Teaching Resources Library

Strategy | Marketing

DeBeers's Diamond Dilemma

David McAdams Cate Reavis

Learning Objectives

  • Explore strategic issues that arise in markets for status goods. 
  • Appreciate how a major player’s strategic moves can transform a market. 
  • Examine the source of diamonds’ value to consumers, and how that value can be shaped through DeBeers’s strategic choices.

Abstract

The synthetic diamond industry was on the radar of diamond giant DeBeers as a potential disruptive technology. In 2009, after years of concerted efforts to improve its tarnished reputation as the industry monopolist, DeBeers was wondering how it should respond to the threat.

Appropriate for the Following Course(s)

Strategy, Marketing, Game theory

DeBeers's Diamond Dilemma

THERE IS NO TEACHING NOTE FOR THIS CASE STUDY.