Publications

20 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

Getting the Marketing Mix Right

Businesses rely on solid marketing strategies to boost sales—yet the tools used to evaluate these strategies often provide misleading results, leaving managers with the inability to accurately measure how... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

February 2008 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Olympia Machine Company, Inc.

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Benson P. Shapiro

The management team of an industrial equipment supplier is debating the company's method of compensating salespeople. Different executives have offered different alternatives to the current method of straight salary plus expenses. Each option has different implications... View Details

Keywords: Governance Controls; Compensation and Benefits; Mission and Purpose; Salesforce Management; Motivation and Incentives; Business Strategy; Industrial Products Industry

May 2009 (Revised January 2011)
Case

HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0

By: Thomas J. Steenburgh, Jill Avery and Naseem Ashraf Dahod

This case introduces the concept of inbound marketing, pulling customer prospects toward a business through the use of Web 2.0 tools and applications like blogging, search engine optimization, and social media. Students follow the growth of HubSpot, an entrepreneurial... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Entrepreneurship; Price; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Communications; Social and Collaborative Networks; Segmentation; Web

July 2008 (Revised May 2009)
Case

The Springfield Nor'easters: Maximizing Revenues in the Minor Leagues

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Christopher H. Lovelock and Laura Winig

The marketing director of a new minor-league baseball team must design, conduct, and then interpret survey research to determine optimal ticket pricing that will yield large attendance figures and contribute to the owner's goal of breaking even in the first year of... View Details

Keywords: Market Research; Quantitative Analysis; Consumer Marketing; Pricing Strategy; Price; Marketing Strategy; Mathematical Methods; Product Launch; Sports; Sports Industry; Massachusetts

07 Jun 2023
HBS Case

3 Ways to Gain a Competitive Advantage Now: Lessons from Amazon, Chipotle, and Facebook

Walk into any local coffee shop, and you might see people using Amazon Kindles—but you’re not likely to spot anyone with a Sony Librie, even though Sony was the first company to make an e-reader in 2004. “It was probably a better product,” says Rebecca Karp, assistant... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

26 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way to Go to Market

Business School marketing professor V. Kasturi "Kash" Rangan in his new book, Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy. The auto industry, he says, is a stark example of why go-to-market strategies need high-level attention and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

February 2010
Background Note

Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Situation Analysis

By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery

Before managers can begin to formulate marketing strategies for their businesses, they must have a strong understanding of the internal and external marketing environments in which they are operating. In this note, we present three methods for collecting and analyzing... View Details

Keywords: Five Forces Framework; SWOT Analysis; Marketing Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Industry Structures; Strategic Planning

August 1998 (Revised July 2002)
Case

Innovation at 3M Corporation (A)

By: Stefan H. Thomke and Ashok Nimgade

Describes how 3M Corp. introduces and learns a new and innovative methodology called Lead User research to understand future customer and market needs. A team from 3M's Medical-Surgical Markets Division applies the Lead User methodology to the field of surgical... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Managerial Roles; Marketing Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Market Timing; Product Development; Problems and Challenges; Business Strategy; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

February 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Technical Note

The Art and Science of Brand Valuation

By: Jill Avery

Brand valuation, the art and science of calculating the economic value accruing to a firm from its use of an intangible brand asset, yields frustratingly inconsistent, discrepant, and, therefore, controversial results. While it is widely accepted that brands are... View Details

2017
Working Paper

Why and How Investors Use ESG Information: Evidence from a Global Survey

By: Georgios Serafeim

Using survey data from a sample of senior investment professionals from mainstream (i.e., not SRI funds) investment organizations, we provide insights into why and how investors use reported environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. The primary reason... View Details

Keywords: Investment Management; Sustainability; ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; Investment Fund; Investment Strategy; Corporate Accountability; Activist Shareholder; Engagement; Environment; Climate Change; Customers; Customer Satisfaction; Employee Engagement; Global Warming; Investment; Decision Making; Environmental Sustainability; Performance Expectations

SSRN

2023
Article

Verifiable Feature Attributions: A Bridge between Post Hoc Explainability and Inherent Interpretability

By: Usha Bhalla, Suraj Srinivas and Himabindu Lakkaraju

With the increased deployment of machine learning models in various real-world applications, researchers and practitioners alike have emphasized the need for explanations of model behaviour. To this end, two broad strategies have been outlined in prior literature to... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Mathematical Methods

Read Now

February 2021 (Revised April 2021)
Case

Board Director Dilemmas—Back the SPAC?

By: Suraj Srinivasan, David G. Fubini and Amram Migdal

This case focuses on a board director of a diversified holding company. The firm’s longtime CEO had always exhibited a cautious, methodical approach to growth. Now, the CEO is raising the idea of joining with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to spin off... View Details

Keywords: Board Director; Strategy; Change Management; Decision Making

August 2012 (Revised October 2012)
Technical Note

Congruence Model Note

By: Shon R. Hiatt and James Weber

This note describes the Congruence Model, a method by which an organization can assess whether its building blocks (critical tasks, formal organizational arrangements, people, and culture) are aligned (congruent) with its strategy. The model postulates that... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Business Processes; Alignment

05 Sep 2012
First Look

First Look: September 5

if they did not obtain the second reward. We discuss implications for research on motivation and incentives. Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy Authors:A.G. Lafley, Roger L. Martin, Jan W. Rivkin, and Nicolaj Siggelkow... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

March 1997 (Revised July 1998)
Case

SOS-Kinderdorf International: Caring for Orphaned Children

By: V. Kasturi Rangan

SOS-Kinderdorf, founded in 1949, has grown rapidly into one of the largest orphanages in the world with children's villages, kindergartens, schools, youth facilities, and other complementary programs in 130 countries. This case describes the evolution of the... View Details

Keywords: Management; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Mission and Purpose; Problems and Challenges; Nonprofit Organizations; Strategy; India; Norway; United States

Find at Harvard

April 2014
Tutorial

Conjoint Analysis: Online Tutorial

By: Elie Ofek and Olivier Toubia

The Conjoint Analysis: Online Tutorial is an interactive pedagogical vehicle intended to facilitate understanding of one of the most popular market research methods in academia and practice, namely conjoint analysis. The aim is to provide students or executives going... View Details

Keywords: Market Research; Conjoint Analysis; Market Segmentation; Pricing; Marketing Strategy

2023
Chapter

Marketing Through the Machine’s Eyes: Image Analytics and Interpretability

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Flora Feng and Kannan Srinivasan

he growth of social media and the sharing economy is generating abundant unstructured image and video data. Computer vision techniques can derive rich insights from unstructured data and can inform recommendations for increasing profits and consumer utility—if only the... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Marketing Research; Algorithmic Bias; AI and Machine Learning; Marketing