Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,299)
- Faculty Publications (466)
Page 1 of 466
Results →
- September 2024
- Case
Eat App: Building and Monetizing an End-to-End Dining Experience Solution
By: Elie Ofek and Ahmed Dahawy
Founded in 2015 in Bahrain, Eat App was an up-and-coming player in the global restaurant management software business. In early 2024, having shifted to a product-led growth strategy, the company’s co-founders faced a host of decisions that could greatly impact their... View Details
- July–August 2024
- Article
Navigating the Future of Online Advertising with WEB3
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Ben Plomion
or years, digital ad spend was a steadily growing portion of marketing budgets. But online advertising faces challenges that mean a transformative shift in digital marketing. Meanwhile, so-called “Web3” has emerged as a medium that can change ad spend and how personal... View Details
- July 2024
- Case
Jacqueline Cook at Vendasta: Debating an IPO
By: Reza Satchu, Tom Quinn and Andrew Kosc
In May 2021, after a surge in demand for digital services that prompted high valuations for startups across the Canadian tech sector, Saskatchewan-based Vendasta entered the final stages of the initial public offering (IPO) process. COO Jacqueline Cook had invested her... View Details
Keywords: Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Interpersonal Communication; Cost vs Benefits; Forecasting and Prediction; Business Cycles; Entrepreneurship; Fairness; Capital Markets; Private Equity; Investment Banking; Stock Options; Financial Markets; Initial Public Offering; Institutional Investing; Price Bubble; Digital Platforms; Digital Transformation; Internet and the Web; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Managerial Roles; Agreements and Arrangements; Going Public; Ownership Stake; Performance Expectations; Work-Life Balance; Strategic Planning; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Rank and Position; Risk and Uncertainty; Opportunities; Happiness; Reputation; Status and Position; Well-being; Information Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Canada
- July 2024
- Case
Freelancer, Ltd.
By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes
Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Webmunk: A New Tool for Studying Online Behavior and Digital Platforms
By: Chiara Farronato, Audrey Fradkin and Chris Karr
Understanding the behavior of users online is important for researchers, policymakers, and private companies alike. But observing online behavior and conducting experiments is difficult without direct access to the user base and software of technology companies. We... View Details
- June 2024
- Article
Oral History and Business History in Emerging Markets
By: Geoffrey Jones
This article describes the motivation, structure and use of the Creating Emerging Markets (CEM) oral history-based project at the Harvard Business School. The project consists of lengthy interviews with business leaders from emerging markets. By June 2024 183... View Details
- March 2024
- Case
ixigo
By: Ranjay Gulati and Rachna Tahilyani
Ixigo is India’s second-largest online travel aggregator (OTA) and the market leader among private train OTAs. It has overcome numerous near-death crises to emerge as a customer-centric, profitable firm. It aspires to become the leading OTA in the next billion Internet... View Details
- February 2024
- Teaching Note
UGG Steps into the Metaverse
By: Shunyuan Zhang and Sunil Gupta
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 523-013. View Details
- February 9, 2024
- Article
The Rise of Consumer Crypto
By: Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers
Although non-fungible tokens are often misunderstood and even derided, they remain a general and flexible solution for establishing and tracking ownership in the digital domain. As a superior solution to existing technology in many areas of the consumer economy, their... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Platform Information Provision and Consumer Search: A Field Experiment
By: Lu Fang, Yanyou Chen, Chiara Farronato, Zhe Yuan and Yitong Wang
Despite substantial efforts to help consumers search in more intuitive ways, text search remains the predominant tool for product discovery online. In this paper, we explore the effects of visual and textual cues for search refinement on consumer search and purchasing... View Details
- August 2023
- Case
Kariyer.net: Recruiting AI
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Fares Khrais and Namrata Arora
In 2017, Fatih Uysal (AMP 2021) became CEO of Kariyer.net. By then, the business was already the industry leading online job board in Turkey. However, faced with stalling growth, a turbulent macroenvironment, and growing competition from international players, Uysal... View Details
Keywords: Online Technology; Marketing; Websites; Artificial Intelligence; Innovation; Two-sided Platforms; Internet and the Web; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Job Search; Employment; Transformation; Volatility; Innovation and Invention; Disruptive Innovation; Management Practices and Processes; Business Growth and Maturation; Competitive Strategy; Business Startups; Talent and Talent Management; Cost vs Benefits; Macroeconomics; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Emerging Markets; Digital Platforms; Employment Industry; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Middle East; Turkey
- July 2023
- Case
Crocs: Using Community-Centric Marketing to Make Ugly Iconic
By: Ayelet Israeli and Anne V. Wilson
In 2022, the Crocs Classic Clog was the best-selling item of clothing on Amazon, the brand was one of the fastest growing brands in the U.S., and global net revenue had increased to approximately $3.6 billion. By most accounts, Crocs had become the “it” shoe. Crocs... View Details
- July 2023
- Article
So, Who Likes You? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
By: Ravi Bapna, Edward McFowland III, Probal Mojumder, Jui Ramaprasad and Akhmed Umyarov
With one-third of marriages in the United States beginning online, online dating platforms have become important curators of the modern social fabric. Prior work on online dating has elicited two critical frictions in the heterosexual dating market. Women, governed by... View Details
- May–June 2023
- Article
Need for Speed: The Impact of In-Process Delays on Customer Behavior in Online Retail
By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
The impact of delays has been widely studied in various offline services. The focus of this study is online services, and we explore the impact of in-process delays—measured by website speed—on customer behavior. We leverage novel retail and website speed data to... View Details
- February 22, 2023
- Article
How to Seed Organic Marketing in a Video-First World
By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger and Matt Higgins
Early direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies relied on plentiful capital and low-cost digital marketing to power growth. But as this sector has matured, capital is more constrained, social media is more cluttered, and customer acquisition costs are rising. DTC companies... View Details
Keywords: Online Business; Ecommerce; E-commerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Omnichannel Retail; Omnichannel Retailing; Influencer Marketing; Consumer; Organic Growth; Video Advertising; Promotion; Celebrities; Online Advertising; Online Channel; Online Communities; Online Community; Go To Market Strategy; Platform; Media; Media Content; Digital; Digital Culture; Digital Influencers; Direct To Consumer Marketing; Direct-to-consumer; Innovation ＆ Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Sales; Digital Platforms; Digital Marketing; Digital Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Internet and the Web; Advertising; Business Model; Growth Management; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Channels; Marketing Communications; Communication Strategy; Innovation Strategy; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Fashion Industry; Advertising Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States; North America
- November 2022
- Case
The Battle Among Channels for Marketing Pharmaceuticals: UpScript, Pharmacy Benefit Managers, and Direct-to-Consumer Sales
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Tiffany Farrell
Can an online, direct-to-consumer pharmacy both improve the quality and speed of care for patients who need branded drugs and stabilize profits for pharmaceutical manufacturers? UpScript, after years spent achieving legal and regulatory compliance and simultaneous... View Details
- November 2022 (Revised June 2023)
- Case
UGG Steps into the Metaverse
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Sharon Joseph, Sunil Gupta and Julia Kelley
In the fall of 2022, boot maker UGG and its parent company, Deckers, were working to position the brand in the nascent but fast growing metaverse. The metaverse, the online realm that individual users could navigate as digital avatars, was becoming more commercialized,... View Details
- November–December 2022
- Article
The Value of Descriptive Analytics: Evidence from Online Retailers
By: Ron Berman and Ayelet Israeli
Does the adoption of descriptive analytics impact online retailer performance, and if so, how? We use the synthetic difference-in-differences method to analyze the staggered adoption of a retail analytics dashboard by more than 1,500 e-commerce websites, and we find an... View Details
- September–October 2022
- Article
Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price
By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant
Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers.
In this article, the authors present a scorecard to... View Details
Keywords: Retail; Retailing; Online Business; Ecommerce; E-commerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Omnichannel Retail; Omnichannel Retailing; Amazon; Amazon.com; Sales; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Fashion Industry; Advertising Industry; Battery Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Distribution Industry; Electronics Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
- 2022
- Working Paper
Algorithmic Assortment Curation: An Empirical Study of Buybox in Online Marketplaces
By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
Most online sales worldwide take place in marketplaces that connect sellers and buyers. The presence of numerous third-party sellers leads to a proliferation of listings for each product, making it difficult for customers to choose between the available options. Online... View Details