Publications

April 2010 (Revised December 2010)
Case

Shanzhai! MediaTek and the "White Box" Handset Market

By: Willy C. Shih, Chen-Fu Chien and Jyun-Cheng Wang

The term "white box" is often used to describe products without a brand name. Such products are assembled from standardized parts, and they became a very popular category of desktop PCs. Hsinchu, Taiwan based MediaTek is a fabless semiconductor company that unleashed a... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Emerging Markets; Competitive Advantage; Wireless Technology; Semiconductor Industry; Taiwan

Educators

13 Feb 2006
Research & Ideas

The Hidden Market for Babies

"brave new world" had actually wanted governments to come in and regulate the market that technology had created. For about a year after View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls; Biotechnology; Health; Technology

12 Nov 2008
Research & Ideas

The Marketing of a President

Editor's Note: Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge. When View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

20 May 2013
Research & Ideas

The Long-Term Fix to US Competitiveness

is that people who should be allies are at cross-purposes with each other." The US Competitiveness Project put forth this definition: "The United States is a competitive nation to View Details

Keywords: by Stephanie Schorow & Harvard Gazette

February 2018
Article

Auctions versus Posted Prices in Online Markets

By: Liran Einav, Chiara Farronato, Jonathan Levin and Neel Sundaresan

Auctions were very popular in the early days of internet commerce, but today online sellers mostly use posted prices. We model the choice between auctions and posted prices as a trade-off between competitive price discovery and convenience. Evidence from eBay fits the... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Auctions; Price

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Article

Creating Ecotourism in Costa Rica, 1970–2000

By: Geoffrey Jones and Andrew Spadafora

Between the 1970s and the 2000s, Costa Rica became established as the world’s leading ecotourism destination. This article argues that although Costa Rica benefited from biodiversity and a pleasant climate, the country’s preeminence in ecotourism requires more than a... View Details

Keywords: Ecotourism; Entrepreneurship In Emerging Markets; Sustainable Business And Innovation; Tourism; Green Business; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development; History; Business History; Tourism Industry; Latin America; Costa Rica

2013
Article

How Concentrated Is the U.S. Advertising and Marketing Services Industry? Myth vs. Reality

By: Alvin J. Silk and Charles King III

We analyze changes in concentration levels in the U.S. Advertising and Marketing Services industry using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's quinquennial Economic Census and the Service Annual Survey. These data, heretofore largely ignored, allow us to redress some of... View Details

Keywords: Concentration Levels; Data; U.S. Census Bureau’s Quinquennial Economic Census And The Service Annual Survey; Measurement Problems; Herfindahl-Hirschman Index; Concentration Ratios; Advertising; Advertising Industry; North and Central America

winter 2009
Journal Article

Interactivity's Unanticipated Consequences for Markets and Marketing

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

The digital interactive transformation in marketing is not unfolding, as some thought it would, on the model of direct marketing. That model anticipated that marketing, empowered by digital media using rich profiling data, would intrude ever more deeply and more... View Details

Keywords: Communication Intention and Meaning; Interactive Communication; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks; Online Technology

Article

Lone Wolves in Infinite, Discrete Matching Markets

By: Ravi Jagadeesan

In finite two-sided matching markets, the Lone Wolf Theorem guarantees that the same set of agents remains unmatched in all stable outcomes. I show by example that this assertion is not true in infinite, discrete markets. However, despite the fact that the Lone Wolf... View Details

Keywords: Lone Wolf Theorem; Strategy-proofness; Marketplace Matching

September 2016
Article

History-based versus Uniform Pricing in Growing and Declining Markets

By: Oz Shy, Rune Stenbacka and David Hao Zhang

We analyze the Markov Perfect Equilibria of an infinite-horizon overlapping generations model with consumer lock-in to compare the performance of history-based and uniform pricing in growing and declining markets. Under history-based pricing, firms charge higher prices... View Details

Keywords: History-based Pricing; Introductory Discount; Uniform Pricing; Consumer Lock-in; High Switching Costs; Demand and Consumers; Competition; Price; Market Entry and Exit; Product Marketing

01 May 2008
Research & Ideas

The Marketing Challenges of the China Olympics

Editor's Note: Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge.Normally,... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Sports

February 2008
Course Overview Note

Conceptual Overview of Real Estate Options in Emerging Markets

By: Nicolas P. Retsinas and Ben Creo

A conceptual overview of real estate investments in emerging markets and descriptions of suggested modules, cases, and discussion questions for a course on this topic. Intended for instructors, this overview describes the nature of emerging markets and how real estate... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Investment; Situation or Environment; Cases; Curriculum and Courses; Real Estate Industry

August 2017
Case

RoboTech: Storming into the U.S. Market

By: Christopher A. Bartlett, Rachel Gordon and John J. Lafkas

This case describes the challenges facing the CEO of a small, Singapore-based industrial robotics company that decides to diversify away from its core industrial robot business by leveraging its expertise into the medical-devices industry. It launches an innovative... View Details

Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Diversification; Product Launch; Competitive Strategy; Globalized Firms and Management; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry; Technology Industry; Singapore; United States

Educators

July 2012
Article

The Real Consequences of Market Segmentation

By: Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam

We study the real effects of market segmentation due to credit ratings using a matched sample of firms just above and just below the investment-grade cutoff. These firms have similar observables, including average investment rates. However, flows into high-yield mutual... View Details

Keywords: Segmentation; Credit; Investment; Investment Funds; Quality; Markets; Measurement and Metrics; Business Ventures

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01 Jun 2009
News

The Maestro and the Market

experiences, you almost can’t listen to the customer.” Norton asks students to consider the operations and marketing of elBulli. There is much about View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Performing Arts, Spectator Sports, and Related Industries; Arts, Entertainment; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Food Services and Drinking Places; Hospitality

June 2024
Article

Oral History and Business History in Emerging Markets

By: Geoffrey Jones

This article describes the motivation, structure and use of the Creating Emerging Markets (CEM) oral history-based project at the Harvard Business School. The project consists of lengthy interviews with business leaders from emerging markets. By June 2024 183... View Details

Keywords: Emerging Economies; Oral History; Emerging Markets; Business History; Research

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17 Aug 2010
News

Economy Led to Cuts in Use of Health Care

June 1974 (Revised April 1983)
Background Note

Note on Marketing Arithmetic and Related Marketing Terms

By: James L. Heskett and Theodore Levitt

A basic note to be used at the beginning of the introductory marketing course to familiarize students with the arithmetic techniques, concepts, and terms that are typically employed in the analysis of a first year marketing case. View Details

Keywords: Marketing

Educators