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- All HBS Web
(266)
- News (69)
- Research (153)
- Events (1)
- Multimedia (1)
- Faculty Publications (75)
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- 23 Jul 2001
- Research & Ideas
Sam Walton: Great From the Start
father-in-law's loan in full. In his fifth year at the Ben Franklin on Front Street in Newport, Arkansas, Sam Walton—the sucker Butler Brothers had been looking for—sold $250,000 worth of merchandise and made a profit of between $30,000... View Details
- 29 Sep 2014
- Research & Ideas
Why Do Outlet Stores Exist?
Why do outlet stores exist? The answer may seem obvious to most shoppers—they are places where companies get rid of factory seconds or outdated merchandise at fire-sale prices. Read: bargains, bargains, bargains. And indeed, that may have... View Details
- 10 Feb 2022
- Research & Ideas
Why Are Prices So High Right Now—and Will They Ever Return to Normal?
early in the pandemic, but has become more widely available. Why empty shelves mean rising prices Missing merchandise is a sign that retailers are facing higher costs of replenishing inventories, which leads to higher inflation. In the... View Details
Keywords: by Rachel Layne
- 08 Aug 2022
- HBS Case
Building an 'ARMY' of Fans: Marketing Lessons from K-Pop Sensation BTS
that fall, drawing 80,000 people in 13 countries. The band’s ARMY grew in tandem, launching in 2014 and swelling eventually to 100 million members. Like typical fan clubs, members bought merchandise and snapped up concert tickets, but the... View Details
- 21 Aug 2013
- Research & Ideas
What Went Wrong at J.C. Penney?
high-low pricing cause are tremendous. Customers come into the store, they look at the new merchandise, and they look at the prices. They like the merchandise, but don't like the price, and so they don't buy. As a result, this new View Details
- 07 Jul 2019
- HBS Case
Walmart's Workforce of the Future
technological innovations such as robot workers and in-house incubators. Walmart fights a revenue drop The case details how the rise of ecommerce (and the success of Amazon in particular) affected Walmart’s discount stores (which sell general View Details
- 06 Dec 2022
- Research & Ideas
Latest Isn’t Always Greatest: Why Product Updates Capture Consumers
Because consumers gravitate to merchandise labeled as “updated,” even if the items are not necessarily improved, according to the results. "Once something says ‘revised’ on it, it makes you suspend critical judgment." “After showing... View Details
- 23 Oct 2000
- Research & Ideas
The Strategy-Focused Organization
targeted customer segments, produced increased customer satisfaction, which led to increased revenue from nongasoline merchandise and gasoline volume growth that exceeded industry averages by more than 2 percent per year. The innovative... View Details
Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton
- 12 Mar 2006
- Research & Ideas
New Research Explores Multi-Sided Markets
its cans, and Sony for its electronic devices. These suppliers are then responsible for supplying, displaying, pricing, and advertising their merchandise within the space allocated by Wal-Mart, and they receive the revenue from sales to... View Details
- 19 Apr 2004
- Research & Ideas
Birth of the American Salesman
any of his contemporaries, however, he strove to make an all-encompassing system of sales management. He created a global sales force that constantly sought new customers (and tried to sell replacement merchandise to existing ones) and... View Details
Keywords: by Laura Linard
- 05 Mar 2012
- Research & Ideas
Is JC Penney’s Makeover the Future of Retailing?
execute a strategy.” Penney will be able to move more merchandise off the floor faster, Lal adds, quickly making room for fresh items. This strategy could bring customers into the store more frequently and buying when they find a... View Details
- 25 Oct 2010
- HBS Case
Tesco’s Stumble into the US Market
lost time; competitors have responded to its initiatives by incorporating some of Tesco's approaches in their own merchandising and assortment selections. The second question is how long the Tesco board will permit management to... View Details
- 04 Apr 2011
- HBS Case
Reinventing the National Geographic Society
the Society's merchandising businesses, brand extensions, and licensed products and services? "This issue appears to be pretty straightforward—it's just a reporting issue," says Garvin. "In fact it embeds the larger issue... View Details
- 28 Jul 2008
- Research & Ideas
Making the Decision to Franchise (or not)
customer-facing operating environment affects organizational design choices such as control systems, incentives, performance measurement, and ownership structures," explains Campbell. "Even firms that have very standardized business models in terms of products, labor,... View Details
- 19 Oct 2021
- Research & Ideas
Fed Up Workers and Supply Woes: What's Next for Dollar Stores?
merchandise into their distribution centers. All retailers are suffering from a shortage of truckers, a shortage of trailers, shortage of capacity in all the logistics networks to move goods around. At the same time, we’re seeing... View Details
- 15 Mar 2017
- Lessons from the Classroom
More Than 900 Examples of How Climate Change Affects Business
This word cloud is composed of blog posts by more than 900 students describing how individual organizations are likely to be affected by climate change. Image by Patrick Clapp Last fall, first-year MBA students at Harvard Business School received a new assignment in... View Details
- 23 Aug 2006
- Op-Ed
The Real Wal-Mart Effect
would pay several percentage points more for the food and nonfood merchandise that—after housing—is their second-largest household expense. So in the debate about what to do about Wal-Mart, let's keep in mind who's reaping the benefits of... View Details
- 18 Aug 2003
- Research & Ideas
How New Managers Become Great Managers
promoted to vice president and divisional merchandise manager for furniture and decorative supplies. There she had profit and loss responsibility for $350 million and twelve people in an area with poor assortment of merchandise, flat... View Details
Keywords: by Linda Hill
- 02 Aug 2020
- What Do You Think?
Is the 'Experimentation Organization' Becoming the Competitive Gold Standard?
the probability of success for ideas central to a strategy. Frequent testing has been especially relevant for retailers, whose merchandise displays offer endless opportunities to test product placement ideas. Now organizations whose... View Details
- 06 Feb 2013
- What Do You Think?
Is ‘Conscious Capitalism’ an Antidote to Income Inequality?
stock went up 10 percent in the first hour after the market closed and the earnings were announced." This is a product of a philosophy that employees are critical, because they basically run the business. Working in teams in the company's stores, they buy some of the... View Details
Keywords: by James Heskett