Ecommerce; E-commerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Omnichannel Retail; Omnichannel Retailing; Amazon; Amazon.com; Sales; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Fashion Industry; Advertising Industry; Battery Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Distribution Industry; Electronics Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- September 10, 2022
- Article
NFT Sales: Clearing the Market, Avoiding Gas Wars
By: Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden
Instead of letting the market decide the price for their primary sale offerings, many NFT projects choose to initially sell their NFTs at prices below the market-clearing level. But what happens when market designers trade off efficiency for equity; or when demand far... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Algorithmic Assortment Curation: An Empirical Study of Buybox in Online Marketplaces
By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
Most online sales worldwide take place in marketplaces that connect sellers and buyers. The presence of numerous third-party sellers leads to a proliferation of listings for each product, making it difficult for customers to choose between the available options. Online... View Details
- August 2022 (Revised June 2024)
- Exercise
How Should Netflix Add an Ad-Supported Tier?
By: Elie Ofek and Olivier Toubia
In the summer of 2022, it became clear that Netflix would introduce an ad-supported tier alongside its existing subscription plans in the near future. Speculation abounded as to the details of the new tier: How many minutes of advertising would it include? What picture... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
Air Wars: Deregulating the U.S. Airline Industry
By: Tom Nicholas and James Weber
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the U.S. government assisted in the development of an airline industry by subsidizing the delivery of mail and allowing mail carriers to also fly passengers. Because the government awarded mail routes to the lowest... View Details
Keywords: Government Regulation; Deregulation; Change Management; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Business History; Human Resources; Compensation and Benefits; Labor; Labor Unions; Leading Change; Leadership Style; Crisis Management; Industry Structures; Operations; Strategy; Adaptation; Competition; Air Transportation; Air Transportation Industry; United States
- August 2022 (Revised March 2023)
- Case
Pricing at Netflix: The Sequel
By: Elie Ofek and Amy Klopfenstein
This case continues the themes discussed in "Pricing at Netflix" (Case 521-004). Following the conclusion of the original case, Netflix developed new, high-profile original content, added millions of subscribers, and introduced another price increase in January 2022.... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Advertising; Marketing Strategy; Entertainment; Film Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Finance; Strategy; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Business Strategy; Adaptation; Internet and the Web; Customers; Customer Satisfaction; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Advertising Industry; North and Central America; United States