Customer Specificity - Publications - Faculty & Research

27 Sep 2004
Research & Ideas

IBM Finds Profit in Diversity

goals without providing the structures to educate senior executives in the specific challenges faced by various constituencies. In addition, these strategies often don't provide models that teach or encourage new behaviors. IBM has taken... View Details

Keywords: by David A. Thomas

09 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

Warring Algorithms Could Be Driving Up Consumer Prices

competition. The study focuses on algorithms that are predicated on rival pricing and does not examine those that target pricing for specific regions or consumer groups. Online retail pricing algorithms, whether developed in-house or... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail

04 Jan 2010
Research & Ideas

Best of HBS Working Knowledge 2009

Many business leaders are mystified about how to reach potential customers on social networks such as Facebook. HBS professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski provides a fresh look into the interpersonal dynamics of these sites and offers guidance... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

30 Oct 2005
Research & Ideas

Tuning Jobs to Fit Your Company

customize products and respond to customers. Regional managers take responsibility for sales, product development, distribution, and manufacturing. As a consequence, the spans of control for managers back at the head office are relatively... View Details

Keywords: by Robert Simons

29 Sep 2009
First Look

First Look: September 29

endogenous vertical differentiation concerns. We discuss how our study helps improve our understanding of notions of strategy, business model, and tactics in the field of strategy. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/10-026.pdf View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

27 Jul 2019
Op-Ed

Does Facebook's Business Model Threaten Our Elections?

technology-driven efforts to sway their votes, and from as far away as Russia, according to US government claims. Social media in general and Facebook specifically were the primary weapons of choice. It worked so well that spending by US... View Details

Keywords: by George Riedel

09 Apr 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, April 9, 2019

Stolarz-Fantino argue that specific design features of our research mean that it cannot have policy implications and that researchers “need to consider profit maximization in menu design or studies are likely to suggest ill-informed... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

04 Oct 2004
What Do You Think?

Does Speed Trump Intellectual Property?

the advent of the fall television season, replete with new reality TV shows, producers are presenting us with an interesting case example of speed as a competitive strategy. One specific case in point is that of the Fox Network's recent... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

19 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 19, 2018

organizations as well as customer pressure from individual investors are critical in mitigating free-rider problems among asset managers and sustaining engagement practices. Finally, I explore the limits and anticompetitive concerns to... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

25 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Has Occupational Licensing Outlived Its Usefulness?

or she will pay. The study, Consumer Protection In An Online World: An Analysis Of Occupational Licensing, is the first to look together at what consumers care about and the effects on demand and metrics of customer satisfaction. It is... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Service

06 May 2008
First Look

First Look: May 6, 2008

series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the film rental and return patterns of a sample of online DVD rental customers over a period of four... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

22 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

The Most Important Management Trends of the (Still Young) Twenty-First Century

Internet-based companies like Google record every click and keystroke of every customer, analyzing the data to continuously improve their products and marketing. Customers are courted and supply chains are managed via websites, social... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

14 Feb 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research: February 14

areas, whereas midscale stores enter less populated, lower-income areas. We find positive causal brand effects for specific upscale and midscale stores, above and beyond market effects, but find negative causal brand effects for all... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

15 Oct 2014
Research & Ideas

Apple Pay’s Technology Adoption Problem

believes merchants who consider adopting Apple Pay will naturally wonder: What do we get out of this? And they will specifically want to know if they will be asked to pay higher fees than credit card companies are charging?... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Technology; Retail

23 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Psychology, Pathology, and the CEO

market share. Its Mach3 shaving system was a blockbuster product, but the company was suffering the effects of its own reliance on trade loading—the practice of offering discounts to retail customers at the end of a quarter in order to... View Details

Keywords: by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

07 Sep 2011
First Look

First Look: Sept. 7

sector. In a second section, a multidisciplinary team of sociologists and an economist map how reforms in economic and social policies have produced declines in the social standing of some specific groups and economic mobility for others.... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

19 Feb 2008
Research & Ideas

Radical Design, Radical Results

"Innovators avoid proposing a wide range of product signs and languages as a way to protect brand identity," says Verganti. "They tend to adopt strategies that allow customers to easily reconnect View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Consumer Products

21 May 2014
Lessons from the Classroom

CORe: HBS Powers Up Online Program on Business Fundamentals

says Narayanan. Narayanan and his colleagues approached that challenge head-on by creating 20 multimedia cases specifically designed for use online. Each employs a two- to three-minute video clip to introduce the situation, and then... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Education

20 Apr 2016
Research & Ideas

When CEOs Become Activists

controversial issues like civil rights and climate change? Two, in terms of consumer response, does CEO activism affect customer perceptions about the company? (They recently discussed the paper in the New York Times.) “What prompted this... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Technology; Publishing

13 Jun 2005
Research & Ideas

Rescuing Products with Stealth Positioning

its market penetration—like that of rivals Microsoft (with the Xbox) and Nintendo (with the GameCube)—has been limited by a narrow customer base of mostly males in their late teens and twenties. Sony's goal is to make the PlayStation a... View Details

Keywords: by Youngme Moon

Publications