Nike has increased its focus on direct-to-customers strategy and cancelled its contract with Amazon to be able to collect its customer data. Through a series of acquisitions of data analytics and AI-based startups, it plans to use this data to understand customer journey, improve demand predictions at a hyper-local scale and enhance customer experience globally.
Retail
AiFi – Making Retail Store Autonomous using AI
AiFi uses AI, machine learning, computer vision and sensor flow to bring a check-out free experience to any retail store concept.
Macy’s: reinventing customer experience through data analytics
Traditional retailers have been significantly impacted by the increasing penetration of e-commerce. Macy’s has focused on developing its data analytics capabilities to survive the fourth industrial revolution.
Craigslist: The remarkable but potentially obsolete success story of the “ultimate platform”
Craigslist, the largest classified advertisement platform in the world, has enjoyed over two decades of largely free offerings connecting "providers" and "seekers" of services and products. Craigslist has long resisted innovation and change to stay true to its simple and free offering, yet as new entrants build competitive value propositions, such mindset and strategy will not only hamper its growth but threaten its very existence.
StockX: The Stock Market for Things
StockX is an e-commerce platform on the rise due to it’s unique stock market approach to resale. Strong network effects, superior platform design, and “sticky” features have and will continue to help StockX grow in the future.
Udaan- India’s Amazon or Alibaba?
Udaan is a B2B marketplace in India connecting small and medium sized retailers to wholesalers for a range of products from lifestyle, home, electronics to fruits and vegetables.
ZUBALE – Revolutionizing retail execution in LatAm
Founded in 2018 by two HBS grads, Zubale is the leading platform crowdsourcing on-the-ground people for retailers to address retail execution tasks. How sustainable and scalable is their platform?
ASOS: Your one-stop shop for all things fashion
ASOS, the UK-based fashion platform, is a two-sided platform that connects shoppers to third-party vendors as well as their private label.
All eyes on Shopify: a winner take all
Shopify, a low-key Canadian company, started as a SAS software solution that enables small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to create their own customizable e-commerce websites without the need to have any prior development or design knowledge. Today, fifteen years after […]
Macy’s Store Closings, Layoffs a Sign of Struggle in Omnichannel Retail
Macys is unable to deliver on competitive pricing, differentiated customer experience, and unique product offering. Its historical competencies leave it ill-equipped to compete in the omnichannel retail market.