Publications

June 16, 2020
Article

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz and Imran S. Currim

The coronavirus makes your customers less able and less willing to spend than before. How should you re-engage with them? Advice from Rohit Deshpandé and colleagues. View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Situation or Environment; Customer Relationship Management

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1994
Chapter

Customer Transaction Databases: Present Status and Prospects

By: J. A. Deighton, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers

Keywords: Customers; Market Transactions; Information Management; Data and Data Sets

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2025
Working Paper

Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning

By: Liangzong Ma, Ta-Wei Huang, Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

Reinforcement learning (RL) offers potential for optimizing sequences of customer interactions by modeling the relationships between customer states, company actions, and long-term value. However, its practical implementation often faces significant challenges.... View Details

Keywords: Dynamic Policy; Deep Reinforcement Learning; Representation Learning; Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Foreign Direct Investment; Analytics and Data Science

SSRN

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Research Summary

Lean Startup Management Practices

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Many information technology startups have embraced "lean startup" management practices. Lean startups confront high levels of uncertainty about both customer problems and product solutions: the strength of demand for new... View Details

10 Jul 2017
Op-Ed

Op-Ed: It’s a Bad Idea to Ban Customers From Recording Videos

Consumers delight in using smartphones to record their experiences and surroundings, but for businesses, such devices present tricky challenges. Suppose a customer encounters a hair in her food, a spill in an aisle, or a rude clerk.... View Details

Keywords: by Benjamin G. Edelman; Food & Beverage; Air Transportation; Retail; Service

January 2013
Case

Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture (MM)

By: Frances X. Frei and Robin J. Ely

On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately-held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft-line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its Board of Directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Internet and the Web; Mergers and Acquisitions; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry

25 Oct 2012
Research & Ideas

10 Reasons Customers Might Resist Windows 8

called the "Charm Bar." Give Microsoft credit for innovation. But will corporate customers rush to embrace the change, or will they resist it at first? Signs point to resistance, according to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the Ernest L.... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Computer; Consumer Products

11 Nov 2013
Research & Ideas

A Smarter Way to Reduce Customer Defections

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits with Aurélie Lemmens, an associate professor at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management. They propose a new method to target customers that potentially boosts a... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Service

30 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

How Your Employees and Customers Drive a New Value Profit Chain

recognition, and involvement of top management in the hiring and retention decisions regarding large numbers of managers. Many organizations don't know the profitability of their existing customers. Many treat all View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

May 2017 (Revised September 2018)
Case

Hilti Fleet Management (A): Turning a Successful Business Model on Its Head

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Oliver Gassmann and Roman Sauer

This case explores the introduction of fleet management in the construction industry by the premium power tools manufacturer Hilti in 2000. Following its customers’ needs, Hilti moved from selling power tools to leasing them as a service. The introduction of the new... View Details

Research Summary

Managing Innovation

I continue to study the disruptive processes by which innovation transforms -- or fails to transform -- industries and companies. There are three elements to these transformations. The first is a technological enabler -- an innovation that makes complicated, expensive... View Details

August 2009
Case

The TSMC Way: Meeting Customer Needs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

By: Willy C. Shih, Chen-Fu Chien, Chintay Shih and Jack Chang

When L.C. Tu receives an emergency order, he is confronted with a range of production scheduling choices, each of which has unique costs and trade-offs. The case was designed to help students understand job-shop style production and the impact of disruptions and... View Details

Keywords: Disruption; Customer Relationship Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cost; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Production; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan

Research Summary

Managing Networked Businesses

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Platform-based businesses that leverage network effects face a distinctive set of management challenges. A platform encompasses components and rules that facilitate interactions between the platform's users. A platform-based product or service exhibits a network... View Details

February 2005
Article

Managing the Ecosystem

By: Marco Iansiti

The days of the corporate lone wolf are over. In our increasingly interconnected world, standing alone is no longer a viable business model. Instead, smart companies rely heavily on networks of partners, suppliers, and customers to achieve market success and sustain... View Details

Keywords: Integrated Corporate Reporting; Partners and Partnerships; Industry Clusters; Customers; Markets; Situation or Environment; Banks and Banking; Insurance; Software

Find at Harvard

10 Oct 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

Keywords: by Aurélie Lemmens & Sunil Gupta; Retail

May 2003
Module Note

Managing Product Development

By: Stefan H. Thomke

Introduces students to the managerial aspects critical to conceiving, designing, and developing innovative products and services. Considers the full range of activities required: learning about customer needs, understanding and managing experimentation and problem... View Details

Keywords: Product Design; Product Development; Service Operations; Business or Company Management; Projects; Management Practices and Processes; Experience and Expertise; Customers; Research; Management Skills; Integration

May 2007 (Revised March 2008)
Background Note

Basic Techniques for the Analysis of Customer Information Using Excel 2003: A Step-by-Step Approach

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez

Provides a set of easy, step-by-step guides for some analytical techniques that are useful in the analysis of cases discussed in the course "Competing and Winning Through Customer Information (CWCI)". The instructions that follow use datasets from three of the cases in... View Details

Keywords: Data and Data Sets; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Mathematical Methods