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• Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2020

  Karen Bruck: Growing Managers at MercadoLibre

  Joshua D. Margolis, Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal

  Karen Bruck, Corporate Sales Director at MercadoLibre, Latin America's largest e-commerce platform, needs to make a decision about one of her managers, who, while analytically savvy, has an approach that does not fit in with the company's culture.

  Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Employee Relationship Management; Decision Making; Interpersonal Communication; Retail Industry; Latin America; Argentina;

  Citation:

  Margolis, Joshua D., Fernanda Miguel, and Mariana Cal. "Karen Bruck: Growing Managers at MercadoLibre." Harvard Business School Case 421-013, July 2020.  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

  Can Shared Service Delivery Increase Customer Engagement? A Study of Shared Medical Appointments

  Ryan W. Buell, Kamalini Ramdas and Nazlı Sönmez

  Customers and providers alike often consider one-on-one service delivery to be ideal, assuming—perhaps unquestioningly—that devoting individualized attention maximizes customer engagement and improves outcomes. Alternatively, shared service delivery, in which customers are served in batch, may, through the dynamics of group interaction, lead to increased customer engagement. On the other hand, the loss of privacy and personal connection in shared delivery models may undermine engagement and performance. To explore this tradeoff, we conducted a randomized controlled trial with 1,000 patients who were undergoing glaucoma treatment over a three-year period at a large eye hospital. Using verbatim and behavioral transcripts from over 20,000 minutes of video recorded during our trial, we examine how shared medical appointments (SMAs)—in which groups of patients with similar conditions meet with a doctor simultaneously, and each receives one-on-one care in turn—impact patients' engagement during their appointments. Patients who experienced SMAs asked 37.2% more questions per minute, made 8.2% more comments per minute, answered 3.6% more questions per minute, and exhibited higher levels of non-verbal engagement across a wide-array of measures (attentiveness, positivity, head wobbling or ‘talai taḷḷāṭṭam’ in Tamil—a South Indian gesture to signal agreement or understanding, eye contact and end-of-appointment happiness), relative to patients who attended one-on-one appointments. We further find that patients in SMAs went on to report higher levels of satisfaction and exhibit greater levels of learning and medication compliance. These results shed light on the potential for shared service delivery models to increase customer engagement and enhance service performance.

  Keywords: Customer Engagement; shared service delivery; shared medical appointments; healthcare Operations; Service Delivery; Health Care and Treatment; Service Operations; Customers; Behavior;

  Citation:

  Buell, Ryan W., Kamalini Ramdas, and Nazlı Sönmez. "Can Shared Service Delivery Increase Customer Engagement? A Study of Shared Medical Appointments." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-001, July 2020.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2020

  Levi Strauss (A): A Pioneer Lost in the Wilderness

  Joshua Margolis, Ashish Nanda, Margaret Cross, Imran Manji and Bismah Rahmat

  In 2011, newly appointed CEO Chip Bergh needed to urgently turn around the iconic but floundering denim apparel firm, Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) Famous for its blue jeans, LS&Co. had suffered a decline in revenue of 29% from $6.8 billion in 1997 to $4.8 billion in 2011.
  Bergh faced some urgent decisions. Should LS&Co. focus more on the wholesale channel or direct-to-consumer channel? What parts of its product mix should the firm emphasize? In which geographies should it invest? With only a short window of time in which to build momentum, Bergh knew that he needed to prioritize, given the firm’s limited resources.

  Keywords: turnarounds; Transformation; Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decision Making; Strategic Planning; Apparel and Accessories Industry;

  Citation:

  Margolis, Joshua, Ashish Nanda, Margaret Cross, Imran Manji, and Bismah Rahmat. "Levi Strauss (A): A Pioneer Lost in the Wilderness." Harvard Business School Case 720-405, March 2020.  View Details

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