beauty - Publications - Faculty & Research

04 May 2021
Book

Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

organization. To find out what drove each member of Best Buy’s executive team, I organized a dinner in 2016, in a room overlooking Minneapolis’s beautiful Lake Bde Maka Ska. It was part of one of our regular quarterly retreats. Everyone... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail

06 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

that increase confidence in a person’s entrepreneurial abilities. Like the conviction of Marla Malcolm Beck and husband Barry Beck that high-end beauty retail stores and spas, tightly coupled with online stores, was the business model of... View Details

Keywords: by HBS Working Knowledge

25 Jan 2017
HBS Case

How Should Advertisers Respond to Consumer Demand for Whiter Skin?

fairer, while many European and American women prefer a dark tan. “This is an issue that manifests in many different societies,” Deshpandé says. “Although this case study originated in India, the issues it deals with are universal issues that business leaders have to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Beauty & Cosmetics

12 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

Swiping Right: How Data Helped This Online Dating Site Make More Matches

tell if these online matches came to fruition in real life.) Defining desirability To sort matches, the researchers measured desirability, though not in the “supermodel” sense. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: The team determined... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

24 Jan 2011
HBS Case

Terror at the Taj

On November 26, 2008, 175 people died in Mumbai, India, when 10 terrorists simultaneously struck sites. Of the five locations—all well-known landmarks—the beautiful domes of the hotel known as the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower would become... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Accommodations

02 Jun 2022
Research & Ideas

Blissful Thinking: When It Comes to Finding Happiness, 'Your Dreams Are Liars'

and a former professional French-horn player, Brooks came to the subject of happiness by way of art. His early research focused on why people produce and consume art and beauty as well as the motives behind human generosity. He discovered... View Details

Keywords: by Dan Morrell

February 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Technical Note

The Art and Science of Brand Valuation

By: Jill Avery

Brand valuation, the art and science of calculating the economic value accruing to a firm from its use of an intangible brand asset, yields frustratingly inconsistent, discrepant, and, therefore, controversial results. While it is widely accepted that brands are... View Details

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November 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods

By: Jill Avery

Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods, offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3 price point that promised an... View Details

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07 Jul 2019
HBS Case

Walmart's Workforce of the Future

annual revenue at those stores from $142.5 billion in 2009 to 97.7 billion in 2018. During the same time period, revenue at Walmart’s “supercenters” (larger stores that also sell groceries and often include services such as eye care, View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail

05 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

The Accidental Innovator

his important pieces came out of some experiments with unusual tools; he wasn't trying to do a piece of work, he was just trying out the unfamiliar tools, and something interesting happened. Another, a potter, showed me how he would create View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

13 Apr 2009
Research & Ideas

Kind of Blue: Pushing Boundaries with Miles Davis

firm specializing in improvisational collaboration and communication in high-performance teams. In their case, "Miles Davis: Kind of Blue", they reflect on the beauty of the music as well as the unusual story behind its... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Music

September 2013 (Revised August 2015)
Background Note

Leadership and Teaming

By: Ethan Bernstein

Small differences in the leadership of teams can have large consequences for the success of their efforts. Many initiatives fail not because of a fatal error in judgment or insufficient ideas, knowledge, motivation, or capabilities to deliver a solution. They fail... View Details

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11 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

A World of Difference: What Keeps Companies from Becoming More Inclusive

is often something small, sometimes even costless to fix, but unknowable without talking about it. Gino: What I love about this is that we think that we understand each other, but we don’t. You’re reminding me of a beautiful paper by... View Details

Keywords: by Jen McFarland Flint

13 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Merck CEO Ken Frazier Discusses a COVID Cure, Racism, and Why Leaders Need to Walk the Talk

been a very strong theme in our politics. And I've always believed it's because historically, we've had these two big, beautiful oceans protecting us from the rest of the world. And so we could say it's all about my liberty. It's not... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Pharmaceutical

August 2021 (Revised February 2024)
Case

Perfect Diary (完美日记)

By: Shunyuan Zhang and Sunil Gupta

Jinfeng (David) Huang founded Yatsen Holding Limited in 2016 and launched the first direct-to-consumer (DTC) cosmetic brand, Perfect Diary, in 2017. Perfect Diary used social influencers or key opinion leaders (KOL) to successfully build brand awareness and to grow... View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Social Influencers; Marketing; Digital Marketing; Competitive Strategy; Brands and Branding; Expansion; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Asia

Citation

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09 Dec 2019
Research & Ideas

Identify Great Customers from Their First Purchase

Testing data on 13,000 shoppers To show how the model works, Ascarza and Padilla fed it some customer data supplied by an international retailer that sells its own brand of beauty products exclusively in its stores and on its website.... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail; Service

18 Feb 2019
Book

What’s Really Disrupting Business? It’s Not Technology

If women wanted to shake up their makeup regimen 10 years ago, Sephora was the place to go. Beauty product junkies loved Sephora’s candy store-like display of sample-size face creams, glittery lip glosses, and eyeshadows in every shade... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Beauty & Cosmetics; Beauty & Cosmetics; Beauty & Cosmetics; Beauty & Cosmetics

16 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

Advice on Advice

even damage relationships. But when advice-giving does go well, it is a beautiful thing, says Margolis, the James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business Administration. "If you've been thinking about a problem in a certain... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

22 May 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

A Luxury Industry Veteran Teaches the Importance of Aesthetics to Budding Business Leaders

Pauline Brown joined the HBS faculty following a tenure as Chairman of North America at the French luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. (Photo credit: Albert Cheung) To future CEOs who want to succeed in the business of making and marketing... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Beauty & Cosmetics; Beauty & Cosmetics; Beauty & Cosmetics; Beauty & Cosmetics

26 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

How Paid Promos Take the Shine Off YouTube Stars (and Tips for Better Influencer Marketing)

offering recommendations and reviews. The researchers picked the beauty and lifestyle category because it attracts the highest amount of brand sponsorships on YouTube. The authors attempted to compare the behavior of influencers in... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Technology; Media & Broadcasting

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Best Buy: How Human Connection Saved a Failing Retailer

Skills and Behaviors that Make Entrepreneurs Successful

How Should Advertisers Respond to Consumer Demand for Whiter Skin?

Swiping Right: How Data Helped This Online Dating Site Make More Matches

Terror at the Taj

Blissful Thinking: When It Comes to Finding Happiness, 'Your Dreams Are Liars'

The Art and Science of Brand Valuation

Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods

Walmart's Workforce of the Future

The Accidental Innovator

Kind of Blue: Pushing Boundaries with Miles Davis

Leadership and Teaming

A World of Difference: What Keeps Companies from Becoming More Inclusive

Merck CEO Ken Frazier Discusses a COVID Cure, Racism, and Why Leaders Need to Walk the Talk

Perfect Diary (完美日记)

Identify Great Customers from Their First Purchase

What’s Really Disrupting Business? It’s Not Technology

Advice on Advice

A Luxury Industry Veteran Teaches the Importance of Aesthetics to Budding Business Leaders

How Paid Promos Take the Shine Off YouTube Stars (and Tips for Better Influencer Marketing)

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