Multisided marketplaces have become fixtures in many contemporary industries. From Amazon to Google, platforms dominate entire markets and have become some of the world's most valuable companies. Despite their success, these companies have a subtle but potentially fatal weakness: disintermediation. This occurs when buyers and sellers find each other on the platform and then bypass that very platform--and its commission--to complete their transaction directly, off of the platform. This article compiles and illustrates the causes of and remediations to platform disintermediation.

Because of their remarkable history of financial success, corporate spinoffs are the subject of perennial interest and investigation. We critically review quantitative and case-based research to determine the conditions under which a spin-off divestiture provides beneficial results for the conglomerate, the newly independent subsidiary, and the stockholders. The shared goal of spin-off researchers is to understand the rationale for the financial success that spin-off firms and their newly disconnected conglomerates experience. Our review and synthesis of the findings include 30 years of academic research by scholars in strategic and business management, commercial research by independent researchers and consulting firms, and IRS and US Treasury documents that detail when a spin-off qualifies for a corporate tax-free exchange. Our central finding is that spin-offs, conglomerates, and stockholders benefit from tax-free divestiture and subsequent refocusing by the companies. The article explains the breadth of spin-off divestitures and the benefits of their success in the US. These results center on helping decision-makers recognize the situational factors that support the choice of a spin-off strategy.

The COVID-19 crisis has fundamentally changed how many businesses operate and connect with their customers. Previously unheard-of government restrictions and sheltering-in-place requirements forced most professional services to transition to remote delivery methods (e.g., email, telephone, video consults, Shopify storefronts). Providers of low-touch services (e.g., lawyers, accountants) naturally lent themselves to remote delivery; however, those that offer high-touch services, particularly those in healthcare (e.g., doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists), experienced a drastic change in working conditions when going virtual. Despite a long history of resistance to virtual delivery, the pandemic created an unprecedented incentive for these high-touch professionals to experiment with underutilized care models such as telehealth: the provision of healthcare services remotely using telecommunications technologies. We examine the rapid adoption of telehealth during COVID-19 through the coming together or convergence of previously unrelated technologies, spaces, and practices. Our analysis reveals opportunities and challenges associated with going hands-off that apply to many other professionals providing high-trust services. Specifically, we offer nine guiding principles for building and protecting cognitive and affective trust in virtual and hybrid delivery models. This is important given the pace of compounding technology convergences that lie ahead for service professionals.

In the contemporary business reality, marked by unemployment and loose labor markets, workplace abuse is likely to climb as organizations and managers wield increased leverage in the employment relationship. We explore the organizational phenomenon of worker abuse and examine workplace blog accounts from abused workers to uncover shared insights. Based on these findings, we offer research-based suggestions, implications for practice, and resources for organizations, managers, and workers. Specifically, we advance an ABUSE mitigation model as a holistic management system for identifying and dealing with workplace abuse.

Digitalization is transforming the industrial landscape. Smarter products, data-based services, and new business models promise to reshape the whole manufacturing industry. But just below the visible excitement lurk unexpected tensions and challenges that can make digital transformation an excruciating journey for industrial companies. In this article, we decipher the digital transformation strategy choices of leading industrial firms in a highly innovative country. We then identify four dominant tensions that managers need to sort out. We also provide guiding principles for selecting a digital transformation strategy capable of overcoming each of the identified tensions.

Although foreignness can bring both benefits and costs to a business, much of the literature has focused on the liability of foreignness (LOF), while relatively little attention has been paid to the positive side. Despite the presence of LOFs, foreign companies may accrue some unique advantages from their foreign status, which are referred to as assets of foreignness (AOFs). Drawing upon social-capital theory and institutional theory, this article examines the issue of LOFs versus AOFs in the context of the informal networks in Korea and explores how foreign companies can manage their weaknesses in host-country-specific informal networks to create value from their foreignness. We discuss two practical strategies, reactive and proactive strategies, that can be used by foreign companies. While these two strategies can be pursued in parallel, this article suggests that foreign companies should prioritize pursuing proactive strategies. This article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the role of foreignness in the international business context and provides practical insights into how foreign companies can leverage their foreign status in developing their own informal networks in Korea.

The top online marketplaces in the world, including Alibaba, Amazon, and eBay, sold $2.7 trillion in 2020, or 62% of global web sales that year. Despite the promise of unfettered access to customers, the reality is that most sellers struggle with unprecedented and unauthorized rogue resellers. These often anonymous, third-party individuals and firms may not provide the quality experiences aligned with customers' expectations of a brand and often market their goods in competition with trusted partners. This requires a systematic battle plan to effectively protect the seller's brand equity, service promise, and authorized distribution network. We describe the channel war that is at work and the forces fueling its development. We explain how rogue reseller activities drive down pricing, increase channel competition and conflict, impact the customer experience, and harm brand equity. We recommend revising product policies, procedures, and agreements to begin to differentiate products from those sold by unauthorized parties. We also recommend a legal strategy to complement these efforts. Critical steps include regular and active enforcement as well as implementing services, benefits, and quality controls for the brand's products that cannot be replicated by unauthorized sellers and requiring authorized distributors and retailers to maintain those benefits and controls.

Statistical significance functions as an arbiter of sorts for data analysis purporting to show a relationship between two or more variables. Unfortunately, in far too many situations, statistical significance may lead decision-makers relying on data and analytics to improve business decisions astray, particularly in the context of big data. In this article, I outline reasons why executives should develop a healthy discernment when they see the phrase "statistically significant" in media outlets, internal analyses, consulting reports, and other sources. To overcome the limitations of focusing on statistical significance, I propose executives shift their attention toward the effect size reported from a statistical model. While not without limitation, effect sizes are more useful to decision-makers, highlight the practical implication of analyses, and help in quantifying the uncertainty inherent to working with data.

The leadership team of Roblox was contemplating a public offering in December 2020. Roblox was an online video game platform that offered developers a platform for building new games and a global social network for publishing and hosting online games. Roblox had filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC, and registered to go public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with the ticker symbol "RBLX." However, at the last minute, a series of market events occurred that made other public listing channels potentially more attractive. Guthrie and the Roblox team must decide whether to delay the IPO, pull the IPO prospectus altogether or list shares through alternative routes such as a direct listing or a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). The Roblox case chronicles the firm's evolution from launch to IPO, highlighting the various funding rounds and market events that impacted the company's public offering in 2020. The case details the process the Roblox team followed to decide between a traditional IPO, a direct listing or a SPAC. Students are encouraged to explore the advantages and disadvantages of different channels for going public, who the stakeholders are in the decision, and the importance of market timing.

Founder Collective ("FC") launched in 2009 with a clear mission: to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. In keeping with its mission, FC maintained smaller fund sizes and was not a lifecycle investor. By November of 2021, the seed market had become more competitive, and FC had successfully picked several Unicorn and even Decacorn investments, causing some LPs to wonder about the opportunity costs of FC's "no pro rata" view. Managing Partners David Frankel, Eric Paley, and Micah Rosenbloom wondered if the seed investing sector had changed too much and if they should evolve their strategy. They contemplated three potential paths forward: start investing their pro rata in later rounds, raise an opportunity fund, or continue their current strategy.

Malabar Gold & Diamonds (Malabar) was established in 1993 in Kerala, India. By 2019, the company was a leading retail chain in India's jewellery market and one of the top five jewellery businesses in the world, selling their products through 117 Indian outlets and 143 global outlets across nine countries. Most of Malabar's domestic revenue came from the southern region of India, and the company was looking to extend its footprint across the entire Indian market. However, the country's jewellery market was highly competitive, with a strong presence of regional players, and consumers in each Indian state had their own unique preference for jewellery design. Malabar needed to find a strategy to expand its presence into the country's uniquely different geographic areas.

Hisense Group Co. Ltd. (Hisense) was a leading manufacturing enterprise in the Chinese household appliance industry. In 2010, Hisense began to lay out its online channels. At that time, the same products had different prices in different channels, which caused fierce channel conflicts. To solve this problem, Hisense segmented online and off-line products and took a series of actions to help off-line channels improve efficiency and reduce prices. Therefore, Hisense successfully changed from having different prices for the same products to having different prices for different products. However, in early 2020 the new model was challenged again, and channel conflicts soon reappeared. How would Hisense break the recurring channel conflict this time?

Recent years had witnessed the social phenomenon of the rise of Internet brands. Looking at Internet fitness unicorn brand Keep’s brand commercialization process, Keep demonstrated the path of creation, product adjustment and upgrade, and brand extension logic of Internet app brands. Keep started as a single-tool app providing exercise content and data records, and gradually developed into a one-stop fitness and exercise platform by actively adjusting its brand goal, surpassing similar products to become the largest social platform for exercise in China. Keep then went through a bottleneck period where it had huge traffic but could not monetize it. Finally, Keep pursued commercialization, transforming into a comprehensive ecological fitness chain. Now, in April 2021, how would Keep respond to the competition and continue its strategic vision of providing a fitness ecosystem? Should its strategic focus continue to shift from online to offline? What should Keep’s next steps be?

Benny Chung-Ying Zee was a professor at a prestigious university in Hong Kong and founder of Health View Bioanalytic Limited (Health View). Health View offered fast, inexpensive, non-invasive assessments of the risk of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease by using artificial intelligence and automatic retinal image analysis (ARIA) of pictures of patients’ retinas using fundus cameras. While Health View was breaking even, Zee realized that it was not yet a success. Thus, Zee was considering how to scale up the company to realize the impact of its technology. Zee had to assess the current business model—its value proposition, target market, sales channels, and strategic partners—and determine how he could scale up and redirect Health View.

In May 2019, ByteIQ Analytics was formed in India, with the idea to revolutionize finance through the potential of data. In the beginning, ByteIQ offered data science and analytics capabilities in the form of various services. But the founders aspired to make ByteIQ a product company so they created their first product, BankStorii, in December 2021. BankStorii was designed to aid financial customers to select the best banking products. ByteIQ’s chief executive officer had two choices in selecting a suitable business model for BankStorii: make BankStorii available to the country's masses free of charge through a website platform or make BankStorii a proprietary software and license it to banks.

Social media influencers have been at the peak of pop culture for the past few years, everyday people suddenly becoming celebrities and influencers for Millennials and Generation Z. Calling themselves creators, influencers now exist in every industry and have widespread, highly engaged followings; many companies are eager to work with them to build their brands. This text offers an overview of influencer marketing, focusing on collaboration between organizations and influencers. Brand managers, agency professionals, new influencers, and students will particularly benefit from this book, gaining practical advice and learning from examples in areas such as the Creator Economy, typology of influencers, and considerations for campaign design. A valuable introduction to the influencer marketing ecosystem and the influencer marketing relationships framework, Celebrity 2.0 shows how content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing can effectively come together. Chapter 1 explores how marketing has shifted over time, moving from traditional advertising to digital advertising. Reasons for this shift are discussed, including the need to move from "push" to "pull" strategies, the explosion of social media platforms, and the fact that people trust people more than they do organizations. The influencer marketing relationship framework is introduced, which shows how content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing can converge and create changes in consumer behavior. Content marketing focuses on the creation and distribution of content in order to gain and retain a specific audience; native advertising is another way of distributing content, mainly purchasing ad space; influencer marketing uses social media influencers as brand advocates-influencers who fit the target audience will probably be the most effective. Carefully integrating these three types of marketing can yield impressive results.

Social media influencers have been at the peak of pop culture for the past few years, everyday people suddenly becoming celebrities and influencers for Millennials and Generation Z. Calling themselves creators, influencers now exist in every industry and have widespread, highly engaged followings; many companies are eager to work with them to build their brands. This text offers an overview of influencer marketing, focusing on collaboration between organizations and influencers. Brand managers, agency professionals, new influencers, and students will particularly benefit from this book, gaining practical advice and learning from examples in areas such as the Creator Economy, typology of influencers, and considerations for campaign design. A valuable introduction to the influencer marketing ecosystem and the influencer marketing relationships framework, Celebrity 2.0 shows how content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing can effectively come together. Chapter 2 begins with three stories: the creator as content developer, the creator as influencer, and the creator as entrepreneur. The Creator Economy is the growing group of businesses centered around independent content creators, including social media influencers, bloggers, and podcasters; this ultimately gives creators more power and audiences more choice. Several trends that led to the Creator Economy are outlined. In terms of monetization for creators, an audience needs to be built first, and it needs to be understood that not all audience members are the same in their willingness to spend money. Examples of successful influencers are given, and different types of creators, such as YouTube creators and web content creators, are described. One of the primary strengths of creators is their connections with everyday audiences.

Social media influencers have been at the peak of pop culture for the past few years, everyday people suddenly becoming celebrities and influencers for Millennials and Generation Z. Calling themselves creators, influencers now exist in every industry and have widespread, highly engaged followings; many companies are eager to work with them to build their brands. This text offers an overview of influencer marketing, focusing on collaboration between organizations and influencers. Brand managers, agency professionals, new influencers, and students will particularly benefit from this book, gaining practical advice and learning from examples in areas such as the Creator Economy, typology of influencers, and considerations for campaign design. A valuable introduction to the influencer marketing ecosystem and the influencer marketing relationships framework, Celebrity 2.0 shows how content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing can effectively come together. Chapter 3 offers a broad overview of influencers, starting with a discussion on influencers as opinion leaders. Celebrity endorsement and marketing has a long history, while influencer marketing is new, which means there are many different definitions of influencer marketing. Several example definitions are given as well as important considerations concerning influencer marketing. Social media influencers are sometimes called micro-celebrities; seen as regular people, they have some level of influence over their audience. Based on their number of followers and if they have influence beyond social media, influencers are grouped into micro-influencers and macro-influencers. More specific tiers can also be used, such as nano-influencers and mega influencers. Using employees as influencers is explored as well as how marketing managers can choose the best influencer for their goals.

Social media influencers have been at the peak of pop culture for the past few years, everyday people suddenly becoming celebrities and influencers for Millennials and Generation Z. Calling themselves creators, influencers now exist in every industry and have widespread, highly engaged followings; many companies are eager to work with them to build their brands. This text offers an overview of influencer marketing, focusing on collaboration between organizations and influencers. Brand managers, agency professionals, new influencers, and students will particularly benefit from this book, gaining practical advice and learning from examples in areas such as the Creator Economy, typology of influencers, and considerations for campaign design. A valuable introduction to the influencer marketing ecosystem and the influencer marketing relationships framework, Celebrity 2.0 shows how content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing can effectively come together. Chapter 4 dives further into influencer marketing, exploring theories about how it may work. One theory is source credibility; if a celebrity has source credibility, they can effectively endorse a product. Source credibility is made up of trust (how well the consumer accepts the endorser's message), expertise (the degree to which the consumer views the endorser as knowledgeable), and attractiveness (if the consumer sees the endorser as physically attractive). Attractiveness can also be impacted by likability and whether or not the endorser is viewed as relatable. The matchup hypothesis describes how congruence is necessary between a social media influencer and a brand in order to have a positive impact; the meaning transfer model claims that endorsers bring pop culture to the endorser-brand relationship. A description of how Generation Z views influencers is provided, and the necessity of building the influencer's relationship with the audience is discussed.

Social media influencers have been at the peak of pop culture for the past few years, everyday people suddenly becoming celebrities and influencers for Millennials and Generation Z. Calling themselves creators, influencers now exist in every industry and have widespread, highly engaged followings; many companies are eager to work with them to build their brands. This text offers an overview of influencer marketing, focusing on collaboration between organizations and influencers. Brand managers, agency professionals, new influencers, and students will particularly benefit from this book, gaining practical advice and learning from examples in areas such as the Creator Economy, typology of influencers, and considerations for campaign design. A valuable introduction to the influencer marketing ecosystem and the influencer marketing relationships framework, Celebrity 2.0 shows how content marketing, native advertising, and influencer marketing can effectively come together. Chapter 5 discusses how to design an effective influencer marketing campaign. Before designing a campaign, companies should conduct an audit of all their current digital assets to make sure further marketing efforts can make a difference. Goals should be outlined following the SMART format; an overview of the consumer journey is offered in relation to campaign objectives. Defining the target market is essential; buyer personas can assist in that endeavor. A thorough discussion of choosing influencers is provided, giving tips on how to look for influencers, metrics that should be considered, and how influencers may view partnerships with brands. Several social media platforms are examined, and a deeper look at Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube-the top three influencer platforms-is offered. Various structures can be used for campaigns; it's vital during any campaign to measure success and pivot when needed. An example of going through the design process for an influencer marketing campaign is given.