Experience Stern | News & Events

Excerpt from The Baffler -- "Serdari suggests that it is actually the increasing popularity of lower- and mid-level bags that now drives up the cost of higher-level bags. And there’s still a market for them, even at a 150 percent mark-up. Serdari says that, just as existing brands are hiking up their costs to distinguish themselves from the rest, a newly reinvented fashion brand (like Céline) might today choose to produce bags with the most marked increase (at, say, $2,500—up from $1,000 ten years ago)."

Excerpt from Fast Co.Exist -- "'What we've been able to show is that there's been unbelievable expansion,' says Shlomo 'Solly' Angel, a senior researcher at the NYU Stern Urbanization Project. 'This gives planners and policymakers an idea of by how much cities are going to grow. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, cities are going to grow seven or eight times between now and 2040.'"

Excerpt from CNC World -- "I think we should expect China to grow at a six or seven percent for the next five to ten years or so, and I think that's a new normal. When you grow for ten percent a year for three decades, it's only natural that you'll slow down. It's important to realize that the slowdown is a sign of success not weakness. Every successful economy, as it gets wealthier, transitions from ten percent growth to seven percent growth for a decade or two, to five percent growth and then eventually you are wealthy and you grow at a two to three percent that we see amongst all fully-developed countries."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "...applying the leverage ratio may reveal a yawning hole at European banks, according to an analysis by Sascha Steffen, an associate professor at ESMT European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, and Viral V. Acharya, a professor of economics at New York University. They first assumed European banks had to write off all the nonperforming loans that are not covered by reserves. Then they calculated how much equity capital the banks would then need so that their equity capital equaled 4 percent of total assets. In that situation, the banks in the sample would have a theoretical capital shortfall of nearly $350 billion."

Excerpt from Al Jazeera -- "Apple's new system uses something called tokenization, which basically does not let the retailers get access to the credit card number and that's the premise on which Apple is basically pushing its system... that we will protect your data. To consumers, they're saying, we'll give you more convenience, we'll give you added security because of tokenization so that retailers don't know your credit card data. Now, for consumers, this is great. For retailers, this is not so good because, for years, they've always mined the credit card data to put in their offline and online transactions together and create a profile... they can use that to also target us with real-time advertisements when we're in the store. Now, with Apple Pay, they can't do that easily anymore."

Excerpt from Financial Times -- "Using his methodology, which he calls SRISK, Mr Acharya found that in a crisis French financial institutions would have a capital shortfall of almost $400bn, worse than the US and UK despite their much bigger financial sectors. Looking just at the French banks tested in the ECB stress tests, which found zero capital shortfall, SRISK came up with €189bn."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "The nature of work itself is dramatically changing due to the concept of an ‘on-demand’ workforce. Studies have predicted that up to 40% of the U.S. workforce population will be part of this ‘on-demand’ labor pool (contractors, freelancers and temp workers) within the next six years. The primary motivation for companies to crowdsource, whether for labor, design, ideas or funding, is to reduce costs in a challenging economic environment, as well as to harness the skills, collective knowledge and wisdom of the crowds to complement the skills of their employees."

Excerpt from WWD -- "'It’s legitimate that customers have been very disappointed with large brands and their customer relationships. Someone has had to come in,' said Thomaï Serdari, brand strategist and adjunct professor of marketing at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. 'The customers felt quite alienated or disconnected and didn’t feel that brands spoke to them. That is what initiated this.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "'This act by CVS and Rite Aid heralds the advent of the imminent battle in the mobile pay system,' Anindya Ghose, a marketing and information-technology professor at New York University, said yesterday in an e-mail."

Excerpt from Marketplace -- "Historically, they were big, well-known companies, often in consumer goods, like Procter & Gamble, General Motors, General Electric and General Mills, says Lawrence White, an economics professor at the N.Y.U. Stern School of Business... But even blue chips can fall, says White, recalling General Motors' bankruptcy. 'The stock holders of the old General Motors came out with nothing,' he says."

Excerpt from Bloomberg Businessweek -- "Apple also needs to sell consumers on Pay. Anindya Ghose, an IT and marketing professor at New York University, says the company should play up what he considers Apple Pay’s greatest strength: the added security of its token system. Right after Apple’s iPad introduction event on Oct. 16, Cook said the payment service’s security and privacy, combined with its ease of use, will appeal to consumers. 'It takes some time to roll out to banks and merchants, but I think there will be an incredible pull from customers who want it,' he said. 'At the end of the day, a merchant always does what their customers want.'"

Excerpt from Forbes -- "For manufacturers, sample boxes away to give targeted consumers a taste, feel for, or experience with products they otherwise would probably not make the effort to get to know. There’s also far less competitive clutter in a sample box than visiting that product category section at retail, so the sampled brands have a much longer time for consumers to evaluate the selling messages on their packages. ROCKSBOX gives users who try the jewelry for a limited time, the option to purchase what they like for a reasonable price."

Excerpt from Fox Business -- "The Apple brand has a lot of forgiveness. People are going to forgive them very quickly because they've got such a strong user base and it's an ecosystem that people feel locked into. I once heard it described as a prison you actually choose to go through because it's a closed system. So they're going to bounce back from this. Not a problem. I don't think it's going to have a real impact on the brand."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "What Bangladesh needs is a global fund that pools resources from the global brands, local manufacturers, Western governments and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Acting alone, not one of these entities has the will or resources to get the job done. But together they may just succeed."

Excerpt from CNBC -- "'Politically, other cities will be pushed to do what San Francisco did, because more people will want to rent out their houses and cars,' said Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at NYU Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "In 2010, de la Renta quietly sold an approximately 20 percent stake to GF Capital Management & Advisors to provide additional financing to launch a beauty business and open more stores. To leverage its brand, the company will need more capital, said Scott Galloway, who teaches marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He said the brand could be valued at as much as $1 billion if it can attract less well-heeled shoppers and said a strategic buyer or private equity firm might bite."

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Excerpt from CNBC -- "...when firms do well for a long period of time and grow to become these big cap firms, that creates a lot of political power, a lot of political capital for the divisions that have a lot of strength. Those divisions then want to keep that power, resist that change as the market changes around them, and that kind of leads to the inertia in the organization. ... because by trying to be efficient in making good decisions and avoiding big bad, risky gambles, they then weed out potentially good risky projects and that kind of makes them look like they're being very risk-averse."

Excerpt from Marketplace -- "'If you only look at the headline cash number, you are missing a lot of the story,' says Rob Salomon, professor at the NYU Stern School of Business... 'As a matter of fact, there’s another example where this happened, which is Daimler-Chrysler’s spin-off of Chrysler. In effect, Daimler paid Cerberus to take Chrysler off its hands,' Salomon says."

Excerpt from Fox Business -- "We've had about two weeks of spectacularly high volatility. However, when you think about it, it's only high relative to the last two years. We haven't seen this for two years. Before that, we had the financial crisis, which makes this small... There's uncertainty about the future. And then, a news event comes along and it moves the markets... The thing that I thought was the new piece of information was that Europe looked worse than it had. Germany was slowing down and Angela Merkel said that we better tighten our belts, which I think the markets thought was just the wrong answer."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "The call is 'critical,' said Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business. 'Is she going to have the wind at her back or in her face?'"

Excerpt from The Guardian -- "The accomplishments Roberts highlights in conducting inspections and identifying factory safety hazards are important. But workers and factory owners need to know next steps. Brands and retailers should work with Bangladeshi manufacturers, the government of Bangladesh, foreign governments, and development organisations to advance a comprehensive approach – underwritten by significant funding – to upgrade the entire export garment sector."

Excerpt from Salon -- "A working paper by Solly Angel and Patrick Lamson-Hall, 'The Rise and Fall of Manhattan’s Densities, 1800-2010,' touches on all of these issues in its quest to chart two centuries of settlement patterns on the island. Angel, a professor at NYU’s Stern Urbanization Project, and Lamson-Hall, a research scholar at the same, show that historical density is not as simple as dividing population by area — and above all, that it is only tenuously related to the architectural profile of the city."

Excerpt from MarketWatch -- "...we’re kidding ourselves if we think that market reforms will be able to prevent [stock market crashes]. The only real solution is to devise investment strategies with the knowledge that big daily drops are unavoidable. These truths are what emerge from academic research into the frequency of market crashes. That research traces to 'Institutional Investors and Stock Market Volatility,' a study conducted a decade ago by Xavier Gabaix, a finance professor at New York University, and three scientists at Boston University’s Center for Polymer Studies: H. Eugene Stanley, Parameswaran Gopikrishnan, and Vasiliki Plerou."

Excerpt from Luxury Daily -- "'What is missing is cultural insight that needs to be internal,' Ms. Serdari said. 'To either partner with people who are bicultural–which is very different than bilingual, by the way–or to hire talent because even though it is expensive, [brands] will have much more return on their investment in the long term if [they] really have people who interpret who the local celebrity is, what TV show is watched, is there a Gossip Girl in Brazil, for example,' she said. '[Brands should ask], are we going to showcase our merchandise with that particular platform? Why or why not?'"