Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(120,131)
- Faculty Publications (201)
- October 2014 (Revised June 2016)
- Case
MasterCard: Driving Financial Inclusion
By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Natalie Kindred
MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga was investing significant time and attention to increase financial inclusion among individuals with historically no access to banking or financial services in countries around the world with large underserved populations. The effort included... View Details
- 2014
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Marketing Reading: Brand Positioning
By: Jill Avery and Sunil Gupta
This Reading addresses the principles of brand positioning and demonstrates how companies can strategically craft powerful, resonant, and unique brand positions to help products stand out amidst the cacophony of the marketplace. Strategic brand positioning provides... View Details
Keywords: Brand Positioning; Branding; Consumer Research; Defensive Strategies; Market Positioning; Marketing; Product Differentiation; Product Positioning; Strategic Positioning; Value Proposition; Customer Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Customer Satisfaction; Brands and Branding
- Spring 2014
- Article
The High Price of Customer Satisfaction
By: Timothy Keiningham, Sunil Gupta, Lerzan Aksoy and Alexander Buoye
Managers often assume that improving customer satisfaction and financial performance go hand in hand. The reality, however, is much more complex. View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Separating Homophily and Peer Influence with Latent Space
By: Joseph P. Davin, Sunil Gupta and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
We study the impact of peer behavior on the adoption of mobile apps in a social network. To identify social influence properly, we introduce latent space as an approach to control for latent homophily, the idea that "birds of a feather flock together." In a series of... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised August 2014)
- Teaching Note
Eko: Mobile Banking and Payments in India
By: Sunil Gupta
- January 2014 (Revised January 2015)
- Case
Reinventing Adobe
By: Sunil Gupta and Lauren Barley
By 2013, Adobe had reinvented itself from a publisher of popular software such as Photoshop and Acrobat to a digital marketing and digital media company. In May 2013, the company decided to stop selling its software as a package in favor of Creative... View Details
- October 2013 (Revised July 2024)
- Teaching Note
Amazon in 2024
By: Sunil Gupta
Amazon launched its website in July 1995 to sell books online and by 2020 it has grown to become a digital giant with over $280 billion in annual sales. A large part of its growth came from expanding into a variety of businesses that some see as unrelated. Has it... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Managing Churn to Maximize Profits
By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta
Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability, or their responsiveness to a... View Details
- August 2013 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
Amazon in 2024
By: Sunil Gupta and Margaret L. Rodriguez
Amazon launched its website in July 1995 to sell books online and by 2020 it has grown to become a digital giant with over $280 billion in annual sales. A large part of its growth came from expanding into a variety of businesses that some see as unrelated. Has it... View Details
- 2013
- Dissertation
Designing Freemium: A Model of Consumer Usage, Upgrade, and Referral Dynamics
By: Clarence Lee, Vineet Kumar and Sunil Gupta
Abstract. Over the past decade "freemium" (free + premium) has become the dominant business model among internet start-ups for its ability to acquire and monetize a large install-base with limited marketing resources. Freemium is a hybrid strategy where a firm offers... View Details
- March 2013 (Revised January 2015)
- Case
Eko: Mobile Banking and Payments in India
By: Sunil Gupta and Rachna Tahilyani
- March 2013
- Article
For Mobile Devices, Think Apps, Not Ads
By: Sunil Gupta
Many companies envision mobile ads becoming an integral part of their communications strategies. But there's a growing consensus that ads don't work on mobile devices; consumers just don't like them. Instead of creating tiny banner ads, smart marketers will turn to... View Details
- February–March 2013
- Article
The Mobile Banking and Payment Revolution
By: Sunil Gupta
Mobile technology is revolutionizing the global banking and payment industry. It offers new opportunities for banks to provide added convenience to their existing customers in developed countries and reach a large population of unbanked customers in emerging markets.... View Details
- February 2013
- Case
YouTube Channels
By: Sunil Gupta and Dharmishta Rood
In December 2011 YouTube launched a website redesign that made Channels the central focus of the site. This redesign was the company's first foray into a strategy designed to foster long-form user engagement. YouTube invested $100 million in 100 Channels, often created... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Do Display Ads Influence Search?: Attribution and Dynamics in Online Advertising
By: Sunil Gupta
As firms increasingly rely on online media to acquire consumers, marketing managers feel comfortable justifying higher online marketing spend by referring to online metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and cost per acquisition (CPA). However, these standard online... View Details
- December 2012
- Background Note
Are Daily Deals Good for Merchants?
By: Sunil Gupta, Timothy Keiningham, Ray Weaver and Luke Williams
In the relatively short time since Groupon was founded, the response to "daily deals"—services that promote businesses by marketing deeply discounted, pre-paid vouchers to an online subscriber base—has by all accounts been spectacular. Our evaluation of daily deals is... View Details
- 2012
- Article
E-Commerce in Asia: Challenges and Opportunities
By: Sunil Gupta and Tanya Bijlani
Asia is becoming increasingly attractive to businesses, especially to e-commerce firms that thrive on global and scalable business models. Yet, most global e-commerce players, with a few exceptions, have failed to achieve significant success in Asia. This article... View Details
Keywords: Asia
- November 2012
- Teaching Note
Groupon (TN)
By: Sunil Gupta, Ray Weaver and Yien Hao Lock
On November 4, 2011, Groupon, a marketing services company that promoted local businesses by selling deeply discounted vouchers for their products and services, completed its initial public offering that valued the company at $17 billion. Within a year Groupon's share... View Details
- June 2012 (Revised October 2012)
- Teaching Note
TripAdvisor (TN)
By: Sunil Gupta
By 2010, TripAdvisor (TA) was the largest travel site in the world operating in 24 countries and 16 languages, with listings for 455,000 hotels, 92,000 attractions and 564,000 restaurants in over 71,000 destinations worldwide. It had over 40 million reviews from 35... View Details