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- February 2024
- Case
Tabby: Winning Consumers' Digital Wallets
By: Eva Ascarza and Fares Khrais
Hosam Arab (MBA 2009), cofounder and CEO of Tabby, a Saudi-based fintech startup, raised its Series D funding round in October 2023, four years after its inception, valuing it as a regional unicorn. Tabby's core product, a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) service, allowed... View Details
- February 2024 (Revised December 2024)
- Case
Best Buy Health: Enabling Care at Home
This case explores retailer Best Buy’s decision to enter health care. Best Buy Health aims to enable care at home across three prongs: consumer health, active aging, and virtual care. A key pillar of Best Buy Health's strategy is leveraging the Geek Squad—the company's... View Details
- February 2024
- Module Note
Data-Driven Marketing in Retail Markets
By: Ayelet Israeli
This note describes an eight-class sessions module on data-driven marketing in retail markets. The module aims to familiarize students with core concepts of data-driven marketing in retail, including exploring the opportunities and challenges, adopting best practices,... View Details
Keywords: Data; Data Analytics; Retail; Retail Analytics; Data Science; Business Analytics; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Omnichannel; Omnichannel Retailing; Omnichannel Retail; DTC; Direct To Consumer Marketing; Ethical Decision Making; Algorithmic Bias; Privacy; A/B Testing; Descriptive Analytics; Prescriptive Analytics; Predictive Analytics; Analytics and Data Science; E-commerce; Marketing Channels; Demand and Consumers; Marketing Strategy; Retail Industry
- February 2024
- Case
FIGS: Scrubbing the Status Quo
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Nicole Tempest Keller
In October 2023, FIGS had revolutionized the medical scrubs industry with its fashionable and functional designs, but the venture was at a critical juncture. The digitally native vertical brand (DNVB) had gone public in a successful IPO in 2021 and reached $500 million... View Details
- January 2024
- Background Note
Evaluating Innovations in the Organization of Primary Care: What Type of Innovation Is It and How Well Does It Align with the Six Factors?
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and James Wallace
How can we evaluate if innovative health care ventures can do good—benefit society—and do well—become financially viable? This question is the topic of the first module in the Innovating in Health Care course book.
This note and "Health Stop (A): What Type... View Details
This note and "Health Stop (A): What Type... View Details
- January 2024
- Case
Sprouts Farmers Market
By: Rajiv Lal, Forest L. Reinhardt and Natalie Kindred
Sprouts Farmers Markets (Sprouts) is a Phoenix, Arizona-based chain of 400-plus natural foods stores in 23 U.S. states and $6.4 billion in sales as of 2022. In its product assortment, brand image, and store environment, Sprouts emphasizes freshness, health, innovation,... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Impact of Culture Consistency on Subunit Outcomes
By: Jasmijn Bol, Robert Grasser, Serena Loftus and Tatiana Sandino
We examine the association between subunit culture consistency—defined as the congruence between the organizational values espoused by top management and those perceived and practiced by subunit employees—and subunit outcomes. Using data from 235 subunits of a... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Estimating Productivity in the Presence of Spillovers: Firm-Level Evidence from the U.S. Production Network
By: Ebehi Iyoha
This paper examines the extent to which productivity gains are transmitted across U.S. firms through buyer-supplier relationships. Many empirical studies measure firm-to-firm spillovers using firm-level productivity estimates derived from control function approaches.... View Details
- December 18, 2023
- Article
Are Everywhere Stores the New Face of Retail?
By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
Historically, customer engagement and product fulfillment occurred in the same place — a traditional retail store. But today, retailers are beginning to explore how they can create opportunities for customers to engage with products in native environments. A related... View Details
- November 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Infarm: Betting the (Indoor) Farm on Food Security
By: Elie Ofek
In the summer of 2023, the co-founders of Infarm, a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company, were contemplating a major pivot going forward. While Infarm had successfully shown it could grow over 75 products—mainly herbs, leafy greens and mushrooms—in modular... View Details
- November 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Technical Note
Customer Data Privacy
By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei Huang
This note provides an overview of the evolving landscape of customer data privacy in 2023. It highlights two pivotal aspects that make privacy a central concern for businesses: building and maintaining customer trust and navigating the intricate regulatory... View Details
- November 2023
- Case
Chai Point
By: Rembrand Koning, Daniel W. Elfenbein and Kanika Jain
Chai Point was an Indian food and beverage company focused on chai. It started in 2010 as a retail store network but soon expanded to corporate offices by developing an IoT-enabled automatic tea and filter coffee machine. By 2023, Chai Point had 170 stores and 5000... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Equity Market Implications of the Retail Investment Boom
By: Philippe van der Beck and Coralie Jaunin
This paper quantifies the impact of Robinhood traders on the US equity market. Within a structural model, we estimate retail and institutional demand curves and derive aggregate pricing implications via market clearing. The inelastic nature of institutional demand... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
KOKO Networks: Bridging Energy Transition and Affordability with Carbon Financing
By: George Serafeim, Siko Sikochi and Namrata Arora
The problem was massive: two million hectares of African forests were lost annually to charcoal production for cooking, an area equivalent to 13 times Greater London, resulting in one billion tons of carbon emissions yearly. At the same time, an estimated 700,000... View Details
Keywords: Clean Tech; Digital; Carbon Credits; Carbon Offsetting; Climate Change; Entrepreneurship; Energy Sources; Environmental Sustainability; Health; Market Design; Business Startups; Transition; Environmental Regulation; Policy; Energy Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Africa; Kenya; Rwanda
- 2022
- Working Paper
Why Do Index Funds Have Market Power? Quantifying Frictions in the Index Fund Market
By: Zach Y. Brown, Mark Egan, Jihye Jeon, Chuqing Jin and Alex A. Wu
Index funds are one of the most common ways investors access financial markets and are perceived to be a transparent and low-cost alternative to active investment management. Despite these purported virtues of index fund investing and the introduction of new products... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
GameStop: Social Media Finds a Cheat Code (A)
By: Joseph Pacelli and Sarah Mehta
This case covers the events leading up to the 2021 GameStop short squeeze. Using GameStop as an illustrative example, the case explores the rise in retail trading, increased financial information sharing on social media, and the gamification of investing enabled by... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Technical Note
Design and Evaluation of Targeted Interventions
By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei (David) Huang
Targeted interventions serve as a pivotal tool in business strategy, streamlining decisions for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. This note delves into two central facets of such interventions: first, the design of potent decision guidelines, or targeting... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
FARM Rio: Bringing a Brazilian Fashion Brand to the World
By: Isamar Troncoso and Jill Avery
FARM Rio, a twenty-six year old Brazilian fashion brand, had recently put down roots in the U.S. The brand, known for its bold, colorful, nature-inspired tropical prints, was testing the waters in Europe to assess if and how the brand should further expand globally.... View Details
- October 2023
- Article
Stock Market Stimulus
By: Robin Greenwood, Toomas Laarits and Jeffrey Wurgler
We study the stock market effects of the arrival of the three rounds of “stimulus checks” to U.S. taxpayers and the single round of direct payments to Hong Kong citizens. The first two rounds of U.S. checks appear to have increased retail buying and share prices of... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
The Impact of Input Inaccuracy on Leveraging AI Tools: Evidence from Algorithmic Labor Scheduling
By: Caleb Kwon, Antonio Moreno and Ananth Raman
Problem Definition: Considerable academic and practitioner attention is placed on the value of ex-post interactions (i.e., overrides) in the human-AI interface. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to ex-ante human-AI interactions (e.g., the... View Details