Publications

01 Jun 2015
News

Five-Star Research

When Assistant Professor Michael Luca began studying online consumer reviews in 2008, then four-year-old Yelp.com, cofounded by Jeremy Stoppelman (MBA 2005), had 10 million reviews. Today, it has more than... View Details

Keywords: April White; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

April 2022
Article

Consumers Value Effort over Ease When Caring for Close Others

By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Mary Steffel, Elanor F. Williams and Michael I. Norton

Many products and services are designed to make caregiving easier, from premade meals for feeding families to robo-cribs that automatically rock babies to sleep. Yet, using these products may come with a cost: consumers may feel they have not exerted enough effort.... View Details

Keywords: Effor; Caregiving; Close Relationships; Symbolic Meaning; Signaling; Relationships; Consumer Behavior; Perception

May 2012
Article

Do Social Deal Sites Really Work?

By: Marco Bertini, Luc Wathieu, Betsy Page Sigman and Michael I. Norton

2024
Working Paper

The Revised-Is-Quality Heuristic: Why Consumers Prefer Products Labeled as Revised

By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien and Michael I. Norton

From downloading never-ending updates to tracking ever-newer releases, consumers today are surrounded by revised products that purport to have improved upon their predecessors. Seven experiments examine when and why consumers rely on a “revised-is-quality”... View Details

Keywords: Product Change; Versioning; Expectancy Effects; Heuristics; Intuitive Processing; Product Marketing; Change; Perception; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

15 Feb 2022
News

Charlotte Club Hosts Webinar to Mark 100 Years of the Case Method

which was taught entirely online last fall by Professor Karim Lakhani, the Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration, to more than 5,000 alumni around the... View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

01 Jun 2000
News

New York Club Focuses on Entrepreneurship

awards dinner. More than five hundred attendees listened to a compelling keynote address by America Online CFO Michael Kelly and participated in a seminar led by HBS associate professor Amar V. Bhidé that... View Details

01 Dec 2001
News

Teens and Magazines: Where There's Smoke, There's Advertising

According to their 1998 agreement with the attorneys general of 46 states, the four largest U.S. tobacco companies are prohibited from using advertising that targets people younger than 18. But HBS assistant professor Charles King (with... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Advertising, Public Relations, and Related Services; Professional Services

20 Apr 2016
News

When CEOs Become Activists

Keywords: Government

October 2021
Article

Communicating Resource Scarcity and Interpersonal Connection

By: Grant E. Donnelly, Anne V. Wilson, Ashley V. Whillans and Michael I. Norton

Consumers often cite insufficient time or money as an excuse for rejecting social invitations. We explore the effectiveness of these excuses in preserving interpersonal relationships. Six studies—including perceptions of couples planning their wedding—demonstrate that... View Details

Keywords: Time; Interpersonal Relationships; Communication; Money; Relationships; Interpersonal Communication

10 Feb 2016
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: New Insights into Career Development

While humblebragging runs rampant on Twitter, it's a lousy self-promotion tactic that usually backfires according to recent research by Ovul Sezer, Francesca Gino, and Michael Norton. Professional Networking Makes People Feel Dirty... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

01 Dec 2020
News

Well Matched

footballer Michael Owen) and rooting for the Denver Broncos (her mom is a native, she explains). After completing her undergraduate degree at Wharton, Rapaport took on a range of investment banking roles. “I learned that I loved the... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; venture capital; diversity; inclusion; tennis; leadership; women; Finance

22 Sep 2016
News

The Competitiveness of Lost Causes

who also holds an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, worked on independent research with Professor Michael Porter at HBS, a collaboration that led to Duch’s career in competitiveness... View Details

Article

Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive

By: Amelia Goranson, Ryan S. Ritter, Adam Waytz, Michael I. Norton and Kurt Gray

In people’s imagination, dying seems dreadful; however, these perceptions may not reflect reality. In two studies, we compared the affective experience of people facing imminent death with that of people imagining imminent death. Study 1 revealed that blog posts of... View Details

Keywords: Death; Language; LIWC; Positivity; Affective Forecasting; Open Materials; Perspective; Attitudes

February 2011
Article

It's the Recipient That Counts: Spending Money on Strong Social Ties Leads to Greater Happiness Than Spending on Weak Social Ties

By: Lara B. Aknin, Gillian M. Sandstrom, Elizabeth W. Dunn and Michael I. Norton

Previous research has shown that spending money on others (prosocial spending) increases happiness. But, do the happiness gains depend on who the money is spent on? Sociologists have distinguished between strong ties with close friends and family and weak... View Details

Keywords: Happiness; Relationships; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving