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In 2015, Sachin and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India's largest e-tailer, Flipkart, announced that the company would switch to a marketplace model...
Founded in 2012, Jumia Nigeria, a startup effort by Germany-based Rocket Internet,
aimed to become an African Amazon. The company entered...
- July 2021
- Article
Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Platforms
By: Zoë Cullen and Chiara Farronato
We study the growth of online peer-to-peer markets. Using data from TaskRabbit, an expanding marketplace for domestic tasks at the time of our study, we show that growth varies considerably across cities. To disentangle the potential drivers of growth, we look...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
The Situational Samaritan: How and Why Marketplace Conditions Shape Prosocial Consumer Behaviors
By: Julia von Schuckmann, Lucia S.G. Barrios, Grant E. Donnelly and Marco Bertini
- June 15, 2021
- Article
Cutting the Gordian Knot of Employee Health Care Benefits and Costs: A Corporate Model Built on Employee Choice
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Barak D. Richman
President Joe Biden’s promise to give every American access to affordable health insurance is well-intentioned, but his plan’s policy elements—a public option, a permanent expanded tax credit—require congressional approval and would expend significant political and...
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- June 2021
- Article
Making Marketplaces Safe: Dominant Individual Rationality and Applications to Market Design
By: Benjamin N. Roth and Ran I. Shorrer
Often market designers cannot force agents to join a marketplace rather than using pre-existing institutions. We propose a new desideratum for marketplace design that guarantees the safety of participation: Dominant Individual Rationality (DIR). A marketplace is DIR if...
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- May 24, 2021
- Article
What Makes an Online Marketplace Disruptive?
By: Clifford Maxwell and Scott Duke Kominers
Platforms like Airbnb, eBay, and Angie’s List have changed how markets work. But while many are innovative and make life easier for consumers, which are truly disruptive? Hewing to Clay Christensen’s theory of disruption, platforms—which operate as online...
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- May 2021
- Article
Stability, Strategy-Proofness, and Cumulative Offer Mechanisms
By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Westkamp
We consider the setting of many-to-one matching with contracts, where firms may demand multiple contracts, but each worker desires at most one contract. We introduce three novel conditions—observable substitutability, observable size monotonicity, and...
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- April 2021 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
StockX: The Stock Market of Things (Abridged)
By: Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton, Annelena Lobb and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2015 by Dan Gilbert, Josh Luber, and Greg Schwartz, StockX was an online platform where users could buy and sell unworn luxury and limited-edition sneakers. Sneaker resale prices often fluctuated over time based on supply and demand, creating a robust...
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Keywords:
Markets;
Auctions;
Bids and Bidding;
Demand and Consumers;
Consumer Behavior;
Data and Data Sets;
Market Design;
Market Platforms;
Two-Sided Platforms;
Multi-Sided Platforms;
Market Transactions;
Marketplace Matching;
Supply and Industry;
Analysis;
Price;
Product Marketing;
Product Launch;
Apparel and Accessories Industry;
Fashion Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Michigan;
Detroit
- March 2021
- Case
Litigation Finance 2.0: LexShares
By: Lauren Cohen, Spencer C. N. Hagist and Yago Zavalia Gahan
Litigation finance—also referred to as third party litigation funding—was in its relative infancy as an asset class when Jay Greenberg and Max Volsky made a platform-play in the space. Seven years later, the market was far from "mainstream," but nonetheless had grown...
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- March 2021
- Case
Humana (A)
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Ashley Ifeadike
To implement a bold new strategy, Humana needed to decide how to prioritize the pillars; where to own and where to partner; how much risk is acceptable; and how to continue to deliver strong operational performance while implementing a new strategy. Had the firm made...
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- March 2021 (Revised June 2021)
- Course Overview Note
Marketplace Design
- February 2021
- Case
Drizly: Managing Supply and Demand through Disruption
By: Kris Ferreira
It was April 6th, 2020, and the management team at Drizly - an online alcohol marketplace where consumers could browse and purchase alcohol from local liquor retail stores via Drizly’s app for immediate home delivery—were thrilled to see record-breaking sales from the...
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- February 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
AptDeco: Circular Economy Furniture Marketplace
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jamie Merkrebs
AptDeco, a used furniture marketplace, was growing rapidly in the tri-state area. The co-founders were confident that the business model, financial position, and unit economics positioned AptDeco for scaling in the massive $120 billion furniture market, despite its...
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Keywords:
E-commerce;
E-Commerce Strategy;
Mobile;
Digital Marketing;
Word-of-Mouth;
Word-of-mouth Marketing;
Word Of Mouth;
Internet Marketing;
Growth Strategy;
Platform;
Platforms;
Two Sided Markets;
Two-sided Market;
Two-sided Marketplace;
Two-Sided Markets;
Two-sided Network;
Black Entrepreneurs;
Black Leadership;
African Americans;
Circular;
Peer-to-peer Markets;
Furniture Industry;
Furniture;
Growth Hacking;
Monetization Strategy;
Growth Management;
Marketing Strategy;
Entrepreneurship;
Market Platforms;
Marketing Channels;
Online Advertising;
Consumer Behavior;
Acquisition;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Two-Sided Platforms;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Retail Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Technology Industry;
Web Services Industry;
United States;
North America;
New York (city, NY);
New York (state, US)
- February 2021
- Article
Trust and Disintermediation: Evidence from an Online Freelance Marketplace
By: Grace Gu and Feng Zhu
As an intermediary improves trust between the two sides of its market to facilitate matching and transactions, it faces an increased risk of disintermediation: with sufficient trust, the two sides may circumvent the intermediary to avoid the intermediary’s fees. In...
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- January 2021
- Case
Brigad: The Future of Work
By: Nien-he Hsieh, Elena Corsi and Daniela Beyersdorfer
In 2019 Florent Malbranche, CEO and co-founder of the French tech startup Brigad, pondered the next growth steps. Founded in 2015, Brigad’s objective was two-fold: to help restaurants and bars find qualified staff for punctual shifts, and to make it easier for...
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- January 2021
- Teaching Note
Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language
This case explores the growth of Ureed, an online marketplace for translation services that is powered by a workforce consisting of remote freelancers who are based in the United Arab Emirates. Nour Al Hassan, the founder and CEO faced the challenge of how best to...
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- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Arçelik: From a Dealer Network to an Omnichannel Experience
By: Ayelet Israeli and Fares Khrais
Arçelik Turkey, the country’s market leader in household appliances, was at an omnichannel crossroads in January 2020. Arçelik was a B2B player utilizing a dealership network with an umbrella of brands and had one of the largest brick-and-mortar store networks in...
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Keywords:
Digital Transformation;
Digital Marketing;
Bricks And Mortar;
Franchise Management;
Franchising;
Dealer Network;
Dealers;
B2B;
B2B2C;
Tradition;
Culture Change;
Cultural Adaptation;
Omnichannel;
Omnichannel Retail;
Omni-channel;
Omnichannel Retailing;
Sales Channels;
Sales Channel Development;
Channel Management;
Channels Of Distribution;
Marketplace;
Platforms;
Collaboration;
Online Channel;
Online Data;
Online Sales;
Online Shopping;
Online;
Retail;
Retailing;
Disruption;
Transformation;
Franchise Ownership;
Change Management;
Partners and Partnerships;
Consumer Behavior;
Sales;
Online Technology;
Marketing Strategy;
Conflict and Resolution;
Conflict Management;
Organizational Culture;
Distribution Channels;
Electronics Industry;
Retail Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Turkey
- January 2021
- Case
Pearson: Efficacy 2.0
By: Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg and James Weber
Pearson, which billed itself as the "world's learning company," faced a host of critical decisions in mid-2020. Several years prior, it had embarked on a new path that put the learner at the heart of the business and committed to a new strategic orientation. The new...
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- January 2021 (Revised February 2021)
- Technical Note
A Three-Part Framework for Entrepreneurial Marketplace Design
- December 2020
- Case
Urban Company
Urban Company is an India-based market platform that helps customers book home services and at home beauty services. The company differentiated itself by investing heavily in building customer trust. Rather than merely positioning itself as a lead generating...
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