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- August 2022 (Revised March 2025)
- Case
Wasabi Technologies (A)
By: N. Louis Shipley and Mel Martin
After launching a successful hot cloud storage company, Founder and CEO David Friend is ready to scale the venture rapidly. Wasabi Technologies had focused primarily on direct sales, but an opportunity to pivot to channel sales was on the horizon. The company’s major... View Details
- August 15, 2022
- Article
Preparing Sales for a Changing Economy: Part 2: Getting More from Your Training Spending
A previous article discussed changing business development requirements and some implications. This article discusses three areas that are fundamental to getting ROI from training initiatives and how engagement between Sales and L&D professionals, completed by smart... View Details
- August 2022
- Case
Meaningful Gigs
By: Brian Trelstad and Rachel Philbin
In October 2020, just a year after founding their company Meaningful Gigs, founders Ronnie Kwesi Coleman and Stephanie Nachemja-Burton prepared for a vital investment meeting with Rethink Education. They had already reached $400,000 in annually recurring revenue (ARR)... View Details
- August 9, 2022
- Article
Preparing Sales for a Changing Economy: Part 1
Companies spend more per capita on sales training than any other function, but the return on investment is disappointing. One recent estimate indicates “that 85-90% of sales training fails to translate into a lasting improvement in productivity.” A major reason is... View Details
- July 2022
- Case
boAt Lifestyle
By: Rajiv Lal and Kairavi Dey
boAt began as a lifestyle brand in the consumer electronics category in 2016 with the aim of bringing affordable, durable, and fashionable audio products and accessories to millennials and Gen-Z customers in India. Born in 2016 with Amazon India as its only sales... View Details
- July 2022
- Supplement
Solution for E-Commerce Analytics for CPG Firms (A): Estimating Sales
By: Ayelet Israeli
Keywords: Data Analysis; Data Analytics; CPG; Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG); Estimation; Online Channel; Retail Analytics; Retail; Retailing Industry; Data; Data Sharing; Bricks And Mortar; Ecommerce; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Sales; Goods and Commodities; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States
- July 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
Nestlé, Shared Value and KitKat Diplomacy
By: Geoffrey G. Jones and Sabine Pitteloud
The case revolves around the decision on March 23, 2022 by Mark Schneider, the chief executive of Swiss-based Nestlé, to withdraw the emblematic Kit Kat chocolate bar from sales in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine in the previous month, although not its... View Details
- July 2022
- Case
General Mills: Responding to the Killing of George Floyd (A)
By: Debora L. Spar and Alicia Dadlani
Jeff Harmening, CEO of General Mills, one of the world's largest manufacturers of breakfast cereals and packaged foods, was deeply disturbed and instantly aware that he and General Mills would need to respond. George Floyd, an African-American man who had been accused... View Details
- July 2022
- Supplement
General Mills: Responding to the Killing of George Floyd (B)
By: Debora L. Spar and Alicia Dadlani
Jeff Harmening, CEO of General Mills, one of the world's largest manufacturers of breakfast cereals and packaged foods, was deeply disturbed and instantly aware that he and General Mills would need to respond. George Floyd, an African-American man who had been accused... View Details
- July 2022
- Teaching Note
Arçelik (A), (B): From a Dealer Network to an Omnichannel Experience
By: Ayelet Israeli, Fares Khrais and Menna Hassan
Arçelik Turkey, the country’s market leader in household appliances, was at an omnichannel crossroads in January 2020. Arçelik was a B2B player utilizing a dealership network with an umbrella of brands and had one of the largest brick-and-mortar store networks in... View Details
Keywords: Digital Marketing; Bricks And Mortar; Franchise Management; Franchising; Dealer Network; Dealers; B2B; B2B2C; Tradition; Culture Change; Cultural Adaptation; Omnichannel; Omnichannel Retail; Omni-channel; Omnichannel Retailing; Sales Channels; Sales Channel Development; Channel Management; Channels Of Distribution; Marketplace; Platforms; Collaboration; Online Channel; Online Data; Online Sales; Online Shopping; Online; Retail; Retailing; Disruption; Transformation; Franchise Ownership; Change Management; Partners and Partnerships; Consumer Behavior; Sales; Internet and the Web; Marketing Strategy; Conflict and Resolution; Conflict Management; Organizational Culture; Distribution Channels; Digital Transformation; Electronics Industry; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Turkey
- June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Background Note
Digital Commerce and Delivery: Preparing Food and Retail Value Chains for a 50-50 World
By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor, Paige Boehmcke and Will Ensor
Increasing digitalization of grocery retail and quick commerce reveals insights about managing complex supply chains at scale and shifting revenue streams from product sales to data monetization. How are the roles of retailers changing? What happens if marginal cost... View Details
Keywords: Grocery Delivery; Grocery; Digitalization; Fulfillment; Delivery; Supply Chain; Disruption; Food; Supply Chain Management; Market Design; Trends; Value Creation; Goods and Commodities; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Transformation; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; China
- June 2022
- Teaching Note
Katie Couric Media: Landing the First Client
By: N. Louis Shipley, William R. Kerr and Paige Boehmcke
Developed for teaching Entrepreneurial Sales, the Katie Couric Media case supports class discussion on client selection, sales strategy, and scaling a startup media firm. View Details
- Article
Do the Right Firms Survive Bankruptcy?
By: Samuel Antill
In U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, firms are either reorganized, acquired, or liquidated. I show that decisions to liquidate often reduce creditor recovery, costing creditors billions of dollars every year. I exploit the within-district random assignment of... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
An Anatomy of Performance Monitoring
By: Achyuta Adhvaryu, Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
Performance monitoring is a mainstay management tool in most organizations. Yet we still know little about whether—and why—better monitoring yields better performance in practice. To shed light on these questions, we study the introduction of a performance monitoring... View Details
Keywords: Performance Monitoring; Worker Skills; Skill Depreciation; Managerial Inattention; On-the-job Training; Productivity; Multitasking; Quick Serve Restaurants; Performance Evaluation; Employees; Competency and Skills; Training; Performance Productivity; Management; Information Technology; Food and Beverage Industry; Puerto Rico
- April 2022
- Case
The First Opium War and Global Free Trade
By: Jeremy Friedman and Allison Lazarus
The First Opium War (1839-1842) symbolized the peak of the era of European imperialism, with a political and cultural legacy that remains potent to this day. The British Empire, “acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness” as one observer famously claimed, seemed to be... View Details
Keywords: Imperialism; Narcotics; Importing; History; Globalized Markets and Industries; Trade; Social Issues
- March 2022 (Revised July 2022)
- Teaching Note
Camera IQ and the Metaverse: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences
By: Jill Avery
Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales... View Details
Keywords: Brand Management; Virtual Reality; Augmented Reality; B2B; E-commerce; Technology Platform; Marketing; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Growth Management; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Social Media; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Advertising Industry; United States
- March 2022 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Hometown Foods: Changing Price amid Inflation
During the early part of the 2021 Covid-19 pandemic, Hometown Foods, a large seller of flour-based products, thrived as consumers hoarded baked goods and took up baking to pass the time and find comfort. Then, amid growing shortages in commodities, a vaccine arrived,... View Details
- March 2022
- Article
Estimating the Effectiveness of Permanent Price Reductions for Competing Products Using Multivariate Bayesian Structural Time Series Models
By: Fiammetta Menchetti and Iavor Bojinov
Researchers regularly use synthetic control methods for estimating causal effects when a sub-set of units receive a single persistent treatment, and the rest are unaffected by the change. In many applications, however, units not assigned to treatment are nevertheless... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
Markups to Financial Intermediation in Foreign Exchange Markets
By: Jonathan Wallen
On average from 2013 to 2020, foreign asset managers in net sold forward 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars. This forward sale of dollars hedges the currency mismatch of foreign investment in U.S. dollar assets. By accommodating this demand, U.S. and European banks earn an... View Details
- February 2022 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Resident 2020
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones
Launched in 2016, Resident was a leading player in the direct-to-consumer bed-in-a-box mattress market, where it was one of at least 175 venture-backed companies competing in the space. By late 2020, it had realized over $500 million in revenue, profitability in the... View Details