Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry

G.  Jones

Book | 2010

Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry

Abstract

The global beauty business permeates our lives, influencing how we perceive ourselves and what it is to be beautiful. The brands and firms that have shaped this industry, such as Avon, Coty, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, and Shiseido, have imagined beauty for us. This book provides the first authoritative history of the global beauty industry from its emergence in the nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how today's global giants grew. It shows how successive generations of entrepreneurs built brands that shaped perceptions of beauty and the business organizations needed to market them. They democratized access to beauty products, once the privilege of elites, but they also defined the gender and ethnic borders of beauty, and its association with a handful of cities, notably Paris and later New York. The result was a homogenization of beauty ideals throughout the world. Today globalization is changing the beauty industry again; its impact can be seen in a range of competing strategies. Global brands have swept into China, Russia, and India, but at the same time, these brands are having to respond to a far greater diversity of cultures and lifestyles as new markets are opened up worldwide. In the twenty-first century, beauty is again being reimagined anew.

Keywords: Globalized Markets and Industries; Markets and Industry History; Brands and Branding; Industry Growth; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Jones, G. Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

This case examines the role of Cisco led by John Chambers in facilitating web filtering in China. It begins with tracing the origins of Cisco as a pioneer of networking equipment. John Chambers, who had worked as a sales manager at IBM and Wang Laboratories, joined Cisco in 1991 and became CEO in 1995. The company expanded rapidly thereafter, acquiring many firms and growing globally, including in China, where it virtually created the internet. The case explores how the firm facilitated surveillance and monitoring of the internet in the Golden Shield project launched in 2000, and in 2004 served as a key participant in the CN2 upgrade which greatly enhanced official capability to filter content online. The case ends in 2007 with Chambers announcing further capital expenditure in China, but facing growing criticism in the US Congress and elsewhere for its human rights record. At the same time Cisco faced a power domestic competitor, Huawei, which had grown rapidly investment in innovation even as Cisco had focused on share buy-backs after experiencing a sharp fall in its share price following the end of the dot.com bubble. The case provides a vehicle for exploring the ethical and human rights responsibilities of corporations in the technology sector, and the impact of the internet on democracy.

The case examines the entrepreneurial career of Rupert Murdoch and the growth of News Corporation from a small Australian newspaper to a global media giant. It shows how he expanded geographically to Europe, the United States, and Asia and from newspapers to the film and television industries. The case identifies the personal role of Murdoch in this growth and the role of his family in its management. The case considers the political impact of News Corporation's newspapers and other media and their alleged role in shaping political opinion.

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

Business, Governments and Political Risk in South Asia and Latin America since 1970

Geoffrey Jones and Rachael Comunale

This working paper provides a new perspective on how businesses have responded to political risk in South Asia and Latin America over the last half century. The existing business history literature on political risk is focused on the experiences of Western multinationals in the 20th century, especially in Nazi Germany and the post-colonial developing world. This working paper is instead focused on perceptions of political risk by domestic business leaders active in Latin America and South Asia since the 1970s. Employing data from the Creating Emerging Markets oral history database developed at the Harvard Business School, the working paper identifies five major sources of political risk: macroeconomic and policy turbulence, excessive bureaucracy, political instability, corruption, and violence. Employing NVivo coding, marked regional differences were identified. Macroeconomic and policy turbulence was the biggest perceived source of risk in Latin America. Excessive bureaucracy was the biggest source of perceived risk in South Asia. There were regional differences also in how leaders in different regions responded to the same risk. In both regions business leaders reported having to dedicate significant time to navigating government regulations, but interviewees in South Asia frequently reported attempting to steer clear from highly regulated industries, while many interviewees in Latin America discussed how they adapted to heavier government oversight by forming closer ties or working relationships with incumbent administrations.

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Risk Management; Government and Politics; Business History; South Asia; Latin America;

Citation:

Jones, Geoffrey, and Rachael Comunale. "Business, Governments and Political Risk in South Asia and Latin America since 1970." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 18-102, May 2018. View Details

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