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Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019 (Revised June 2019)

Raksul

by Scott Duke Kominers, Masahiro Kotosaka, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno

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Abstract

Raksul, 2018 Forbes Japan "Startup of the Year," ran an e-commerce platform drawing upon thousands of individual suppliers. Launched as a business-to-business printing services marketplace, Raksul had recently expanded to operate both a logistics/delivery marketplace and a television advertising marketplace. Each marketplace faces its own growth challenges; at the same time, the CEO must consider whether and how each marketplace can enhance the others.

Keywords: e-commerce; marketplace design; B2B; platform strategy; printing; Entrepreneurship; Market Platforms; Logistics; Advertising; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Structures; Web Services Industry; Japan;

Language: English Format: Print 21 pages EducatorsPurchase

Citation:

Kominers, Scott Duke, Masahiro Kotosaka, Nobuo Sato, and Akiko Kanno. "Raksul." Harvard Business School Case 819-115, April 2019. (Revised June 2019.)

Related Work

  1. Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019 (Revised June 2019)

    Raksul

    Scott Duke Kominers, Masahiro Kotosaka, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno

    Raksul, 2018 Forbes Japan "Startup of the Year," ran an e-commerce platform drawing upon thousands of individual suppliers. Launched as a business-to-business printing services marketplace, Raksul had recently expanded to operate both a logistics/delivery marketplace and a television advertising marketplace. Each marketplace faces its own growth challenges; at the same time, the CEO must consider whether and how each marketplace can enhance the others.

    Keywords: e-commerce; marketplace design; B2B; platform strategy; printing; Entrepreneurship; Market Platforms; Logistics; Advertising; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Structures; Web Services Industry; Japan;

    Citation:

    Kominers, Scott Duke, Masahiro Kotosaka, Nobuo Sato, and Akiko Kanno. "Raksul." Harvard Business School Case 819-115, April 2019. (Revised June 2019.)  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsPurchase Related

About the Author

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Scott Duke Kominers
MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration
Entrepreneurial Management

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More from the Author

  • Article | Journal of Political Economy | December 2019

    Costly Concessions: An Empirical Framework for Matching with Imperfectly Transferable Utility

    Alfred Galichon, Scott Duke Kominers and Simon Weber

    We introduce an empirical framework for models of matching with imperfectly transferable utility and unobserved heterogeneity in tastes. Our framework allows us to characterize matching equilibrium in a flexible way that includes as special cases the classic fully- and non-transferable utility models, collective models, and settings with taxes on transfers, deadweight losses, and risk aversion. We allow for the introduction of a very general class of unobserved heterogeneity on agents' preferences. Under minimal assumptions, we show existence and uniqueness of equilibrium. We provide two algorithms to compute the equilibria in our model. The first algorithm operates under any structure of heterogeneity in preferences. The second algorithm is more efficient, but applies only in the case when random utilities are logit. We show that the log-likelihood of the model has a particularly simple expression and we compute its derivatives. As an application, we build a model of marriage with two-sided preferences over the partner type and private consumption. We estimate our model using the 2013 "Living Costs and Food Survey" database.

    Keywords: sorting; matching; Marriage Market; intrahousehold allocation; Imperfectly Transferable Utility; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods;

    Citation:

    Galichon, Alfred, Scott Duke Kominers, and Simon Weber. "Costly Concessions: An Empirical Framework for Matching with Imperfectly Transferable Utility." Journal of Political Economy 127, no. 6 (December 2019): 2875–2925.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsSSRNFind at Harvard Related
  • Article | Management Science | December 2019

    Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms

    Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers

    We provide the first large-sample evidence on the behavior and impact of nonpracticing entities (NPEs) in the intellectual-property space. We find that, on average, NPEs appear to behave as opportunistic “patent trolls.” NPEs sue cash-rich firms and target cash in business segments unrelated to alleged infringement at essentially the same frequency as they target cash in segments related to alleged infringement. By contrast, cash is neither a key driver of intellectual-property lawsuits by practicing entities (e.g., IBM and Intel) nor of any other type of litigation against firms. We find further suggestive evidence of NPE opportunism: targeting of firms that have reduced ability to defend themselves, repeated assertions of lower-quality patents, increased assertion activity nearing patent expiration, and forum shopping. We find, moreover, that NPE litigation has a real negative impact on innovation at targeted firms: firms substantially reduce their innovative activity after settling with NPEs (or losing to them in court). Meanwhile, we neither find any markers of significant NPE pass-through to end innovators nor of a positive impact of NPEs on innovation in the industries in which they are most prevalent.

    Keywords: Patent trolls; patents; innovation; Patents; Lawsuits and Litigation; Ethics; Innovation and Invention;

    Citation:

    Cohen, Lauren, Umit Gurun, and Scott Duke Kominers. "Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms." Management Science 65, no. 12 (December 2019): 5461–5486. (Cited in the United States Federal Trade Commission Report on Patent Assertion Entities, 2016.)  View Details
    CiteView DetailsSSRNFind at Harvard Related
  • Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2018 (Revised November 2019)

    Shiseido: Reinvesting in Brand

    Jill Avery and Nobuo Sato

    Shiseido was in the midst of a six year corporate turnaround, trying to reverse the effects of decades of under-investment in R&D and marketing which had led to a cycle of declining customer support and brand value. Would the CEO’s VISION 2020 plan, centered on four strategies: 1.) increasing R&D spending from 1.8% to 3% of sales, 2.) investing an incremental ¥120 billion in brand-building marketing, 3.) moving to a “think global-act local” matrixed brand management structure, and 4.) rethinking brand portfolio strategy, be enough to achieve aggressive 8% per year sales goals while simultaneously increasing the company’s operating margin from 8% to 10% in the highly competitive and slow growing beauty industry?

    Keywords: brand management; Brand Value; turnaround; brand portfolio; brand communication; global brands; digital marketing; Return on investment; marketing ROI; internet marketing; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Value; Growth and Development Strategy; Investment Return; Consumer Behavior; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Japan; Asia;

    Citation:

    Avery, Jill, and Nobuo Sato. "Shiseido: Reinvesting in Brand." Harvard Business School Case 519-026, December 2018. (Revised November 2019.)  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsPurchase Related
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