Internet-based commerce has undergone explosive growth over the past decade and is expected to keep growing. With the increasing popularity of online marketplaces, trust is seen as a key foundation for consumers' willingness to purchase, in particular, from unknown sellers. While trust has been examined in various contexts, limited focus has been placed on the importance of displaying institutional trust assurances such as trustmarks on retailers' websites. We conducted two studies into how the use of trustmarks impacts consumer trust, consumer risk perceptions, and, consequently, influences consumer purchase intentions. The results of the two studies suggest that the use of trustmarks increases consumer online trust and purchase intentions, as well as reducing their perceived risk. We use these results to inform managerial decision making in e-commerce, particularly for marketers and e-retailers. We provide three important managerial lessons to be learned from our insights. Our implications are important not only for mature e-commerce markets to create a competitive advantage but also for growing and emerging e-commerce markets, where new retailers are trying to establish trust among their consumers to increase market share.
Top managers tend to focus on strategy formulation and planning but fail to embrace the problem-solving complexity of strategy implementation. This can lead to implementation failures that are reflected in misaligned organizations that seem to know where they want to go but cannot seem to get there. We posit that one reason for the ineffective transition from strategy formulation to strategy implementation is that planning is associated with a different set of thought processes and emotional experiences than is required for strategy implementation. We integrate research from management (strategy implementation and change management) with that from psychology (self-regulation and nudges) to identify the transition from strategic planning to implementation as a roadblock that prevents effective strategy implementation. We then present six leadership nudges that aid this transition. The first set of nudges are willpower-enhancing nudges that rely on increasing willpower to help transition from planning to implementation: Remove the distraction to plan, develop implementation intentions, and use verbal framing. The second set are desire-reducing nudges that work to decrease the desirability of planning and in so doing facilitate the transition to implementation: Highlight the end game, leverage a crisis, and celebrate small wins.
In an era of increasing technological transformation, the lines among industries, competitors, and companies are blurring as firms and platforms combine to create unique methods for engagement. Survival and growth in a rapidly changing marketplace requires incumbent companies to divest themselves of legacy thinking and to embrace internal innovation that adds value for both channel members and customers. This entails understanding the mechanisms of process digitalization, communications digitalization, and buyer digitalization. It requires incumbent firms to build and innovate on strengths currently possessed in-house and to identify and cover resource gaps. Incumbents also must work to overcome organizational inertia and effectively implement an agile approach for digitalization across the company, channels, and customer triumvirate. In sum, incumbents must: (1) consider and embrace gains from the digitalization of process, communications, and buyer; (2) respect the core business while recognizing that elements of the existing business model must adapt to changing channels and customer expectations; and (3) recognize that digitalization comes in many forms with multiple applications.
Jeanette Williams, the administrative assistant of the IT department of a large firm, had suggested creating a departmental gift fund to which employees would each contribute a set amount each year and that could be used to purchase gifts to mark significant events in the lives of department employees. Though she had managed the fund since its inception, Dave Babcock, the interim manager, had decided to take over its management. Over the course of several months, a number of events occurred requiring the use of the gift fund. In most cases, those events were of the type for which the fund had been created - births, deaths, promotions, and departures. However, Dave had also used the fund to pay for a social event, generating mixed reactions from employees. The fund had been depleted, and Dave had solicited volunteer contributions from employees when more events occurred calling for gifts. Department staff had begun to ask questions about Dave's management of the gift fund. Faced with another event and a depleted fund, Dave had to decide what to do next.
Guanxi, political connections in China, can provide unique competitive advantages, but can expose business leaders to regulatory and political risks in the region. The fictional case focuses on how U.S. banks in Hong Kong, a major financial center for the Chinese market, are pinned upon the horns of a dilemma. Banks can abide by the letter of the law and not win any business; alternatively, they can break the law, in spirit if not actually the letter, and win business at the cost of incurring legal jeopardy and possibly violating one's own sense of morality by hiring the children of well-connected senior management of a Chinese business who can direct substantial mandates to the employers.
Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (Fairfax), the Canadian insurance and investment company, made an offer in 2016 for a majority stake in the Catholic Syrian Bank Limited (CSB), a regional private bank in India. Despite its initial enthusiasm for the deal, the CSB rejected the offer because of low valuation. At the behest of the Reserve Bank of India, the CSB made a counter-offer to Fairfax for a majority stake at a substantially higher valuation. Should Fairfax take the offer?
Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (Fairfax), the Canadian insurance and investment company, made an offer in 2016 for a majority stake in the Catholic Syrian Bank Limited (CSB), a regional private bank in India. Despite its initial enthusiasm for the deal, the CSB rejected the offer because of low valuation. At the behest of the Reserve Bank of India, the CSB made a counter-offer to Fairfax for a majority stake at a substantially higher valuation. Should Fairfax take the offer?
While Samsung remains one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, it is facing a need to re-invent itself. Chinese competitors like Huawei have benchmarked Samsung's business model, taking market share away from Samsung's core smartphone business and compressing its margins. To stay ahead of these competitors, Samsung has been transforming itself into a Silicon Valley entity that aims to create new markets for new product categories. In order to take advantage of Silicon Valley and its rich innovation ecosystem, however, Samsung must overcome strategic and organizational challenges. This case examines Samsung's traditional strengths as a technology manufacturing powerhouse and its emerging strengths as an innovator, and challenges students to leverage both strengths in re-imagining Samsung.
The case describes the investment of hedge fund, Totem Point Management in Analog Semiconductors (ADI) as a way to discuss forecasting and valuation in growth companies. In June 2016, hedge fund Totem Point invested in ADI at around $55 a share. In general, Totem Point aimed for their investments to yield 50 percent returns over a two-year time horizon. It was now 2018, and Totem Point was evaluating whether to maintain its position in ADI, expand it, or close it and walk away with its (substantial) winnings from the investment. Though the stock had done well in the prior two years, it had recently seen numerous downgrades by sell-side analysts, as its price slid 15 percent from a historic high. The question facing Totem Point, was whether it would grow by a further 50 percent over the next two years. To answer this question, Totem Point considered growth trends in each of ADI's main end-markets: industrial applications, consumer applications, automotive applications, and telecommunications applications. If these end-markets expanded over the coming two years, ADI would do very well, but if they failed to expand, the stock would stagnate. Totem Point's task was to figure out which scenario was most likely and what that scenario would mean for the stock's price.
Accion, an NGO, had been a pioneer in microfinance since its entry into that sector in the early 1970s. Its investments in Banco Compartamos paid off, when the microfinance bank went IPO in 2007, leaving an influx of $138 million for Accion. Under a new CEO, Michael Schlein, who came from Citibank, the organization was constantly wrestling with what its next strategic direction should be. In 2010, Schlein decided to move the organization in the direction of fintech, betting that the new digital technologies would enable a rapid inclusion of the 1.7 billion people who had been traditionally excluded from financial products and services. The case lays out the components of the new strategy and asks students to assess its effectiveness.
When the mother-daughter founders of DivaCup set out with a mission to disrupt the menstrual care industry with an innovative product form, they initially struggled to gain legitimacy and convince retailers to carry their unique product. Now, fifteen years later, the product was available online and in more than 35,000 retail stores worldwide, and the company was struggling with omnichannel distribution challenges and frequent violations of their pricing policy due to intense competition among channel partners. International distribution and the prevalence of gray market sellers were causing large price dispersions across markets, which was harming the brand further. In October 2018, the entry of a formidable competitor, P&G (owner of menstrual care brands Tampax and Always), into the niche product segment causes the CEO and her team to consider the best plan to reposition and differentiate its product to broaden its appeal to users of other product forms, while maintaining its market leadership in the menstrual cup segment. This challenge is made more difficult due to prevalent miseducation about menstrual care and menstrual cups in particular.
Two esports entrepreneurs must choose on which business model to focus their time and money. After successfully launching an online esports coaching platform, a number of new opportunities emerge in the rapidly growing esports space which now has close to 1 billion gamers and an online audience that is greater than the Superbowl. Should they focus on a B2C business, a B2B business? Develop an analytics capability to support "sabremetrics" for esports or a content creation capability? How can they best exploit ownership of the world's top team in the "Hearthstone" league. The choice will depend on the future industry structure and how the two can most effectively "follow the money".