Grocery - Publications - Faculty & Research

10 Oct 2007
First Look

First Look: First Look: October 10

Abstract We study the effect of small windfalls on consumer-spending decisions by examining the purchasing behavior of a sample of online grocery shoppers over the course of a year. We compare the purchases customers make when redeeming a... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

13 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

5 Weight Loss Tips From Behavioral Economists

Business scholars increasingly hinge their hypotheses on sociological and psychological studies, seeking a true handle on what motivates executives, employees, consumers, and policymakers. For instance, the following studies suggest several simple weight-loss tips. TIP... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

24 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Busting Six Myths About Customer Loyalty Programs

discuss each of these myths in turn. Size Of The Reward Loyalty programs do not really work in grocery stores because the rewards that grocery retailers can afford to offer are too small. They cannot offer... View Details

Keywords: by Marcel Corstjens & Rajiv Lal; Retail; Consumer Products

17 Oct 2016
HBS Case

Business Solutions That Help Cut Food Waste

University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative: Doug Rauch: Solving the American Food Paradox. The case was co-authored by Ryan Johnson, research associate with the Global Research Group. Rauch came up with one solution: In June 2015, he opened Daily Table, a... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

12 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

Can Consumers be Trusted with Their Own Health Care?

Consumers today have more control than ever over the way they choose goods and services—from browsing freely at grocery stores to managing their own financial assets. Perhaps consumers should also have a greater sense of empowerment when... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health

06 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

When Product Variety Backfires

adequately considered whether or when this is true. In a sense, they have a very blunt tool that they are overusing. Second, there is a constant battle for shelf space in most grocery stores. If you are Quaker Oats, you would like to have... View Details

Keywords: by Poping Lin; Consumer Products

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Brand Power from Wedgwood to Dell: Part One

Heinz went door to door, or grocery store to grocery store, saying, 'What do you think about these pickles?' Field walked the floors of his Chicago department store observing customer reactions to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

19 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Finding Success in the Middle of the Market

offers consumers three options—good, better and best—in most high turnover product categories. In addition, Tesco doesn't just sell groceries through one-size-fits-all supermarkets. Recognizing the need to shape as well as respond to an... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Auto; Retail

17 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Why E-commerce Didn’t Die With the Fall of Webvan

taking to Staples.com and Merck-Medco. Why didn't they embrace Webvan, Kozmo.com, and grocery deliverers such as Homeruns to the same extent? A: There's a simple answer. It's the idea that there's a direct migration path from direct mail... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products; Retail

21 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Are We Thinking Too Little, or Too Much?

still be stymied if they try to consider every single laptop on the market. (In the article, Norton and Ariely cite a study by social psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, who showed that grocery store shoppers who were offered... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

11 Dec 2006
Research & Ideas

Fixing Price Tag Confusion

says Groceries $88, Delivery $8? In a recent working paper titled "The Framing Effect of Price Format," HBS Associate Professor Luc Wathieu and coauthor Marco Bertini of the London Business School attempt to understand the consumer... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

15 May 2020
Research & Ideas

Find Your Pragmatic Path through Radical Uncertainty

activities. These days, we need to plan more carefully because small decisions can have dire consequences for ourselves and for others. Consider the newly stressful task of grocery shopping. Should I order View Details

Keywords: by Howard Stevenson, Eugene B. Kogan, and Shirley Spence

29 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

Most Popular Articles and Research Papers of 2014

How Grocery Bags Manipulate Your Mind People who bring personal shopping bags to the grocery store to help the environment are more likely to buy organic items—but also to treat themselves to ice cream and... View Details

29 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

The Next Marketing Challenge: Selling to ’Simplifiers’

road half the time, grew in number as the size of the average American household declined. The new economy has made it even easier for consumers to get rid of their stuff. These huge houses had to be filled with more stuff, good news for the home-appliance and... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Retail; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation

19 Feb 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

Amazoned: Is Any Industry Safe?

Today, Amazon participates in so many industries that it takes a small army of researchers at HBS to track them all: retailing, cloud computing, book stores, grocery stores, digital consumer products, commercial real estate,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

21 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

The New Math of Customer Relationships

updating the books with a new one titled The Ownership Quotient. In it, we highlight organizations like Harrah's Entertainment, Rackspace Managed Hosting (a Website hosting service), Baptist Health Care, and Wegmans (a regional grocery... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

05 May 2010
What Do You Think?

Is Denial Endemic to Management?

Microsoft became dominant in software for PC operating systems; and the belief by entrepreneurs and investors alike that online grocery orders to the long-gone Webvan, the largest single start-up during the Internet bubble, would become a... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

11 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

Riding the Internet Fast Track

customer will buy his or her next car from them, and at that, a second purchase could well be years away. While many firms are clearly bent on getting big fast, some competitors are adopting a get-it-right-first strategy instead. One such company, Streamline.com, a... View Details

Keywords: by Peter Jacobs

10 Nov 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

Research News and Tips: Innovating Across Time Zones

Harvard Business Review 98, no. 5 (September–October 2020): 98–105. Weaknesses in supply chain strategy exposed As anyone who went grocery shopping in the early days of the pandemic can tell you, empty shelves revealed how COVID-19 did a... View Details