Publications

Article

Everybody Else Is Doing It: Exploring Social Transmission of Lying Behavior

By: Heather E. Mann, Ximena Garcia-Rada, Daniel Houser and Dan Ariely

Lying is a common occurrence in social interactions, but what predicts whether an individual will tell a lie? While previous studies have focused on personality factors, here we asked whether lying tendencies might be transmitted through social networks. Using an... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Social and Collaborative Networks

February 2011 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Coca-Cola on Facebook

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

In late 2008, executives at Coca-Cola had to decide what to do with a fan-created page on Facebook that had amassed over one million followers in three months. From a legal point of view the fan-created page was in violation of Facebook's terms of service as a... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Governance Controls; Policy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Channels; Social and Collaborative Networks; Food and Beverage Industry

07 Nov 2016
HBS Seminar

Vishal Gaur, Johnson, Cornell University

January 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Less Is More: Will Aldi's Expansion Plans Pay Off in a Crowded U.S. Grocery Market?

By: David Collis and Haisley Wert

In 2024, the discount grocery retailer Aldi announced bold U.S. expansion plans. Within five years, the German company would increase its store count by 30% to reach 3,200+ stores across the United States and approach becoming the fifth largest grocery retailer in the... View Details

Keywords: Scope; Grocery; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Business Model; Competitive Strategy; Retail Industry; United States

March 2022
Teaching Note

Supreme: Remaining Cool While Pursuing Growth

By: Jill Avery and Sandrine Crener

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 522-006. Following VF Corporation’s acquisition of cult streetwear brand Supreme, consumers and industry pundits were nervous that becoming part of a large, public corporation would put an end to Supreme’s slow and careful growth... View Details

Keywords: Cultural Branding; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Growth Management; Consumer Products Industry; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry; United States

July 2021
Article

Information Transparency, Multihoming, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market

By: Hui Li and Feng Zhu

Platform competition is shaped by the likelihood of multi-homing (i.e., complementors or consumers adopt more than one platform). To take advantage of multi-homing, platform firms often attempt to motivate their rivals’ high-performing complementors to adopt their own... View Details

Keywords: Platform Competition; Multi-homing; Information Transparency; Daily Deals; Groupon; LivingSocial; Digital Platforms; Information; Competition

April 2019
Article

Mitigating Malicious Envy: Why Successful Individuals Should Reveal Their Failures

By: Alison Wood Brooks, Karen Huang, Nicole Abi-Esber, Ryan W. Buell, Laura Huang and Brian Hall

People often feel malicious envy, a destructive interpersonal emotion, when they compare themselves to successful peers. Across three online experiments and a field experiment of entrepreneurs, we identify an interpersonal strategy that can mitigate feelings of... View Details

Keywords: Emotions; Perception; Interpersonal Communication; Communication Strategy

January 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Index

By: Jose Alvarez and Julia Kelley

In December 2017, Marc Freed-Finnegan and Jonathan Wall, the co-founders of retail technology company Index, had to discuss the company’s direction as they entered 2018. Five years earlier, Freed-Finnegan and Wall had founded Index after observing the technological... View Details

Keywords: Product Launch; Product Positioning; Sales; Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Retail Industry; Technology Industry

April 2015 (Revised June 2016)
Case

The Transformation of NCR

By: David Collis, Raffaella Sadun and Matthew Shaffer

During his tenure as CEO since 2005, Bill Nuti had moved NCR Corporation (originally National Cash Register) from its historical competence in hardware to become a provider of hardware and software for managing transactions across a range of industries and payments... View Details

Keywords: NCR; Hardware; Software; Acquisitions; Financial Services; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Expansion; Information Infrastructure; Applications and Software; Transformation; Acquisition; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry

October 2014
Case

Progressive, 2007-2013

By: John R. Wells and Galen Danskin

In 2013, Progressive was the fourth largest player in the auto insurance market, having lost the third position to GEICO in 2008. As the industry shifted from agency to online sales, GEICO's direct selling model positioned it strongly for growth. Progressive's direct... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Change; Insurance Companies; Insurance; Strategy; Insurance Industry; North America

Winter 2013
Article

The New Patent Intermediaries: Platforms, Defensive Aggregators and Super-Aggregators

By: Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie

The patent market consists mainly of privately negotiated, bilateral transactions, either sales or cross-licenses, between large companies. There is no eBay, Amazon, New York Stock Exchange, or Kelley's Blue Book equivalent for patents, and when buyers and sellers do... View Details

Keywords: Intellectual Property; Platforms; Intermediaries; Aggregator; Patents; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Distribution Channels

May 2010
Article

Bye Bye Bundles: The Unbundling of Music in Digital Channels

By: Anita Elberse

Fueled by digital distribution, unbundling is prevalent in many information industries. What is the effect of this unbundling on sales? And what bundle characteristics drive this effect? I empirically examine these questions in the context of the music industry, using... View Details

Keywords: Unbundling; Bundling; Digital Distribution; System-of-equations Modeling; Sales; Distribution Channels; Framework; Mathematical Methods; Revenue; Reputation; Internet and the Web; System; E-commerce; Information Industry; Music Industry

October 2007
Article

The Effectiveness of Pre-Release Advertising for Motion Pictures: An Empirical Investigation Using a Simulated Market

By: Anita Elberse and Bharat N. Anand

One of the most visible and publicized trends in the movie industry is the escalation in movie advertising expenditures over time. Yet, the returns to movie advertising are poorly understood. The main reason is that disentangling the causal effect of advertising on... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Stocks; Investment Return; Price; Revenue; Quality; Mathematical Methods; Motion Pictures and Video Industry