Publications

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May 2021 (Revised August 2021)
Supplement

Migros Turkey: Scaling Online Operations

By: Antonio Moreno and Anibha Singh

As Migros, one of Turkey’s largest grocery chains, forays into online groceries, the company faces operational challenges related to inventory management, fulfillment and last mile delivery and strategics questions related to growing in an ecosystem with rapidly... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Operations; Management; Competitive Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Turkey

July 2014 (Revised August 2014)
Case

AmazonFresh: Rekindling the Online Grocery Market

By: Rory McDonald, Clayton Christensen, Robin Yang and Ty Hollingsworth

More than a decade after the high-profile failures of several early online grocers, grocery remains the largest single U.S. retail category and one of the few that has not yet migrated online. Amazon began testing its grocery-delivery service, AmazonFresh, in Seattle,... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; New Markets; Grocery; Operations Strategy; Innovation and Invention; Strategy; Emerging Markets; Learning; Service Operations; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

26 Jun 2000
Research & Ideas

What’s an Internet Business Model? Ask a Health Care Professional

Though the Internet has woven itself into most aspects of life, few fields have adopted it more actively, and at times controversially, than health care. What new business models in health care, based on the... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health

August 2002 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Great Dakota Bank: Online Banking

By: Frances X. Frei, Youngme E. Moon and Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar

In 2002, Great Dakota Bank's retail division is considering how heavily it should be promoting the company's online banking service. A recent promotional campaign appears to have significantly increased enrollments in online banking, but it is unclear whether the bank... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Internet and the Web; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Technological Innovation; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Satisfaction; Management; Service Operations; Banking Industry

November 17, 2009
Article

The Dark Underbelly of Online Advertising

By: Benjamin Edelman

The Internet is sold to advertisers as a highly measurable medium that is the most efficient way to target exactly the right customers. But online advertising is also easily subverted—letting fraudsters claim advertising fees for work they did not actually do. The... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Online Advertising; Advertising Industry

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November 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

eBay Inc.: Internet Success or Fairy Tale?

By: David F. Hawkins and Jacob Cohen

A well-known financial analyst claims that eBay has never been profitable and currently does not generate any "unfettered" cash flow. View Details

Keywords: Cash Flow; Accounting; Web Services Industry

01 Sep 2007
News

Faculty Research Online

investment managers and firms. See http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5648.html. Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer Apple’s iTunes music download service and illegal... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools

April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
Supplement

edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (B)

By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin

Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,... View Details

Keywords: Laundry; O2O; Online-to-offline; Service Operations; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Transformation; Service Industry; China

2007
Working Paper

Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman

We report on a field study demonstrating systematic differences between the preferences people anticipate they will have over a series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Decision Choices and Conditions; Attitudes; Conflict and Resolution; Emotions; Film Entertainment; Cognition and Thinking; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

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10 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

Reinventing the Industrial Giant

products and combine them into solutions. As services grow to sizeable proportions, treat them as an independent business rather than as an adjunct to the industrial core.... View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria, Davis Dyer & Frederick Dalzell; Manufacturing

01 Jun 2008
News

Faculty Research Online

Management Innovation Take Us? Management could change a lot in the coming years, says HBS professor emeritus Jim Heskett. A few reasons: continued development of the Internet and the transparency View Details

Keywords: Educational Services; Educational Services

Winter 2016
Article

Analytics for an Online Retailer: Demand Forecasting and Price Optimization

By: Kris J. Ferreira, Bin Hong Alex Lee and David Simchi-Levi

We present our work with an online retailer, Rue La La, as an example of how a retailer can use its wealth of data to optimize pricing decisions on a daily basis. Rue La La is in the online fashion sample sales industry, where they offer extremely limited-time... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Price; Forecasting and Prediction; Revenue; Sales; Retail Industry

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March 2020 (Revised January 2022)
Case

Michelin: Building a Digital Service Platform

By: Sunil Gupta and Christian Godwin

Michelin, a tire company with over a century of experience, attempts to develop a digital service platform for its fleet and dealer customers. The case focuses on the challenges of bringing a large, well-established company into the digital age. Concerned about the... View Details

Keywords: Change; Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Making; Leading Change; Growth and Development; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Auto Industry; Auto Industry; Auto Industry; United States; France

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools

01 Mar 2010
News

Faculty Research Online

consumers prefer single songs over music “bundles.” The result? It is time for the industry to rethink its products and prices, writes Associate Professor Anita Elberse. See... View Details

30 May 2018
Research & Ideas

Should Retailers Match Their Own Prices Online and in Stores?

The line gets blurry for shoppers when retailers won't honor their online prices in-store. (Kwangmoozaa) While shopping for my 10-year-old daughter’s Halloween costume last October, I pulled out my smartphone View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail

01 Jun 2009
News

Faculty Research Online

HBS Working Knowledge is an online forum for innovation in business practice, offering a first look at new thinking from HBS faculty. Read the complete articles summarized below by visiting their Web links. Marketing After the Recession... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools

01 Feb 2000
News

Financial Services 24/7

what the Web has to offer, they will ask for and expect more. Learning from their own and each others triumphs and failures, firms will fine-tune their View Details

Keywords: Susan Young

12 Aug 2008
Op-Ed

Google-Yahoo Ad Deal is Bad for Online Advertising

A proposed advertising deal between Internet competitors Google and Yahoo would reduce competitiveness in the Internet advertising market, likely resulting in higher... View Details

Keywords: by Benjamin G. Edelman; Advertising; Publishing

March 2001 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Madison Avenue: Digital Media Services (C)

By July 2000, Madison Avenue had experienced extraordinary growth in sales, employees, clients, and service offerings. From late 1999 to July 2000, the company had taken several initiatives to redesign its internal processes so that the firm could continue to grow,... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Digital Marketing; Product Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Advertising Industry