From the methods used to make its most boundary-pushing shoe soles to the ornamental design of the knitted uppers that can be found in its Flyknit technology, Nike’s arsenal of utility and design patents is sweeping. In addition to using those legal protections to try to stomp down on competitors if they veer too close to...
A researcher from Georgetown University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing, which examines how consumers approach sustainable buying decision making with on-demand production, where they are given power early in the development cycle. The study, forthcoming in the January issue of the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Who Receives Credit or Blame?...
If one wants to calculate the environmental impact of purchasing a product or services, they must consider the role of the capital assets that went into their production — machinery, factories, IT, vehicles, and roads — and the energy and materials required to create those assets. For instance, any assessment of the environmental “footprint” of...
It pays to be the boss. According to new research from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, it pays even more to be an incumbent CEO working with a newly hired chief financial officer (CFO). Fuqua researchers studied more than 20 years of data from S&P 1500 firms and found CEOs took home an average...
Conventional wisdom dictates that workers who “lawyer up” in workplace disputes would be more likely to improve their chances at securing a better outcome, but in an alternative dispute resolution context such as arbitration, employers can all but cancel out those positive effects, says a new paper by a University of Illinois expert who studies...
A company with a gender-diverse board of directors is interpreted as revealing a preference for diversity and a weaker commitment to shareholder value, according to new research in the INFORMS journal Organization Science. The study examines investor responses to board diversity and finds that one additional woman on the board results in a 2.3% decrease in...
Despite years of effort to bring more women to the top boards of business, the proportion of women on the committees of listed companies remains in the single digits. In 2019, women held just 8.7 percent of the positions on the boards of the 160 largest German companies. Despite this, quotas, such as the statutory...
Concerns abound about whether Chinese consumers will continue to splurge on luxury goods and other “non-essential” items, with Sanford C. Bernstein revealing “weakening discretionary spending” and “more muted” demand from Chinese customers, thereby, suggesting that “the luxury-goods sector may be close to a ‘temporary plateau.’” While such news does not bode well for luxury brands, according to...
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is vying for Tiffany & Co. The Paris-based luxury goods conglomerate made a $14.5 billion play for the American jewelry stalwart last month, in furtherance of a quest to bolster its offerings in the fast-growing jewelry market. Just as analysts predicted, Tiffany’s board reportedly rejected LVMH’s initial, unsolicited offer to seek a...
The demise of the Zac Posen brand is not coming without at least one lawsuit, which sheds some light into the winding down of the famed fashion brand. It turns out that a few weeks before Zac Posen announced that it would shutter after 20 years in business, the New York-based womenswear brand favored by supermodels,...
