Publications

23 Dec 2010
News

When the Underdog Becomes the Big Dog

Article

Friends or Foes? Examining Platform Owners' Entry into Complementors' Spaces

By: Feng Zhu

As platform owners continue to expand their ecosystems, many of them have started to provide consumers with their own complementary applications. These moves position the platform owners as direct competitors to their complementors. This paper surveys empirical studies... View Details

Keywords: Platform; Complementors; Digital Platforms; Market Entry and Exit; Competition

This paper examines the relative importance of platform quality, indirect network effects, and consumer expectations on the success of entrants in platform-based markets. We develop a theoretical model and find that an entrant's success depends on the strength of... View Details

June 2008 (Revised August 2008)
Case

The Suzlon Edge

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Juliana Seminerio

With prices of oil, coal and gas at historically high levels, the wind industry had installed more than 20,000 MW of wind energy, representing a $37 billion investment in 2007. Besides high prices, wind energy represented a solution for consumers seeking an energy... View Details

Keywords: Family Business; Cost vs Benefits; Renewable Energy; Globalized Firms and Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Integration; Climate Change; Environmental Sustainability; Energy Industry; India

September 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Case

Hot Wheels at Mattel: Reinventing the Wheel

By: Elie Ofek, Andres Terech and Nicole Tempest Keller

In 2017, Chris Down, Global Brand General Manager for Hot Wheels, and his team from the Advanced Play Group within Mattel, Inc., were considering which innovation path to pursue in order to "future proof" the Hot Wheels franchise going forward. Hot Wheels was the... View Details

Keywords: Toys; Industry Evolution; Innovation Strategy; Product Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Technological Innovation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Decision Making; Digital Transformation

July 2015
Article

BYOB: How Bringing Your Own Shopping Bags Leads to Treating Yourself, and the Environment

By: Uma R. Karmarkar and Bryan Bollinger

As concerns about pollution and climate change have become more central in public discourse, shopping with reusable grocery bags has been strongly promoted as environmentally and socially conscious. In parallel, firms have joined policy makers in using a variety of... View Details

Keywords: Grocery Shopping; Reusable Bags; Licensing; Priming; Goals; Hedonic; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Environmental Sustainability; Retail Industry

22 Feb 2024
Research & Ideas

How to Make AI 'Forget' All the Private Data It Shouldn't Have

There’s a virtual elephant in AI’s room: It’s nearly impossible to make the technology forget. And there are an increasing number of scenarios where consumers and programmers may not only want to remove data from a machine learning... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Technology; Information Technology

Research Summary

The Ownership of Deep Metaphors

By: Gerald Zaltman

Deep metaphors are basic orienting structures of human thought. They guide in subtle and overt ways how customers and managers process information about any product, service, or activity and event. It is essential for a firm to understand deep metaphors as they are... View Details

2024
Working Paper

Incorporating Micro Data into Differentiated Products Demand Estimation with PyBLP

We delineate a general framework for incorporating many types of micro data from summary statistics to full surveys of selected consumers into Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes (1995) style estimates of differentiated products demand systems. We extend recommended practices... View Details

September–October 2023
Article

Building Brand Engagement: Lessons from NFTs and Collectibles

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Ben Plomion

The financial hype about Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) has cooled considerably since trading in that market went from more than $780 million on May 1, 2022 to less than $295 million for the entire month of May, 2023. But brands launch marketing campaigns in this medium,... View Details

Keywords: Opportunities; Digital Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy

May 2021
Article

Private and Social Returns to R&D: Drug Development and Demographics

By: Efraim Benmelech, Janice Eberly, Dimitris Papanikolaou and Joshua Krieger

Investment in intangible capital such as R&D has increased dramatically since the 1990s. However, productivity growth remains sluggish in recent years. One potential reason is that a significant share of the increase in intangible investment is geared toward consumer... View Details

Keywords: Drug Development; Research and Development; Investment Return; Demographics; Pharmaceutical Industry

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2020
Working Paper

Contract Duration and the Costs of Market Transactions

By: Alexander MacKay

The optimal duration of a supply contract balances the costs of reselecting a supplier against the costs of being matched to an inefficient supplier when the contract lasts too long. I develop a structural model of contract duration that captures this tradeoff and... View Details

Keywords: Vertical Relationships; Transaction Costs; Contract Duration; Identification; Supply Chain; Cost; Contracts; Auctions; Mathematical Methods

SSRN

November 2016 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Mark43

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Mitch Weiss and Halah AlQahtani

The founders of Mark43, an early-stage startup that provides software for law enforcement agencies, must decide whether to bid on a request for proposals (RFP) from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). On the one hand, LAPD would be a second large and influential... View Details

Keywords: Start-up; Software Applications; Government Markets; Rapid Growth Stage; Public Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; United States; New York (city, NY)

May 2017
Article

When Discounts Raise Costs: The Effect of Copay Coupons on Generic Utilization

By: Leemore S. Dafny, Christopher Ody and Matt Schmitt

Branded pharmaceutical manufacturers frequently offer “copay coupons” that insulate consumers from cost sharing, thereby undermining insurers’ ability to influence drug utilization. We study the impact of copay coupons on branded drugs first facing generic entry... View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Insurance Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

September 2010
Case

Angie's List

Angie's List is a paid subscription-based service that gives consumers online access to member-submitted reviews of plumbers, electricians, and other home service providers. Customer and revenue growth are strong, but customer acquisition costs are high and the company... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Price; Competitive Advantage; Product Launch; Service Industry; United States

October 2003 (Revised March 2004)
Case

Symbian: Setting the Mobility Standard

By: Fernando F. Suarez and Thomas R. Eisenmann

Symbian, a joint venture owned by companies who collectively sold a dominant share of the world's cell phones, faced competition from Microsoft in developing the operating system for "smartphones," which integrated mobile communications and computing functions. In... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Joint Ventures; Information Technology; Software; Wireless Technology; Mobile Technology; Information Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry