Goods, trade, and consumer services

Many felt pressure to lie about their personal lives.

Why would a new Ceres report give low scores to Whole Foods, one of the nation’s largest purchasers of renewable energy, for the way it is responding to the challenge of climate change? Precisely for the word that Whole Foods uses to describe itself: “whole.” Many of the company’s actions on climate change are laudable, […]

Change may be brewing for the American beer industry, but its current structure serves an important purpose.

Stores have evolved, so the jobs should too.

If they don’t act soon, they may fade into irrelevance.

Rick Steves developed a deep love for travel when he was a teenager and soon realized that he could fashion a career out of teaching others how to plan...

Companies intent on wooing the Chinese consumer are ramping up their local research and development efforts. In the past five years, global fast-moving consumer goods companies have announced plans to pour over $5 billion into R&D in China. The case is compelling. The rationale includes the need to tailor products and develop original ones that […]

"Please don't tell me that I need to have a baby to have this time off." Those words were still ringing in the ears of Jessica Gonon an hour after a tense...

In 1999, Mei Zhang quit her lucrative consulting job to launch WildChina, a small travel company in her native China. Nearly four years later, the SARS...

In the fall of 2012 the author decided he needed to do some soul searching. The start-up he'd founded six years earlier had grown into a global company...

By sharing rental revenues with movie studios, Blockbuster increased the availability of hit videos, making customers happy and boosting its own profits as well as those of suppliers. This model will work in other industries, too.

They're even collaborating with Walmart.

Pinterest surged into the spotlight earlier this year when it was revealed that it drives more web traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined....

Who knew they care so much about breakfast?

When the Gallup Organization applied Six Sigma principles to sales and service groups at several companies, it learned how much performance variation exists between seemingly similar work groups. Managing that variability can raise overall performance by orders of magnitude and can create organic growth.

Use caricature to gain a competitive perspective on UX challenges.

Not long ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the resplendent headquarters of Hearst Corporation, the privately-held media empire that owns Good Housekeeping magazine — and its famous Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. An executive there took me on a walk around to see the wonders of this fancy LEED gold-certified tower. The building hovers […]

I didn’t buy any gifts from Amazon this year. I, whose entire job basically depends on the Internet — including editing HBR Singles like this and this, both sold through Amazon — developed a moral and intellectual aversion to purchasing goods from this Internet stalwart. Here’s what happened. My original plan this holiday shopping season […]

The six-month experiment reversed managers' opinions on hybrid work - and offers three important lessons.

With the future of our global economy still uncertain, more and more executives are looking to China, specifically to the Chinese consumer — who just might be able to lift the global economy out of recession. New research from McKinsey & Co. indicates that, by 2015, China will be home to the world’s fourth-largest population […]