Product Differentiation - Publications - Faculty & Research

June 2024 (Revised August 2024)
Case

Revlon India's Turnaround: Navigating Online-Offline Decisions Using a Balanced Scorecard

Revlon India was founded as a joint venture in 1995, pairing the industrial conglomerate UMG with the global beauty brand Revlon, Inc. to bring international color cosmetics to India. After growing rapidly and pioneering the Beauty Advisor (BA) model in India, the... View Details

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29 Jun 2010
First Look

First Look: June 29

Working PapersSurviving the Global Financial Crisis: Foreign Direct Investment and Establishment Performance Authors:Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen Abstract We examine in this paper the differential response of establishments to the... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

07 Aug 2006
Research & Ideas

Whatever Happened to Caveat Emptor?

Many of us learned at an early age the expression caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware. The phrase conjured up an image of a roiling, rollicking market that consumers best entered equipped for battle and prepared for disappointment—or worse—if a View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

16 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

photographers to take inviting photos of hosts’ apartments). Following those guidelines, they were able to gradually improve their products and identify what made them resonate most with customers and suppliers. Only after that was... View Details

Keywords: by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding; Retail; Transportation; Accommodations

08 Oct 2020
Research & Ideas

Keep Your Weary Workers Engaged and Motivated

motivated, to find meaning at work during this crisis. Research by Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria and colleagues suggests that people are guided by four basic emotional needs, or drives, that are the product of our common... View Details

Keywords: by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams

19 Feb 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, February 19, 2019

hired. The data is consistent with horizontal differentiation of CEO behavioral types and firm-CEO matching frictions. We estimate that 17% of sample CEOs are mismatched and that mismatches are associated with significant View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Research Summary

Understanding Customers

In conventional business case studies, protagonists almost never have the option of stepping back to seek a new understanding of the customer. But to be effective in practice, managers need both the self-assurance and ability to initiate and pursue, with rigor and... View Details

17 Jan 2018
Research & Ideas

If the CEO’s High Salary Isn't Justified to Employees, Firm Performance May Suffer

corporate culture is a first-order driver of company performance,” Rouen says. “It’s something that can differentiate one company from another in a competitive industry.” Companies can boost workplace culture in ways beyond compensation,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

08 Aug 2022
HBS Case

Building an 'ARMY' of Fans: Marketing Lessons from K-Pop Sensation BTS

the product of heavy government investment to create a unique cultural export. Music agencies built acts using an idol system that managed all aspects of stars’ lives and trained them in singing, dance, and even foreign languages.... View Details

Keywords: by Shalene Gupta; Media & Broadcasting; Music

13 Jan 2023
Research & Ideas

Are Companies Actually Greener—or Are They All Talk?

Most companies now account for social good in their financial reports in some way, but with regulation scattershot and evolving, it’s complicated for investors to assess so-called ESG reports. The disclosures, known as Environmental, Social, and Governance reports,... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

02 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 2, 2018

capital. We examine productivity differentials between machine learning and older vintage technology based on interactions with two important human capital attributes: domain-specific expertise and... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

19 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

The History of Beauty

the consumer products giant Unilever, published some years ago. This company had a long-established business in soap and other toiletries, but spent decades after World War II striving without great success to expand its business into... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Beauty & Cosmetics

03 Jan 2023
Book

Confront Workplace Inequity in 2023: Dig Deep, Build Bridges, Take Collective Action

aimed specifically at dismantling inequities in the workplace. “Research has shown time and time again that some of the stereotypical feminine attributes, such as empathy, trust, connection—those are the things that really differentiate... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

14 May 2008
Research & Ideas

Getting Down to the Business of Creativity

narrowly defined product space," Tripsas says. "Suppliers, complementary producers, distribution channels, and consumers must often develop new capabilities, beliefs, and behaviors for the product... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Retail; Apparel & Accessories; Fashion; Entertainment & Recreation

21 Apr 2015
First Look

First Look: April 21

productivity and employment. There are few significant differences between industries with limited and high private equity activity. It is hard to find support for claims that economic activity in industries with private equity backing is... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel & Sean Silverthorne

24 Jan 2005
Research & Ideas

Rethinking Activity-Based Costing

Activity-based costing, ABC, would seem to be an accurate way for managers to assign costs to the customers and products that use a department's services. But real-world use has shown ABC loses power in large-scale operations, and can be... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & Steven R. Anderson

04 May 2009
Research & Ideas

What’s Next for the Big Financial Brands

company? So long as they are not triumphalist, large banks like JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo that were less involved in chasing too-good-to-be-true subprime returns have a differentiating advantage. But it's hard to rebuild consumer... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Banking; Financial Services

16 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restaurant Revolution: How the Industry Is Fighting to Stay Alive

advice to restaurant owners, staff, investors, and patrons that we offer below. How did it deteriorate so quickly? Restaurants are universally labor intensive—by any productivity metric they rank among the least View Details

Keywords: by Michael S. Kaufman, Lena G. Goldberg, and Jill Avery; Food & Beverage

09 Aug 2010
Research & Ideas

How to Speed Up Energy Innovation

animals, as well as fertilizers and new techniques. There's a huge amount of human capital and knowledge invested in farming. Q: What sets energy apart from these other industries? A: The first and most obvious is that it's difficult to View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Energy; Utilities

22 May 2007
First Look

First Look: May 22, 2007

evaluate their theory by looking at the design evolution of two software product platforms through the modeling lens of design structure matrices (DSMs) and design rule theory. Our analysis shows that DSM models and options theory can... View Details