Publications

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Video

Ashraf Abu Issa

Ashraf Abu Issa, Chairman of Abu Issa Holding, shares insights on the demand for luggage in the Middle East. View Details

August 1978 (Revised October 1979)
Case

Grey Advertising/Canada Dry Account

After taking over Canada Dry's mixers account in 1966, Grey Advertising assembled a successful ad campaign that increased ginger ale sales significantly. But Canada Dry's market share for ginger ale and its other mixer products had remained the same or declined during... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Advertising Campaigns; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

December 2005 (Revised February 2019)
Case

Brighter Smiles for the Masses--Colgate vs. P&G

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Dennis Yao and Filipa Azevedo Jorge

In 2000, Procter & Gamble Co. introduced Crest Whitestrips, a new, revolutionary product that allowed consumers to whiten their teeth at home. With Whitestrips, P&G created an entire new category in oral care, worth $460 million in 2002. Whitestrips sent P&G's main... View Details

Keywords: Competitive Advantage; Competitive Strategy; Advertising; Product Launch; Patents; Price; Performance Effectiveness; Consumer Products Industry

2012
Chapter

The Relational Roles of Brands

By: Jill Avery

In contemporary culture, brands play important relational roles, linking consumers to others and serving as relational partners. This chapter provides an understanding of the relational roles of brands to illuminate why and how consumers connect with brands and how... View Details

Keywords: Brands; Brand Management; Brand Equity; Brand Building; Customer Relationship Management; CRM; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

May 2002 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Innovation at Progressive (A): Pay-As-You-Go Insurance

By: Frances X. Frei and Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar

Consumer auto insurance is a price-sensitive industry in which customers rarely pay a premium to a provider even for additional service features. Progressive spends more on additional service features than its competitors do; consumers don't pay extra for these... View Details

17 Jun 2014
News

Housing not warm yet: Pro

14 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

How to Profit from Scarcity

scarcity encourages us to buy sooner and perhaps to buy more than normal. We saw two excellent examples of this effect this summer with the launches of the iPhone and the seventh Harry Potter book. In both... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

06 Apr 2023
Blog Post

Bringing Music to the HBS Classroom: My Journey as a Nontraditional Student in the Summer Venture in Management Program

that my skill set was not aligned with the demands of business school, let alone a highly-acclaimed institution like Harvard. My undergraduate experience was predominantly made up of developing in-depth technical View Details

22 Apr 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Competing with Privacy

Keywords: by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Andres Hervas-Drane; Publishing

August 1999 (Revised January 2002)
Case

Brita Products Company, The

By: John A. Deighton

Clorox's Brita skillfully exploits a tide of water safety concerns, growing a home water (filtration) business from inception to a 15% U.S. household penetration in ten years. The dilemma in the case arises as the period of increasing returns seems to be drawing to a... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Acquisition; Retention; Safety; Natural Environment; Emerging Markets; Investment Return; Equity; Demand and Consumers; United States

August 1995 (Revised July 1997)
Case

H.E. Butt Grocery Company: A Leader in ECR Implementation (A) (Abridged)

By: F. Warren McFarlan

Describes the industry context that has resulted in the development of efficient consumer response (ECR) within the grocery industry and its adoption by H.E. Butt Grocery Co. View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Adoption; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

Ray Kluender is an assistant professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit, teaching Entrepreneurial Finance to second-year MBA students.

He studies the causes of financial distress among American households and how public policy,... View Details

January 2009 (Revised July 2009)
Case

Alibaba's Taobao (A)

By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Julie M. Wulf

This case examines the decision of Alibaba Group to diversify from an international business-to-business (B2B) exchange (Alibaba.com) into a B2C and C2C exchange (Taobao.com) for Chinese retailers and consumers. In China, Taobao had managed to displace the once... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Demand and Consumers; Market Transactions; Service Operations; Diversification; Internet and the Web; China

BYJU’S The Learning App (BYJU’s) is India’s largest K-12 education app with approximately 300,000 annual paid subscribers. The mobile app uses a mix of video lessons and interactive tools to personalize learning for every student. Although there is room to grow... View Details

2023
Working Paper

ESG: From Process to Product

By: George Serafeim

ESG measurement, analysis, management, and communication is a process that the financial industry has turned into a product, resulting in many investment funds using the ESG label. This has caused confusion, generating demand for a framework that defines... View Details

Keywords: ESG; ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance; ESG Ratings; ESG Reporting; Investment Fund; Investment; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Financial Services Industry

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October 2021 (Revised May 2023)
Case

Engine No.1: An Impact Investing Firm Engages with ExxonMobil

By: Mark Kramer, Shawn Cole, Vikram S. Gandhi and T. Robert Zochowski

ExxonMobil, the world's fifth largest source of carbon emissions, remained committed to aggressively expanding its oil & gas business despite global warming. During the COVID pandemic this strategy resulted in massive losses as the price and demand for oil declined. ... View Details

Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Global Warming; Impact Investment Funds; Hedge Fund Activism; Leadership Development; Business Model; Renewable Energy; Resource Allocation; Decision Choices and Conditions; Governing and Advisory Boards

Research Summary

The Consumer-Direct Channel: "We've Come Full Spiral"

Professor Lemon is currently engaged in a field research project investigating the extent to which new "channels" such as the Internet and home grocery delivery represent a dramatic shift in consumer buying behavior. She is working with a consortium of global... View Details

January 1996 (Revised February 1997)
Case

Exploring Brand-Person Relationships: Three Life Histories

The idea that "relationships" exist between consumers and products has implicitly occupied a central place in brand marketing thought and practice. Now as relational (one-on-one) marketing is said to be replacing transactional (mass) marketing as the dominant paradigm... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Relationships; Brands and Branding