Publications

13 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer (And How To Reach It)

Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman's latest book, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, delves into the subconscious mind of the consumer—the place where most purchasing decisions are made. The question: How can marketers... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

25 May 2016
Research & Ideas

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

explore interactions between private business and public health, and demonstrate how consumers can create better and less expensive care for themselves. Book Excerpt: Consumer Power in Shaping Public Health... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Health

August 2018
Article

The Effect of Graphic Warnings on Sugary-Drink Purchasing

By: Grant Donnelly, Laura Y. Zatz, Daniel Svirsky and Leslie John

Governments have proposed text warning labels to decrease consumption of sugary drinks – a contributor to chronic diseases like diabetes. However, they may be less effective than more evocative, graphic warning labels. We field-tested the effectiveness of graphic... View Details

Keywords: Policy Making; Preferences; Food; Health; Policy; Information; Labels; Consumer Behavior; Decision Making; Performance Effectiveness

Read Now

25 Jan 2017
HBS Case

How Should Advertisers Respond to Consumer Demand for Whiter Skin?

think of the role of advertising as providing primes that are psychological in nature as a means of persuasion, you can take something that exists in society—a consumer preference for fair skin—and leverage... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Beauty & Cosmetics

23 Mar 2015
Research & Ideas

It’s Called ‘Price Coherence,’ and It’s Surprisingly Bad for Consumers

Consumers often have the following choice: Either buy something directly from a retailer, or buy it indirectly through an intermediary, which partners with the retailer to attract more buyers. Think purchasing a plane ticket straight from... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail; Air Transportation; Food & Beverage; Entertainment & Recreation

07 Apr 2022
Research & Ideas

Giving Back: Consumers Care More About How Companies Donate Than How Much

giving campaign was manipulated, consumers continued to prefer the brand they felt gave a larger percentage of profits to those giving a larger sum of money. In that study, shoppers considering an online... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

Forthcoming
Article

Economic Integration and the Transmission of Democracy

By: Marco Tabellini and Giacomo Magistretti

In this paper, we study the effects of economic integration with democratic partners on democracy. We assemble a large country-level panel dataset from 1960 to 2015, and exploit improvements in air, relative to sea, transportation to derive a time-varying instrument... View Details

Keywords: Democratization; Institutional Development; Economic Integration; International Trade; Democracy; Political Preferences; Institutions; Trade; Global Range; Economics; Government and Politics

August 2017 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Flex Hungary: Launching Production (A)

By: Willy Shih

This case examines design choices in the construction of flow lines. Flow lines are a popular way of arranging production because they are simple and inherently efficient. Equipment or workstations are arranged according to the sequence of steps in which a product is... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing; Line-balancing; Flow Line; Conveyor-paced Line; Consumer Goods; Consumer Products; Production Management; Production Planning; Production Scheduling; Operations; Production; Management; Supply Chain; Design; Analysis; Goods and Commodities; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; European Union

Educators

August 2019
Article

When and How to Diversify—A Multicategory Utility Model for Personalized Content Recommendation

By: Yicheng Song, Nachiketa Sahoo and Elie Ofek

Sometimes we desire change, a break from the same or an opportunity to fulfill different aspects of our needs. Noting that consumers seek variety, several approaches have been developed to diversify items recommended by personalized recommender systems. However,... View Details

Keywords: Recommender Systems; Personalization; Recommendation Diversity; Variety Seeking; Collaborative Filtering; Consumer Utility Models; Digital Media; Clickstream Analysis; Learning-to-rank; Consumer Behavior; Media; Customization and Personalization; Strategy; Mathematical Methods

14 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’

typical consumers think. That's fine if you only want to keep making incremental improvements to your products, says Jill Avery, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and a former brand manager at Gillette, Samuel Adams, and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

October 2024
Article

Canary Categories

By: Eric Anderson, Chaoqun Chen, Ayelet Israeli and Duncan Simester

Past customer spending in a category is generally a positive signal of future customer spending. We show that there exist “canary categories” for which the reverse is true. Purchases in these categories are a signal that customers are less likely to return to that... View Details

Keywords: Churn; Churn Management; Churn/retention; Assortment Planning; Retail; Retailing; Retailing Industry; Preference Heterogeneity; Assortment Optimization; Customers; Retention; Consumer Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction; Retail Industry

June 2014
Case

Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (A)

By: Mihir A. Desai and Elizabeth A. Meyer

By the end of 2013, Apple had $137 billion dollars in cash and marketable securities. This case explores how companies can generate such large amounts of cash and how and if they should distribute it to shareholders, especially in the face of shareholder pressure. In... View Details

Keywords: Apple; Steve Jobs; Forecast; Forecasting; Forecasting And Prediction; Shareholder Activism; Share Repurchase; Dividends; Financial Ratios; Preferred Shares; Cash Distribution; Corporate Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Republic of Ireland

Educators

April 2021
Article

A Model of Multi-Pass Search: Price Search Across Stores and Time

By: Navid Mojir and K. Sudhir

In retail settings with price promotions, consumers often search across stores and time. However, the search literature typically only models one pass search across stores, ignoring revisits to stores; the choice literature using scanner data has modeled search across... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Search; Multi-pass Search; Price Search; Store Search; Spatial Search; Temporal Search; Spatiotemporal Search; Dynamic Structural Models; MPEC; Price Promotions; Store Loyalty; Consumer Behavior; Price; Spending; Marketing; Mathematical Methods

SSRN

January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
Case

THE YES: Reimagining the Future of E-Commerce with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

By: Jill Avery, Ayelet Israeli and Emma von Maur

THE YES, a multi-brand shopping app launched in May 2020 offered a new type of buying experience for women’s fashion, driven by a sophisticated algorithm that used data science and machine learning to create and deliver a personalized store for every shopper, based on... View Details

Keywords: Data; Data Analytics; Artificial Intelligence; AI; AI Algorithms; AI Creativity; Fashion; Retail; Retail Analytics; E-Commerce Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Big Data; Preference Elicitation; Preference Prediction; Predictive Analytics; App Development; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Advertising; Mobile App; Mobile Marketing; Apparel; Online Advertising; Referral Rewards; Referrals; Female Ceo; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Creativity; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; AI and Machine Learning; E-commerce; Digital Platforms; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

Educators

17 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

‘Not a Bunch of Weirdos’: Why Mainstream Investors Buy Crypto

the growth of cryptocurrency, many consumers and businesses remain skeptical. The findings, the authors say, provide the first large-scale portrait of cryptocurrency investors, offering valuable insights for regulators, financial... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

June 2014
Supplement

Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (B)

By: Mihir Desai and Elizabeth A. Meyer

This case is meant to accompany Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (A) and details the results of Apple's Q2 2013 earnings call. View Details

Keywords: Apple; Steve Jobs; Forecast; Forecasting; Forecasting And Prediction; Shareholder Activism; Share Repurchase; Dividends; Financial Ratios; Preferred Shares; Cash Distribution; Corporate Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Republic of Ireland