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June 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Inditex: 2000

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In 2000, Inditex was one of the largest specialty apparel retailers in the world, with $2.4 billion in sales from 1,080 stores across 33 countries. Zara, Inditex's main brand, produced popular designer items at a fraction of design-house prices and could push an item... View Details

Keywords: Fashion; Fashion Industry; Succession; IPO; Competition; Initial Public Offering; Multinational Firms and Management; Management Succession; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry; Retail Industry

25 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Rapport: The Hidden Advantage That Women Managers Bring to Teams

(worldwide), but service industries like food and retail in this part of the world are great examples, and they occupy very large proportions of the labor force. The findings here apply to a lot of workers,” Tamayo says. Rather than hire... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Food & Beverage

30 Sep 2008
First Look

First Look: September 30, 2008

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14302 The Effect of Labor on Profitability: The Role of Quality Author:Zeynep Ton Abstract Determining staffing levels is an important decision in retail operations. While the costs of increasing labor are... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Web

Podcast - Business & Environment

how IKEA is redesigning iconic products like the Billy bookcase to make them easier to disassemble and repair, how secondhand retail pilot programs at IKEA stores are reaching new customers, and how investments like RetourMatras are... View Details

02 Sep 2015
What Do You Think?

What's Wrong With Amazon’s Low-Retention HR Strategy?

low-retention HR strategy, its customers probably regard it as a highly successful application of that idea. Advocates of a high-retention strategy may wonder why Amazon hasn’t learned something from online retailer Zappos, a... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Retail; Retail; Retail; Retail; Retail

14 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

Curiosity, Not Coding: 6 Skills Leaders Need in the Digital Age

chairman of a major African retailer at one of the 21 global roundtable discussions we held with leaders of digital-first and incumbent companies. [div class=infogram-embed data-id=_/6OB5d19m9elT4JzFJntV][/div] More troubling, though, was... View Details

Keywords: by Linda A. Hill, Ann Le Cam, Sunand Menon, and Emily Tedards; Technology

December 2021
Case

Green Monday

By: José B. Alvarez, Billy Chan and Dawn H. Lau

This case describes the entrepreneurial journey of David Yeung, from campaigning for plant-based diets to building Green Monday, a purpose-driven business and an ecosystem based in Hong Kong comprising a retail platform, an alternative meat brand (“OmniPork”), a... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Social Enterprise; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Business Model; Mission and Purpose; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; Hong Kong; China; Asia

May 2018
Article

Effects of an Information Sharing System on Employee Creativity, Engagement, and Performance

By: Shelley Xin Li and Tatiana Sandino

Many service organizations rely on information sharing systems to boost employee creativity to meet customer needs. We conducted a field experiment in a retail chain, based on a registered report accepted by Journal of Accounting Research, to test whether an... View Details

Keywords: Information; Knowledge Sharing; Employees; Creativity; Performance

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June 2013 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Inditex: 2012

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In the 11 years since its public offering, Inditex and its flagship brand, Zara, had expanded into 86 countries, achieved $21.6 billion in revenue, and become the largest specialty apparel retailer in the world. In marked contrast to the general malaise of the Bolsa de... View Details

Keywords: Fashion; Strategy; Strategic Planning; Competitive Strategy; Fashion Industry; Spain

27 Sep 2018
Research & Ideas

Religion in the Workplace: What Managers Need to Know

communicated so people on the front line don’t have to decide how to work through these issues and make things up in the moment.” Muslim headscarf meets retailer’s dress code Sporting goods retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, founded in... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage; Apparel & Accessories

March 2004 (Revised September 2005)
Case

Newell Rubbermaid: Strategy in Transition

By: Cynthia A. Montgomery, Rhonda Kaufman and Carole Winkler

Describes the transformation of a company's corporate-level strategy. Begins by laying out the strategy that brought the Newell Co. stunning success for nearly three decades. The highly integrated, internally consistent strategy was tailored for manufacturing and... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Corporate Strategy; Transformation; Problems and Challenges; Acquisition; Product Development; Brands and Branding; Retail Industry; Retail Industry; United States

Willy Shih is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Management Practice in Business Administration. He is part of the Technology and Operations Management Unit, and he teaches in the MBA and Executive Education Programs. His expertise is in manufacturing, product... View Details

Keywords: retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing

Web

All Industries

Nonprofit / Government Other Financial Services Private Equity Retail Services Technology Venture Capital Career Data Internship Data View: Class of 2024 Class of 2024 Class of 2023 Class of 2022 Class of 2021 Class of 2020 Sort By: A-Z... View Details

15 May 2012
First Look

First Look: May 15

tax rates at high incomes are lower than in standard analysis and closer to those observed in policy. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-064.pdf Cases & Course MaterialsHome Depot and Interconnected Retail José... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

14 Jan 2014
First Look

First Look: January 14

harmful. Specifically, lower consumer surplus and welfare result from inflated retail prices, over-investment in providing benefits to buyers, and excessive adoption of the intermediary's services. Competition among intermediaries... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

16 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

Few companies in the past few years have rocketed to success faster than Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy, which together have transformed the way we hail a cab, plan a vacation, and shop for handmade gifts, respectively. In a previous HBS Working Knowledge article, How Uber,... View Details

Keywords: by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding; Retail; Retail; Retail

05 Jul 2023
Cold Call Podcast

How Unilever Is Preparing for the Future of Work

Keywords: Re: William R. Kerr; Retail; Retail

August 2024 (Revised December 2024)
Case

Influencer-Led Brand Building: Hairitage and the McKnights

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano

Longtime hairstyle influencer Mindy McKnight had been building her “Cute Girls Hairstyles” audience across numerous online platforms for nearly two decades. Brand incubator Maesa took an innovative approach to producing successful brands: identifying white space in the... View Details