Publications

November 1998 (Revised December 1998)
Case

Asea Brown Boveri (Condensed)

By: Robert L. Simons

The merger of Asea AB and BBC Brown Boveri required a restructuring of operations and a change in organizational cultures. Competitive success also necessitated the benefits of scale while remaining "local" for political and customer-responsiveness reasons. The case... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Mergers and Acquisitions; Restructuring; Cost vs Benefits; Competitive Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth and Development; Performance Effectiveness; Consumer Products Industry

11 Jun 2001
Research & Ideas

E-Commerce Unplugged

In this excerpt, Nohria and Leestma outline the challenges and rewards awaiting businesses that target the mobile-commerce customer. The best place to start? Develop a thorough knowledge of consumer... View Details

Keywords: by Nitin Nohria & Marty Leestma

March 1997 (Revised March 1998)
Case

Help the World See: Self-Sustaining Eye Care in Belize

In 1992, Help the World See (HTWS), a U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to improving eye care in developing countries, established permanent, self-sustaining eye care clinics in Belize in conjunction with the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired (BCVI). The... View Details

Keywords: Conflict of Interests; Nonprofit Organizations; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Belize

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April 2009
Supplement

Supply Chain Optimization at Hugo Boss (B) - The M-Ratio

By: Ananth Raman, Nicole DeHoratius and Zahra Kanji

We evaluate the impact of a supply chain pilot implemented at Hugo Boss. This pilot entailed altering the way in which Hugo Boss orders from its suppliers. We explore the challenge of assessing the impact of supply chain change, the link between operational performance... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chain; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Sales; Change; Valuation; Consumer Products Industry

November 2000
Exercise

Atlantis-Biovent Negotiation: Confidential Instructions for Biovent

By: Michael A. Wheeler

This two-party exercise illustrates bidding strategy in the context of settling a large insurance claim. Specifically, the claimant (Biovent) and the insurer (Atlantis) are asked to submit confidential offers to a dispute resolution website that will determine whether... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Bids and Bidding; Emerging Markets; Agreements and Arrangements; Conflict of Interests; Strategy; Web Sites

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13 Jun 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Learning to Become a Taste Expert

Keywords: by Kathryn A. Latour and John A. Deighton; Food & Beverage

29 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

'Green Bonds' May Be Our Best Bet for Environmental Damage Control

Municipalities have been selling bonds to pay for public works projects—fire stations, parking garages,sewage treatment systems—for 200 years. It’s only in the past decade or so, however, that they’ve been selling them with an extra perk: helping the environment. In... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy; Utilities; Construction; Green Technology; Public Administration

12 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Creating Online Ads We Want to Watch

30-second consumer product advertisements. Out of 28 ads, 14 were chosen because they were decidedly provocative; the researchers expected them to evoke either joy or surprise in the viewers at different... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Consumer Products

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

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Research and Development; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior

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July 23, 2019
Article

Is the U.S. on Its Way to Becoming a Cashless Society?

By: Shelle Santana

The rise of digital payments, including credit cards, debit cards, and mobile payments systems, have contributed to the steady shift in payment practices among consumers. According to the FDIC, cash represented just 30% of all payments in 2017, and the percentage of... View Details

Keywords: Payment Methods; Cash; Credit Cards; Consumer Behavior; Change; United States

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2009
Chapter

Creating Superior Customer Value in a Connected World

By: Ranjay Gulati

"In the early twenty-first century, customers are more demanding than ever, and difficult economic times make them all the more so. As customers tighten their wallets and increase their demands, firms face greater pressure to provide superior customer value. Reducing... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Consumer Behavior; Product Design; Social and Collaborative Networks; Value Creation

30 Jan 2018
First Look

January 30, 2018

flash sales industry was created using this idea as a cornerstone of its business strategy. In this paper, we identify and investigate a new reason why frequent assortment rotations can be valuable to a retailer, particularly for products... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

02 Feb 2016
Blog Post

A Summer Internship in General Management

summer at a consumer packaged goods company that makes some of the country’s most well-known brands, I learned how to approach a problem from a marketing perspective. I feel that the additional granularity... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail

September 2020
Article

Customer Supercharging in Experience-Centric Channels

By: David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

We conjecture that for online retailers, experience-centric offline store formats do not simply expand market coverage, but rather, serve to significantly amplify future positive customer behaviors, both online and offline. We term this phenomenon “supercharging” and... View Details

Keywords: Retail Operations; Marketing-operations Interface; Omnichannel Retailing; Experience Attributes; Quasi-experimental Methods; Operations; Internet and the Web; Marketing Channels; Consumer Behavior; Retail Industry

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January 2020
Case

The June Oven

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Christian Godwin

The June Oven was a smart oven which was capable of identifying food and cooking it accordingly. This type of smart oven represented the next step in the long history of oven and stove development. Due to the widespread use of traditional ovens, the market for the June... View Details

2008
Working Paper

Where Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained

By: Shawn A. Cole, John Thompson and Peter Tufano

In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their degree of revealed credit constraints. Specifically, we analyze how these Americans spend their income tax refunds, using transaction-level data from a stored-value card... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Credit; Personal Finance; Spending; Taxation; Consumer Behavior; United States

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February 2001 (Revised August 2001)
Case

Henry Heinz: Making Markets for Processed Foods

By: Nancy F. Koehn

Outlines many of the supply-side innovations, such as improved transportation, communication, and technological developments, that greatly expanded the productive capacity of the United States in the late 19th century. Explores a range of demand-side shifts, including... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Supply and Industry; Innovation and Invention; Food and Beverage Industry; United States