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Copyright: © 2013 The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
J. Scott Armstrong is a marketing professor at Wharton and author of the recent book Principles of Forecasting. In the article that follows he talks about role-playing as a tool for business and government leaders who face crucial decisions in situations ranging from military clashes to marketing challenges.
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During the economic downturn that most of corporate America experienced in 2001 the following companies had something in common: Intel Texas Instruments Cirrus Logic and Hunt Wesson. What tied them together was their decision last year to go from a direct (in-house) sales force to a contract or outside sales agency for some or all of their major product lines. Marketing professors Erin Anderson at INSEAD and Len Lodish at Wharton say that outside sales agencies if properly managed can benefit companies regardless of the economic climate.
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With more than 20 million people registered on the monster.com job search site it’s clear that we are a workforce on the move. In a recent executive education session Peter Cappelli director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources explained how a dramatically different labor market is changing not just the way people are hired and fired but how they view their jobs their employers and their careers.
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The dramatic disintegration of Enron has left a lot of people wondering how this huge publicly-traded company could have fallen so far so fast. Wharton faculty and others help explain what went on behind the scenes at Enron where it is now clear that management exploited loopholes in accounting procedures and created questionable partnerships involving top company officials among other tactics.
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Only a few years ago B2B exchanges were expected to completely alter conventional buyer-supplier relationships. The reality has been otherwise. Only 10% of the 1 000 B2B exchanges launched in the past 18 months are reportedly still in operation. Meanwhile the important B2B action seems to have shifted to industry-wide exchanges run by incumbent firms such as Covisint in the auto industry and Transora in the consumer products sector. In a new research study Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie and colleague Susan Helper explore this evolution.
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Webvan the ambitious online grocer once bragged that it would set a new standard for Internet retailing. As most people now know for all its hubris the company has turned out to be one of the dot-com economy’s most spectacular failures. After burning its way through $1.2 billion in capital it declared bankruptcy in July. Does Webvan’s collapse mean that shoppers dislike buying groceries online? For a part of the answer look across the Atlantic to a Britain-based supermarket chain called Tesco. Its online arm Tesco.com will probably have revenues of $420 million this year.
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Even as so many well-known search engines are struggling for survival Google.com continues to thrive actually turning a profit this year according to the privately-held company. What explains Google’s success and the loyalty of its users? “Performance not glitter ” sums up one Wharton professor. Plus a purist approach to advertising.
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Choose one: a slight pay raise or a shorter work week. If you chose the former you may be suffering from what authors John de Graaf David Wann and Thomas Naylor call “affluenza ” which is both the name of their new book and a reference to America’s worship of economic expansion. Think more shopping malls bigger homes more bankruptcies both monetary and spiritual. Affluenza our reviewer says is a riveting terrifying and inspiring analysis of what ails contemporary America.
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How can executives measure returns on investments they make in information technology? This complex issue touches everything from decisions about replacing desktop computers with laptop models to investments in complex software systems. Experts from Wharton and Intel the giant chip maker suggest some methods that may help executives approach these questions.
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Customer relationship management or CRM is the buzzword du jour in business circles. To hear some proponents talk about it all a company needs to do is buy and install a sophisticated CRM software package to maximize its returns from customers. Wharton faculty members point out however that making CRM work involves doing a lot more.
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