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- December 2021
- Case
Bed Bath & Beyond: The New Strategy to Drive Shareholder Value
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Daniel W. Fisher
At one time, Bed Bath & Beyond was one of the most successful specialty retailers in the United States—it’s growth and profit margins far exceeded both peer retailers in the home goods market as well as many other discount retailers. But in 2014, its stock price...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
CRM and AI in Time of Crisis
By: Michelle Y. Lu and Navid Mojir
A crisis can affect the incentives of various players within a firm’s multi-layered sales and marketing organization (e.g., headquarters and branches of a bank). Such shifts can result in sales decisions against the firm’s best interests. Motivated by the backlash to...
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- December 2021
- Article
Employee Responses to Compensation Changes: Evidence from a Sales Firm
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
Using data from an inbound sales call center, we study employee responses to compensation changes that ultimately reduced take-home pay by 7% for the average affected worker. These changes caused a significant increase in the turnover rate of the firm's most productive...
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- December 2021
- Case
Troverie (A)
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Lindsay N. Hyde and Olivia Graham
Six months after the August 2018 launch of Troverie, a U.S.-based online retailer of luxury watches, the average cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than originally projected, and the startup is incurring a substantial loss on each sales transaction. Could...
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- November 2021
- Teaching Note
Seeding and Selling Asana
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Tom Quinn, Amram Migdal and Susie Ma
This teaching note accompanies case no. 821-054, “Seeding and Selling Asana.”
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- November 2021
- Case
AppHarvest: Rebuilding the Appalachian Economy Through Agriculture
By: Joshua Lev Krieger, William R. Kerr and Christian Godwin
In 2021, AppHarvest completed construction of a 60-acre indoor farming facility, one of the world’s largest, recorded its first sales, and went public in a multi-billion dollar IPO. Described as “a force of nature,” Jonathan Webb founded the company to bring jobs back...
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- November 2021
- Case
LKQ-Stahlgruber
By: Guhan Subramanian and Caeden Brynie
Through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions, LKQ Corp. became the leading aftermarket auto parts distributor in the U.S. by the early 2000s. Beginning in 2012, the company began similarly consolidating the European marketplace. However, by 2017, the...
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- November 2021
- Article
The Comprehensive Effects of Sales Force Management: A Dynamic Structural Analysis of Selection, Compensation, and Training
By: Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim and Byoung G. Park
This study provides a comprehensive model of an agent’s behavior in response to multiple sales management instruments, including compensation, recruiting/termination, and training. The model on agents’ behavior takes into account many of the key elements that...
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- October 2021 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Bodega Aurrera: eCommerce at the Base of the Pyramid
By: Michael Chu, Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui, Carla Larangeira and Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago
Bodega Aurrera, serving the base of the pyramid and Walmart’s main Mexican format, is considering launching a full eCommerce channel as Covid-19 has erupted in the country. In 2019, Bodega Aurrera accounted for 45% of revenues and 2,748 of Walmex’s 3,416 stores. Having...
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- September 2021
- Case
On the Bubble: Startup Bootstrapping
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Tom Quinn and Annelena Lobb
Bubble was a software company in the low-code/no-code market, making tools that allowed users without traditional programming backgrounds or technical skills to build software. The case covers cofounder Joshua Haas’s engineering background, as he experienced a high...
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Keywords:
Business Startups;
Business Growth and Maturation;
Business Model;
Business Plan;
Disruption;
Transformation;
Trends;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Customer Relationship Management;
Decision Making;
Cost vs Benefits;
Decisions;
Entrepreneurship;
Venture Capital;
Equity;
Executive Compensation;
Recruitment;
Selection and Staffing;
Disruptive Innovation;
Technological Innovation;
Job Interviews;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Ownership Stake;
Opportunities;
Software;
Technology Adoption;
Technology Industry;
Web Services Industry;
New York (city, NY);
California;
France
- September 20, 2021
- Article
The Puzzle of OpenSea Private Sale Fees
- 2021
- Working Paper
Accounting for Employment Impact at Scale
By: Adel Fadhel, Katie Panella, Ethan Rouen and George Serafeim
Using new data on workforce composition and wages, we systematically measure the employment impact at U.S. firms from 2008 to 2020, including 2,682 unique firms and 22,322 firm-year observations. We document significant variation across industries and firms within each...
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- September 2021
- Case
Francoise Brougher (A)
Francoise Brougher was a high-powered technology executive in Silicon Valley. After successful stints at Google (where she rose to lead a $16 billion ad sales business) and Square (which she helped take public), she joined Pinterest as its first Chief Operating Officer...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Expanding the Entrepreneurial Cultural Toolkit: The Temporal Interplay of the Substantive and the Symbolic
By: Rebecca Karp and Siobhan O'Mahony
Much research shows how entrepreneurs leverage symbolic toolkits via storytelling and narratives to convince resource providers of their venture’s legitimacy. Although investors’ legitimacy concerns may be initially met with symbolic actions, it is unclear whether...
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- August 2021
- Case
Camera IQ: Building Augmented Reality Brand Experiences in Social Media
By: Jill Avery and Rayan Nahas
Camera IQ, a camera marketing software company that empowered brands to create and launch augmented reality experiences (AREs) across social platforms, had just raised an additional $5 million to fund further product development and expand its marketing and sales...
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Keywords:
Brand Management;
Social Media;
Digital Marketing;
Virtual Reality;
Augmented Reality;
B2B;
E-commerce;
Technology Platform;
Marketing;
Marketing Communications;
Marketing Strategy;
Brands and Branding;
Online Advertising;
Online Technology;
Growth Management;
Customer Relationship Management;
Customer Value and Value Chain;
Advertising Industry;
United States
- August 2021
- Article
Improving Sales Hiring
Sales hiring presents inherent challenges not found to the same extent in talent management in other functional areas. Moreover, common hiring practices make a tough job needlessly harder. This article suggests practical ways to improve sales hiring: Hire for the Task,...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Treatment and Selection Effects of Formal Workplace Mentorship Programs
By: Jason Sandvik, Richard Saouma, Nathan Seegert and Christopher Stanton
While formal mentorship programs are ubiquitous, less is known about who gains from receiving mentorship. In this paper, we report the outcome of a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) carried out in a US-based inbound sales call center where one branch of the experiment...
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- July 2021
- Case
Mary Kay Inc.: Enriching Women's Lives while Embracing Change
By: Elie Ofek, K. Shelette Stewart and Julia Kelley
In December 2020, Mary Kay Inc. Chief Marketing Officer Sheryl Adkins-Green considered several strategic dilemmas. Founded in 1963 by Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay was a direct sales company whose Independent Beauty Consultants purchased its beauty and cosmetics products at...
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Keywords:
Advertising Campaigns;
Demographics;
Marketing;
Brands and Branding;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Communications;
Marketing Strategy;
Product Marketing;
Product Positioning;
Social Marketing;
Salesforce Management;
Organizations;
Mission and Purpose;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Innovation and Invention;
Innovation Strategy;
Competition;
Competitive Strategy;
Competitive Advantage;
Beauty and Cosmetics Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
Europe;
Asia;
Texas
- 2021
- Working Paper
Risk Sensitivity or Social Signaling? Unmasking Behaviors with Video Analytics
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kaiquan Xu and Kannan Srinivasan
In 2020, as the novel coronavirus spread globally, face masks were recommended in public settings to protect against and slow down the spread of the coronavirus. Why did people comply, or not, while shopping in 2020? Do these motivations relate to their shopping...
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- Article
Biosimilars and Follow-On Products in the United States: Adoption, Prices, and Users
By: Ariel Dora Stern, Jacqueline L. Chen, Melissa Ouellet, Mark R. Trusheim, Zeid El-Kilani, Amber Jessup and Ernst R. Berndt
Biologic drugs account for a disproportionate share of the increase in pharmaceutical spending in the U.S. and worldwide. Against this backdrop, many look to the expanding market for biosimilars—follow-on products to biologic drugs—as a vehicle for controlling...
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