Research Questions

Studying this chapter should provide you with the knowledge to: “A Chinese-telecommunications giant founded by a former engineer of the People’s Liberation Army is about to take a shot at challeng- ing Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. in the global smartphone market.” —Wall Street Journal, April 5, 20161The headline above from a Wall Street […]

Studying this chapter should provide you with the knowledge to: In 1998 Larry Page and Sergei Brin launched Google, a search en- gine that allowed users to search the world wide web for infor- mation. Google used a page-ranking algorithm that worked like academic citations—the more people selected a website page to be viewed, the

Studying this chapter should provide you with the knowledge to: One cold January, facing increasing competition from low-fare carriers, Delta Airlines introduced a new pricing plan called sim- plifares that dramatically cut ticket prices across most of Delta’s domestic US routes. Paul Matsen, Delta’s chief marketing officer, stated, “We could sit back and wait for

Studying this chapter should provide you with the knowledge to: Google’s stock has always been a high flyer. Since the company went public in the summer of 2004 until the close of 2016, its shares generated a total return of 1,440%, a 23.4% compound annual growth rate.1 Even for a company with such strong share

LEARNING OBJECTIVES Studying this chapter should provide you with the knowledge to: In 1852, Henry Wells and William Fargo sat together in New York City and formed a joint stock company to provide banking and delivery services to a rapidly growing territory as far away from New York as possible: California. The new bank gained

LEARNING OBJECTIVES Studying this chapter should provide you with the knowledge to: Paul Newman (1925–2008) has been described as “the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history.”1 His act- ing career began with a role in the Broadway play Picnic. His big break in film came in 1956, when he played boxer

Walmart, a discount retailer, was started by Sam Walton in the small town of Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. By 2014, Walmart had become the world’s largest retailer, with more than $476 bil- lion in revenues and 10,942 stores.1 More than one-quarter of Walmart’s revenues came from outside of the United States as it continued to

IntroductionFollowing 100 years of growth, the carbonated soft drink (CSD) industry was a $36 billion market (see Exhibit 1), and Coca-Cola and Pepsi had the top selling soft drinks in the world. In 2015, sales of Pepsi and Coca-Cola products made up 70.8 percent of sales in the US CSD industry (see Exhibit 1).The year

James Pitaro moved his chair away from the computer screen and took a deep, calming breath. Pitaro had just finished his first full year as president and co-chair at sports programming giant ESPN. Pitaro began his career in 1999 at a then-hot startup named Yahoo before moving on to run Walt Disney Company’s interactive division.

Southwest Airlines sent its first flights aloft in 1971. After almost 45 years, Southwest was so successful that the company was considered, in many ways, the crown jewel of the airline industry. The organization had achieved the longest continuous stretch of profitability in the history of the airline industry and was consistently ranked in the