Publications

May 1981 (Revised December 1992)
Case

Chesebrough-Pond's, Inc.: Vaseline Petroleum Jelly

By: John A. Quelch

The product manager for Vaseline Petroleum Jelly has to prepare the 1978 brand budget and determine expenditure levels for advertising, trade promotion, and consumer promotion. View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Budgets and Budgeting; Product Marketing; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

02 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Inflation with COVID Consumption Baskets

Keywords: by Alberto Cavallo

September 2019
Article

The Persistence of Broadband User Behavior: Implications for Universal Service and Competition Policy

By: Andre Boik, Shane Greenstein and Jeffrey Prince

In several markets, firms compete not for consumer expenditure but consumer attention. We examine user priorities over the allocation of their time, and interpret that behavior in light of salient tensions in policy discussions over universal service, data caps, and... View Details

Keywords: Broadband Service; Attention Allocation; Consumer Behavior; Household; Internet and the Web; Competition; Policy

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2006
Working Paper

The Effect of Dividends on Consumption

By: Malcolm Baker, Stefan Nagel and Jeffrey Wurgler

Classical models predict that the division of stock returns into dividends and capital appreciation does not affect investor consumption patterns, while mental accounting and other economic frictions predict that investors have a higher propensity to consume from stock... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Personal Finance; Investment Return; Household

Article

The Effect of Dividends on Consumption

By: Malcolm Baker, Stefan Nagel and Jeffrey Wurgler

Classical models predict that the division of stock returns into dividends and capital appreciation does not affect investor consumption patterns, while mental accounting and other economic frictions predict that investors have a higher propensity to consume from... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Investment Return; Economics; Stocks; Capital; Business Earnings; Investment Portfolio; Investment Funds; Cost; Saving

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2024
Working Paper

What Makes Players Pay? An Empirical Investigation of In-Game Lotteries

By: Tomomichi Amano and Andrey Simonov

In 2020, gamers spent more than $15 billion on loot boxes, lotteries of virtual items in video games. Paid loot boxes are contentious. Game producers argue that loot boxes complement the gameplay and expenditures on loot boxes reflect players’ enjoyment of the game.... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Policy; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Product Design; Ethics; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Video Game Industry

16 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Seven Tips for Managing Price Increases

your inventory on a last-in, first-out basis to insure that increases in your realized selling prices do not trail the increases in your input costs. 7. Increase Relevance. You need to persuade customers to cut back their expenditures on... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

13 Jul 2020
News

Inflation: baskets of plenty

February 2022 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Aleph Farms: A New Culture of Meat

By: Elie Ofek and Jeff Huizinga

Aleph Farms, an Israeli food-tech start-up, was hoping to play a major role in disrupting the conventional meat sector. Compared to intensive agricultural practices, Aleph’s cultured (or lab-grown) meat solution held the promise of considerably reducing greenhouse gas... View Details

July 1996 (Revised June 1998)
Case

Gillette Indonesia

By: John A. Quelch

The country manager of Gillette Indonesia is reviewing his 1996 marketing plan and considering whether the pace of market development and mix of product sales can be impacted by the level and type of Gillette expenditures in the market. View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Multinational Firms and Management; Emerging Markets; Forecasting and Prediction; Product Marketing; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Indonesia

September 1990 (Revised November 1994)
Case

Kao Corp.

By: John A. Quelch

As the Japanese diaper market expands, Kao management must determine its response to new product introductions by its two major competitors. Options include launching a new premium priced brand or a new low priced brand, or increasing advertising and promotion... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Marketing Strategy; Industry Growth; Product Launch; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry; Japan

Research Summary

Bricks and Clicks: The Effect of Store Assortment on E-tail Format (with R. Lal and E. Ofek)

An often neglected aspect in existing studies of the Internet selling process is the high volume of product returns. Such returns reflect a major logistic expenditure on behalf of companies that sell over the net. The problem is reduced when consumers shop in physical... View Details

September 2020
Article

Relaxing Household Liquidity Constraints Through Social Security

By: Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller and Natasha Sarin

More than a quarter of working-age households in the United States do not have sufficient savings to cover their expenditures after a month of unemployment. Recent proposals suggest giving workers early access to a small portion of their future Social Security benefits... View Details

Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Personal Finance; Employment; Welfare; Insurance; Government Legislation

21 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Buy Now, Pay Later: How Retail's Hot Feature Hurts Low-Income Shoppers

Online shopping features that let consumers pay for goods in interest-free installments exploded during the pandemic, but new research questions the riskiness of such services: Are people getting in over their heads? Buy now, pay later... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Retail; Financial Services; Technology

2008
Working Paper

An Investigation of Earnings Management through Marketing Actions

By: Craig James Chapman and Thomas J. Steenburgh

Prior research hypothesizes managers use "real actions," including the reduction of discretionary expenditures, to manage earnings to meet or beat key benchmarks. This paper examines this hypothesis by testing how different types of marketing expenditures are used... View Details

Keywords: Performance Expectations; Earnings Management; Marketing Strategy; Financial Reporting; Brands and Branding; Food and Beverage Industry

SSRN

2016
Working Paper

The Empirical Economics of Online Attention

By: Andre Boik, Shane Greenstein and Jeffrey Prince

In several markets, firms compete not for consumer expenditure but instead for consumer attention. We model and characterize how households allocate their scarce attention in arguably the largest market for attention: the Internet. Our characterization of household... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Competition; Behavior; Resource Allocation; Household; Cognition and Thinking

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2019
Working Paper

Real Exchange Rate Behavior: New Evidence from Matched Retail Goods

By: Alberto Cavallo, Brent Neiman and Roberto Rigobon

We use a dataset containing daily prices for thousands of matched retail products in nine countries to study tradable-goods real exchange rates. Prices were collected from the websites of large multi-channel retailers and then carefully matched into narrowly-deﬁned... View Details

Keywords: Purchasing Power Parity; Online Prices; Real Exchange Rate; Macroeconomics; Currency Exchange Rate; Price; Internet and the Web