Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,118)
- Faculty Publications (234)
- Article
When Talk Is "Free": The Effect of Tariff Structure on Usage Under Two- and Three-Part Tariffs
By: Eva Ascarza, Anja Lambrecht and Naufel Vilcassim
In many service industries, firms introduce three-part tariffs to replace or complement existing two-part tariffs. In contrast with two-part tariffs, three-part tariffs offer allowances, or “free” units of the service. Behavioral research suggests that the attributes... View Details
- November 2012
- Case
The Universalization of L'Oréal
By: Rajiv Lal and Carin-Isabel Knoop
In 2010, half of the world's cosmetics sales came from the so-called emerging markets for the first time; L'Oréal opened three new subsidiaries, in Egypt, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan; and the Paris, France-based cosmetics and personal care powerhouse declared its... View Details
- 2012
- Book
The Architecture of Innovation: The Economics of Creative Organizations
By: Josh Lerner
Innovation is a much-used buzzword these days, but when it comes to creating and implementing a new idea, many companies miss the mark—plans backfire, consumer preferences shift, or tried-and-true practices fail to work in a new context. So is innovation just a... View Details
- August 2012 (Revised August 2013)
- Background Note
Competency-Destroying Technology Transitions: Why the Transition to Digital Is Particularly Challenging
By: Willy Shih
Some technology transitions are exceedingly difficult for incumbent firms to execute. The bankruptcy filing by the Eastman Kodak Company highlighted the difficulty companies faced when their core business transitioned from an analog to a digital world. Kodak's business... View Details
Keywords: Technology Transitions; Competency-destroying; Digital; Analog; Digital Transition; Modular; Modularity; Technological Change; Radical Innovation; Incremental Innovation; Architectural Innovation; Modular Innovation; Sustaining Innovation; Competency-enhancing; Noise Propagation; Perfect Copying; Digital Music; Digital Media; Consumer Electronics; Kodak; Sony; Panasonic; Disruptive Innovation; Technology Adoption; Transition; Change Management; Consumer Products Industry; United States
- July 2012
- Case
Performance Management at Vitality Health Enterprises, Inc.
By: John Bingham and Michael Beer
Vitality Health Enterprises, a medium-sized firm that manufactures health and personal care products, has experienced six straight quarters of strong revenue growth. James Hoffman, the new Senior Vice President of Human Resources, fears that the chain of success is... View Details
- July 2012
- Article
Discrete Choice Cannot Generate Demand That Is Additively Separable in Own Price
By: Sonia Jaffe and Scott Duke Kominers
We show that in a unit demand discrete choice framework with at least three goods, demand cannot be additively separable in own price. This result sharpens the analogous result of Jaffe and Weyl (2010) in the case of linear demand and has implications for testing of... View Details
- May 2012
- Article
Adding Bricks to Clicks: Predicting the Patterns of Cross-Channel Elasticities over Time
By: Jill Avery, Thomas J. Steenburgh, John Deighton and Mary Caravella
The authors propose a conceptual framework to explain whether and when the introduction of a new retail store channel helps or hurts sales in existing direct channels. A conceptual framework separates short- and long-term effects by analyzing the capabilities of a... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Channels; Channels Of Distribution; Distribution; Retailing; Channel Management; Channel Migration; Multichannel Retailing; Framework; Customers; Marketing Channels; Sales; Internet and the Web; Demand and Consumers; Competency and Skills; Distribution Channels; E-commerce; Retail Industry; United States
- April 2012
- Article
The Impact of Relative Standards on the Propensity to Disclose
By: Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie John and George Loewenstein
Two sets of studies illustrate the comparative nature of disclosure behavior. The first set investigates how divulgence is affected by signals about others' readiness to divulge. Study 1A shows a "herding" effect, such that survey respondents are more willing to... View Details
- April 2012
- Article
Bouncing Out of the Banking System: An Empirical Analysis of Involuntary Bank Account Closures
By: Dennis Campbell, F. Asis Martinez-Jerez and Peter Tufano
Using a new database, we document the factors that relate to the extent of involuntary consumer bank account closure resulting from excessive overdraft activity. Consumers who have accounts involuntarily closed for overdraft activity may have limited or no access to... View Details
- Article
Credit Access and Social Welfare: The Rise of Consumer Lending in the United States and France
By: Gunnar Trumbull
Research into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis has drawn attention to a link between growing income inequality in the United States and high household indebtedness. Most accounts trace the U.S. idea of credit-as-welfare to the period of wage stagnation and... View Details
Keywords: Household Finance; Welfare State; Credit; Personal Finance; Welfare; Borrowing and Debt; France; United States
- June 2011 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Reversing the AMD Fusion Launch
By: Elie Ofek and Ryan Johnson
AMD management needs to make a critical decision on the launch sequence of its next-generation technology called Fusion. The Fusion processor concept merges the central and graphics processing units (CPU and GPU) onto one chip-- yielding advantages in performance... View Details
- June 2011
- Case
Reed Supermarkets: A New Wave of Competitors
By: John A. Quelch and Carole Carlson
Reed Supermarkets is a high-end supermarket chain with operations in several Midwestern states. Meredith Collins, vice president of marketing, visits stores located in Columbus, Ohio, an important region with the largest market and the greatest impact on revenue... View Details
- 2011
- Book
Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors
By: Rebecca Henderson and Richard G. Newell
Accelerating energy innovation could be an important part of an effective response to the threat of climate change. Written by a stellar group of experts in the field, this book complements existing research on the subject with an exploration of the role that public... View Details
- Fall 2012
- Article
Marketing and Public Policy: Transformative Research in Developing Markets
By: C. Shultz, Rohit Deshpandé, Bettina Cornwell, A. Ekici, P. Kothandaraman, M. Peterson, S. Shapiro, D. Talukdar and A. Veeck
Developing markets are a challenge for researchers who study them and for governments, business leaders, and citizens who strive to improve the quality of life in them. The limitations of the dominant development paradigm coupled with the need to focus on consumers... View Details
- May 2011
- Article
Think Customers Hate Waiting? Not So Fast...
By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton
Managers typically look for ways to reduce wait time to increase customer satisfaction. New research suggests there's a better approach: showing customers a representation of the effort, whether literal or not, being expended on their behalf while they wait. (The... View Details
- April 2011
- Teaching Note
Porcini's Pronto: "Great Italian cuisine without the wait!" (Brief Case)
By: James L. Heskett and Richard Luecke
Teaching Note to 4277. View Details
- Article
An Exploration of Optimal Stabilization Policy
By: N. Gregory Mankiw and Matthew C. Weinzierl
This paper examines the optimal response of monetary and fiscal policy to a decline in aggregate demand. The theoretical framework is a two-period general equilibrium model in which prices are sticky in the short-run and flexible in the long-run. Policy is evaluated by... View Details
- January – February 2011
- Article
'Bricks and Clicks': The Impact of Product Returns on the Strategies of Multichannel Retailers
By: Elie Ofek, Zsolt Katona and Miklos Sarvary
The Internet has increased the flexibility of retailers, allowing them to operate an online arm in addition to their physical stores. The online channel offers potential benefits in selling to customer segments that value the convenience of online shopping, but it also... View Details
- 2011
- White Paper
Brands Are People Too! Harnessing the Power of Brand Warmth and Competence
By: Chris Malone, Jill Avery and S. T. Fiske
Research in customer behavior has revealed that the way humans respond to brands is simply an extension of the way they instinctively perceive, judge, and behave towards one another. Understanding how consumers judge brands using social processes akin to those used in... View Details
- 2011
- Article
The Consumer Psychology of Mail-in Rebates
By: John T. Gourville and Dilip Soman
Consumers who buy a product intending to use an accompanying mail-in rebate often do not redeem the rebate. To explain this behavior, we argue that consumers use an anchoring and adjustment approach to predicting the likelihood of redeeming a rebate. In keeping with... View Details