Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(2,148)
- Faculty Publications (273)
- September 2011
- Article
The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value
By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton
A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when... View Details
- June 2011 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
Sephora Direct: Investing in Social Media, Video, and Mobile
By: Elie Ofek and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
Julie Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora Direct, is seeking to double her budget for social media and other digital marketing initiatives for 2011. A number of digital efforts implemented in the past two years seem to be bearing fruit and there is a desire to... View Details
- May–June 2011
- Article
The Uninvited Brand
By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery
Brands rushed into social media, viewing social networks, video sharing, online communities, and microblogging sites as the panacea to diminishing returns for traditional brand building routes. But, as more branding activity moves to the web, marketers are confronted... View Details
- April 2011
- Case
Designs by Kate: The Power of Direct Sales
By: John A. Deighton and Sarah Abbott
The sales representatives at Designs by Kate (DBK) sell private label jewelry at hosted parties and through online social media channels. They are also responsible for recruiting, training, and managing new sales reps. CEO and founder Kate Creevey designed the... View Details
- March 2011 (Revised December 2012)
- Case
Demand Media
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
Google search had helped Demand Media grow to be a $1.9 billion online publisher. Then, social media and smartphone apps began to change the way people navigated the Internet. How should Demand Media respond? The business ran on a radically new model in which a stable... View Details
- March 2011 (Revised August 2014)
- Background Note
Social Media in Health Care
By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Selin Gunal Tyler and Charles C. Huang
This note reviews the social media firms in health care that help providers and consumers to interact and their nascent business models. View Details
- February 2011 (Revised December 2012)
- Case
Coca-Cola on Facebook
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
In late 2008, executives at Coca-Cola had to decide what to do with a fan-created page on Facebook that had amassed over one million followers in three months. From a legal point of view the fan-created page was in violation of Facebook's terms of service as a... View Details
- January 2011 (Revised April 2012)
- Case
BBVA Compass: Marketing Resource Allocation
By: Sunil Gupta and Joseph Davies-Gavin
BBVA Compass, the 15th largest commercial bank in the U.S., is a part of the BBVA Group of Spain, the second largest bank in Spain with $755 billion in assets. In December 2010, Frank Sottosanti, Chief Marketing Officer of BBVA Compass, was reviewing the marketing... 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
- December 2010
- Case
Digital Divide
By: Sunil Gupta
In November 2010, Charles Henry, chief marketing officer of a major consumer packaged goods company, was trying to convince his senior managers to enhance the digital presence of the company's brands by significantly increasing their online marketing budget. However,... View Details
- May 2010
- Article
Bye Bye Bundles: The Unbundling of Music in Digital Channels
By: Anita Elberse
Fueled by digital distribution, unbundling is prevalent in many information industries. What is the effect of this unbundling on sales? And what bundle characteristics drive this effect? I empirically examine these questions in the context of the music industry, using... View Details
- March 2010
- Background Note
Airline Travel in the U.S.
By: Sunil Gupta and Kavita Shukla
How should airlines respond to the rising share of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) as consumers increasingly search the web to buy tickets? View Details
- February 2010 (Revised October 2010)
- Case
YouTube: Time to Charge Users?
By: Anita Elberse and Sunil Gupta
In January 2010, YouTube, the world's largest online video aggregator, was still seeking to become profitable. Was the time right for Google, YouTube's parent company, to charge users seeking to upload content, as some analysts had suggested—and if so, who should be... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised April 2011)
- Case
Google Inc.
By: Benjamin Edelman and Thomas R. Eisenmann
Describes Google's history, business model, governance structure, corporate culture, and processes for managing innovation. Reviews Google's recent strategic initiatives and the threats they pose to Yahoo, Microsoft, and others. Asks what Google should do next. One... View Details
- 2010
- Article
Competing against Online Sharing
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane
This paper aims to explore online sharing of copyrighted content over peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing networks and its impact on the music industry and to assess the viable business models for the industry in the future. View Details
- 2010
- Article
Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales: The Moderating Role of Product and Consumer Characteristics
By: Feng Zhu and Michael Zhang
This article examines how product and consumer characteristics moderate the influence of online consumer reviews on product sales using data from the video game industry. The findings indicate that online reviews are more influential for less popular games and games... View Details
- 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
- October 2009
- Article
Shaping Online Consumer Choice by Partitioning the Web
By: Jolie M. Martin and Michael I. Norton
This research explores how partitioning attributes in online search interfaces changes the valuations of those attributes-and impacts subsequent choice-such that attributes that are displayed as separate categories tend to receive greater decision weight than... View Details
- June 2009
- Article
Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals
By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman
We report on a field study demonstrating systematic differences between the preferences people anticipate they will have over a series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Principles that Matter: Sustaining Software Innovation from the Client to the Web
By: Marco Iansiti
Economic analysis often reviews the role of principles—such as respect for intellectual property rights—in driving innovation. Given the interdependent nature of innovation in information technology, three core principles have emerged that work together to ensure that... View Details