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- September 2024
- Article
Activist Directors: Determinants and Consequences
By: Ian D. Gow, Sa-Pyung Sean Shin and Suraj Srinivasan
This paper examines determinants and consequences of hedge fund activism, focusing on activist directors, i.e., directors appointed in response to activist demands. Using a sample of 3,259 activism events from 2004 to 2016, we identify 1,623 activist directors.... View Details
- July, 2024
- Article
Consumer Protection in an Online World: An Analysis of Occupational Licensing
By: Chiara Farronato, Andrey Fradkin, Bradley Larsen and Erik Brynjolfsson
We study the demand and supply implications of occupational licensing using transaction-level data from a large online platform for home improvement services. We find that demand is more responsive to a professional's reviews than to the professional's... View Details
- July–August 2024
- Article
Doing More with Less: Overcoming Ineffective Long-Term Targeting Using Short-Term Signals
By: Ta-Wei Huang and Eva Ascarza
Firms are increasingly interested in developing targeted interventions for customers with the best response,
which requires identifying differences in customer sensitivity, typically through the conditional average treatment
effect (CATE) estimation. In theory, to... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Value of Silence: The Effect of UMG’s Licensing Dispute with TikTok on Music Demand
By: Mengjie (Magie) Cheng, Elie Ofek and Hema Yoganarasimhan
Social media platforms like TikTok have transformed how music is discovered, consumed, and
monetized. This study examines the implications of the dispute between TikTok and Universal Music
Group (UMG), which resulted in UMG excluding its music from TikTok from... View Details
- May 2024 (Revised May 2024)
- Case
Shell's Balancing Act: Resource Allocation and the Green Transition
By: David Collis and Haisley Wert
In mid-2023, amid pressure from climate change activists, shareholder activists, and confronting enormous uncertainty about the future demand for and price of fossil fuels, new Shell CEO Wael Sawan (Harvard MBA 2003) announced a change in strategy for the U.K. oil... View Details
Keywords: Portfolio Analysis; Climate; Oil; Oil And Gas; Oil Companies; Renewables; Petroleum; Investor Demand; Investors; Corporate Strategy; Resource Allocation; Climate Change; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations; Energy Industry; United Kingdom
- March 2024
- Background Note
Physical Climate Risk
By: Michael W. Toffel, Spencer Glendon and Alison Smart
This note describes how managers can identify their company’s physical climate risks, which can heighten the risk of business disruption, change the costs of operations and supply chains, and affect the demand for their goods and services. The note also provides a... View Details
- February 2024 (Revised February 2024)
- Teaching Note
Travelogo: Understanding Customer Journeys
By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei Huang
Teaching Note for HBS Exercise 524-044. The exercise aims to teach students about 1) Customer Segmentation; and 2) constructing buying personas, 3) Get actionable insights from clickstream data. View Details
- January 2024 (Revised February 2024)
- Exercise
Travelogo: Understanding Customer Journeys
By: Eva Ascarza, Nicolas Padilla and Oded Netzer
In late May 2023, Sarah Merino, the newly appointed manager of the Customer Insights group at Travelogo—an online travel booking platform—initiates a comprehensive analysis of clickstream data to understand the varied behaviors and needs of their users. In preparation... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Case
Ball: EVA Driving the World's Leading Can Manufacturer (A)
By: Jonas Heese and Susan Pinckney
The case describes Ball’s multi decade history of using Economic Value Added to drive decision making and workforce compensation. In 2016, the company acquired Rexam PLC and became the world’s leading metal beverage container company. Consumer demand for varied... View Details
Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Cost Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Buildings and Facilities; Green Building; Mergers and Acquisitions; Customer Satisfaction; Decisions; Forecasting and Prediction; Machinery and Machining; Asset Pricing; Corporate Finance; Capital; Cost; Financial Management; Goods and Commodities; Compensation and Benefits; Executive Compensation; Employee Relationship Management; Goals and Objectives; Resource Allocation; Business Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; United States; Arizona; California; Texas
- July–August 2023
- Article
Demand Learning and Pricing for Varying Assortments
By: Kris Ferreira and Emily Mower
Problem Definition: We consider the problem of demand learning and pricing for retailers who offer assortments of substitutable products that change frequently, e.g., due to limited inventory, perishable or time-sensitive products, or the retailer’s desire to... View Details
- June 2023
- Case
Investing in the Climate Transition at Neuberger Berman
By: George Serafeim and Benjamin Maletta
By mid-2023, Neuberger Berman (NB), an active asset manager, had grown its assets under management to about half a trillion dollars and took pride in its client centricity and innovative spirit. Responding to client demand for investment products that integrated... View Details
Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Sustainability; Decarbonization; Performance; Risk Assessment; Opportunities; Environmental Sustainability; Carbon Footprint; Business Analysis; Investing; Regulation; Asset Management; Investment Strategy; Climate Change; Transition; Analysis; Product Positioning; Strategy; Investment Portfolio; Financial Services Industry; Energy Industry
- 2023
- Working Paper
Design-Based Confidence Sequences: A General Approach to Risk Mitigation in Online Experimentation
By: Dae Woong Ham, Michael Lindon, Martin Tingley and Iavor Bojinov
Randomized experiments have become the standard method for companies to evaluate the performance of new products or services. In addition to augmenting managers’ decision-making, experimentation mitigates risk by limiting the proportion of customers exposed to... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
Using LLMs for Market Research
By: James Brand, Ayelet Israeli and Donald Ngwe
Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly gained popularity as labor-augmenting
tools for programming, writing, and many other processes that benefit from quick text
generation. In this paper we explore the uses and benefits of LLMs for researchers and
practitioners... View Details
- March–April 2023
- Article
Market Segmentation Trees
By: Ali Aouad, Adam Elmachtoub, Kris J. Ferreira and Ryan McNellis
Problem definition: We seek to provide an interpretable framework for segmenting users in a population for personalized decision making. Methodology/results: We propose a general methodology, market segmentation trees (MSTs), for learning market... View Details
- December 2022
- Technical Note
Risks and Opportunities from the Transition to a Low Carbon Economy: A Business Analysis Framework
By: George Serafeim
The transition to a low carbon economy introduces many risks and opportunities for businesses. Risks emerge from regulatory actions, such as carbon taxes and cap and trade systems, technological innovation that develop alternatives for customers making existing... View Details
Keywords: Risk Assessment; Opportunities; Environmental Sustainability; Carbon Footprint; Risk Management; Competitive Dynamics; Business Analysis; Climate Change; Accounting; Finance; Valuation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Technological Innovation; Transition; Product Positioning; Renewable Energy; Analysis
- Article
Recovering Investor Expectations from Demand for Index Funds
By: Mark Egan, Alexander J. MacKay and Hanbin Yang
We use a revealed-preference approach to estimate investor expectations of stock market returns. Using data on demand for index funds that follow the S&P 500, we develop and estimate a model of investor choice to flexibly recover the time-varying distribution of... View Details
- August 2022
- Supplement
Zalora: Data-Driven Pricing Recommendations
By: Ayelet Israeli
This exercise can be used in conjunction with the main case "Zalora: Data-Driven Pricing" to facilitate class discussion without requiring data analysis from the students. Instead, the exercise presents reports that were created by the data science team to answer the... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Pricing Algorithms; Dynamic Pricing; Ecommerce; Pricing Strategy; Pricing And Revenue Management; Apparel; Singapore; Startup; Demand Estimation; Data Analysis; Data Analytics; Exercise; Price; Internet and the Web; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry; Fashion Industry; Singapore
- August 2022
- Article
The Bulletproof Glass Effect: Unintended Consequences of Privacy Notices
By: Aaron R. Brough, David A. Norton, Shannon L. Sciarappa and Leslie K. John
Drawing from a content analysis of publicly traded companies’ privacy notices, a survey of managers, a field study, and five online experiments, this research investigates how consumers respond to privacy notices. A privacy notice, by placing legally enforceable limits... View Details
- February 18, 2022
- Article
Transparency as a Solution for COVID-19 Related Hospital Capacity Issues
By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Richard Boxer
In the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. hospitals could not provide an adequate supply of beds to meet demand. Solving the problem of hospital bed capacity is of great importance in the “new normal,” which requires recognizing that SARS-CoV-2 is but... View Details
Keywords: COVID; COVID-19 Pandemic; Health Care; Health Care Demand; Health Care Delivery; Health Care Industry; Health Care Operations; Health Care Policy; Transparency; Hospital; Hospital Management; Hospitals; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Service Delivery; Operations; Performance Capacity; Policy; Health Industry
- Winter 2021
- Article
Mobile Internet Usage and Usage-based Pricing
By: Jeffrey Prince and Shane Greenstein
Using data on mobile Internet usage of thousands of individuals, we provide some of the first analyses linking mobile usage to key demographics such as income. We find a reverse-U relationship between mobile Internet usage and income—notably different than the... View Details