Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,277)
- Faculty Publications (251)
- Article
The Cost Structure, Customer Profitability, and Retention Implications of Self-Service Distribution Channels: Evidence from Customer Behavior in an Online Banking Channel
By: Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei
This paper uses the context of online banking to investigate the consequences of employing self-service distribution channels to alter customer interactions with the firm. Using a sample of retail banking customers observed over a 30-month period at a large U.S. bank,... View Details
- December 2009 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
Diamond Foods
By: David E. Bell and Mary Louise Shelman
CEO Michael Mendes has transformed a grower-owned cooperative into a publicly traded top marketer of snack foods. Diamond's organization, culture, product development process, advertising and promotion strategy, and specifically its marketing department have been built... View Details
- November 2009
- Article
Organizational Design and Control across Multiple Markets: The Case of Franchising in the Convenience Store Industry
Many companies operate units that are dispersed across different types of markets, and thus serve significantly diverging customer bases. Such market-type dispersion is likely to compromise the headquarter's ability to control its local managers' behavior and satisfy... View Details
- August 26, 2009
- Comment
Where Cash for Clunkers Ran Off the Road
By: John A. Quelch
Today, let us celebrate the end of an unjustifiable drain on the U.S. taxpayer: the Cash for Clunkers (C4C) program.
True, C4C greatly boosted the number of consumers visiting car dealers. Doubtless, some new cars were sold to consumers who thought they... View Details
True, C4C greatly boosted the number of consumers visiting car dealers. Doubtless, some new cars were sold to consumers who thought they... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Creating Superior Customer Value in a Connected World
By: Ranjay Gulati
"In the early twenty-first century, customers are more demanding than ever, and difficult economic times make them all the more so. As customers tighten their wallets and increase their demands, firms face greater pressure to provide superior customer value. Reducing... View Details
- April 2009
- Article
How to Market in a Downturn
By: John A. Quelch and Katherine Jocz
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Because no two recessions are exactly alike, marketers find themselves in poorly... View Details
- Article
Households' Willingness to Pay for 'Green' Goods: Evidence from Patagonia's Introduction of Organic Cotton Sportswear
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Michael Crooke, Forest L. Reinhardt and Vishal Vasishth
To shed light on individuals' willingness to pay for "green" goods (i.e., goods that are supposed to have lower adverse environmental impacts either in production or in use), we study data from the introduction by Patagonia, Inc., of organic cotton sportswear in the... View Details
- January 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Cisco Systems (2001): Building and Sustaining a Customer-Centric Culture
By: Ranjay Gulati
Customer centricity has been an important part of the culture at Cisco Systems since its inception. While part of this is attributable to values put in place by the founders and retained by subsequent management, it is also closely interwoven with its organizational... View Details
- August 2009
- Article
Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer
By: John Beshears and Katherine L. Milkman
We study the effect of small windfalls on consumer spending decisions by comparing the purchases online grocery customers make when redeeming $10-off coupons with the purchases they make without coupons. Controlling for customer fixed effects and other variables, we... View Details
- November 2008 (Revised November 2008)
- Case
Cyworld: Creating and Capturing Value in a Social Network
By: Sunil Gupta and Sangman Han
In May 2008, the new CEO of Cyworld, a social network company in Korea, had to decide how to create and capture value from his rapidly growing user base. Cyworld was founded in 1999, and in 2003 it was acquired by SK Telecom, a leading mobile service provider in Korea.... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers
By: Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman
Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don't understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don't think deeply about consumers' innermost thoughts and feelings. Marketing Metaphoria is a... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised March 2014)
- Case
Flying J (A)
By: Rohit Deshpande and Lauren Barley
The largest retailer of diesel fuel in the U.S., Flying J, is rethinking its growth strategy as the economy goes into a recession. Its major customer base, owner-operated truck drivers, are facing increasing costs of doing business. Yet Flying J is considering whether... View Details
- April 2008
- Case
Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad
By: Michael Beer and Elizabeth Collins
In May 2007, the Engstrom Auto Mirrors plant, a relatively small supplier based in Indiana, faces a crisis. The business was in the second year of a downturn. Sales had started to decline in 2005; a year later, plant manager Ron Bent had been forced to lay off more... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Organizational Design and Control across Multiple Markets: The Case of Franchising in the Convenience Store Industry
By: Dennis Campbell
Many companies operate units which are dispersed across different types of markets, and thus serve significantly diverging customer bases. Such market-type dispersion is likely to compromise the headquarters' ability to control its local managers' behavior and... View Details
- 2008
- Simulation
Pricing Simulation: Universal Car Rental
This web-based simulation presents an engaging context in which students develop their knowledge of pricing by managing a rental car operation (Universal) in Florida and improve regional performance by developing a pricing strategy. The simulation involves three... View Details
Keywords: Competition; Consumer Behavior; Price; Profit; Renting or Rental; Auto Industry; Service Industry; Miami; Orlando; Tampa
- November 2007
- Article
A Model of Consumer Learning for Service Quality and Usage
By: Raghuram Iyengar, Asim Ansari and Sunil Gupta
In many services, e.g., the wireless service industry, consumers choose a service plan based on their expected consumption. In such situations, consumers experience two forms of uncertainty. First, consumers may be uncertain about the quality of their service provider... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer
By: Katherine L. Milkman, John Beshears, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman
We study the effect of small windfalls on consumer spending decisions by examining the purchasing behavior of a sample of online grocery shoppers over the course of a year. We compare the purchases customers make when redeeming a $10-off coupon they received from their... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
A Taste For Obscurity: An Individual-Level Examination of 'Long Tail' Consumption
By: Anita Elberse
Because online retailers are often able to provide products in a more cost-efficient manner than bricks-and-mortar stores, online channels are characterized by a vast assortment of products. Proponents of the "long tail" principle recently argued that the demand for... View Details
- July 2007 (Revised April 2008)
- Teaching Note
Zipcar: Influencing Customer Behavior (TN)
By: Frances X. Frei
- February 2007
- Case
Behavioral Finance at JP Morgan
By: Malcolm P. Baker and Aldo Sesia
Following a successful model in Europe, JP Morgan has introduced a set of five U.S. retail mutual funds with an investment philosophy and marketing strategy grounded in behavioral finance. The asset management group believes that understanding investor biases like... View Details