Publications

2008
Chapter

Allocating Marketing Resources

By: Sunil Gupta and Thomas J. Steenburgh

Companies spend billions of dollars on marketing every year because it is essential to organic growth. Given these large investments, marketing managers have the responsibility to optimally allocate resources and to demonstrate that their investments generate... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Resource Allocation; Marketing; Demand and Consumers; Mathematical Methods

September 2019 (Revised May 2020)
Case

Keroche (A): Fighting for Share in the Kenyan Alcoholic Drinks Market

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Pippa Tubman Armerding

This case discusses the challenges faced by Kenyan alcoholic drinks producer Keroche Industries Limited in 2003, when the Kenyan government accused the company of manufacturing and selling substandard alcoholic drinks, revoked its liquor licenses, and shut down its... View Details

Keywords: Keroche; Alcohol; Wine; Manufacturing; Informal Market; Regulation; Illicit; Illegal; Shutdown; Factory; Low-income Consumers; Multinational; Local; Government; Allegations; Accusations; Negative Press; EABL; Tusker; Beer; SAB; Chang'aa; Naivasha; Rift Valley; East Africa; Lawsuit; Legal Battle; Business Ventures; Business Exit or Shutdown; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Production; Safety; Quality; Distribution; Small Business; Family Business; Crime and Corruption; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decisions; Income; Demographics; Geographic Scope; Geographic Location; Goods and Commodities; Government Legislation; Growth and Development; Business History; Lawsuits and Litigation; Laws and Statutes; Lawfulness; Goals and Objectives; Consumer Behavior; Market Entry and Exit; Problems and Challenges; Social Issues; Poverty; Strategy; Competition; Entrepreneurship; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Kenya; Nairobi; Africa

Research Summary

Selling China: Foreign Direct Investment During the Reform Era

The aim of the book is to illustrate the dynamics of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China in the 1990s. The topic is important both because China is the world's second largest recipient of FDI and because there are substantial misconceptions about the drivers of... View Details

September 2016 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Casper Sleep Inc.: Marketing the 'One Perfect Mattress for Everyone'

By: Robert J. Dolan

“A Warby Parker of mattresses? Somebody is going to do it. Why not us?” This was the topic of a conversation begun in spring 2013 among Gabe Flateman, Philip Krim, Neil Parikh, and T. Luke Sherwin. The four met as members of a New York City venture accelerator... View Details

Keywords: Mattress; Sleep; Marketing; Business Model; Marketing Channels; Adoption; Sales; Consumer Products Industry

26 May 2009
Research & Ideas

Improving Market Research in a Recession

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.... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

16 Jul 2014
HBS Case

Marketing Obamacare

who'd lost their insurance, and older people who didn't know they were eligible for Medicare. Consumers also had differing levels of enthusiasm about signing up for insurance, ranging from excited to cynical... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health

09 Feb 2012
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Online Marketing

benefit merchants through advertising, simply by informing consumers of a merchant's existence via e-mail. For some merchants, the benefits of offering discount vouchers are sharply reduced if individual customers buy multiple vouchers.... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty; Technology

2024
Working Paper

Platform Information Provision and Consumer Search: A Field Experiment

By: Lu Fang, Yanyou Chen, Chiara Farronato, Zhe Yuan and Yitong Wang

Despite substantial efforts to help consumers search in more intuitive ways, text search remains the predominant tool for product discovery online. In this paper, we explore the effects of visual and textual cues for search refinement on consumer search and purchasing... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Decision Choices and Conditions; Learning; Internet and the Web

24 Nov 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Accounting for Product Impact in the Consumer Finance Industry

Keywords: by George Serafeim and Katie Trinh; Financial Services

October 2008 (Revised September 2009)
Case

Consumer Lending in Japan: Citi CFJ (A)

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull and Akiko Kanno

Despite a tradition of high household savings, Japan has supported a dynamic and technically sophisticated consumer-lending sector. The high profitability of the sector has periodically attracted interest from domestic banks as well as international investors. Most... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Financing and Loans; Foreign Direct Investment; Personal Finance; Courts and Trials; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; Japan

24 Apr 2014
News

Creating a mathematical method to understand consumer behavior in a digital world

homophily—the “birds-of-a-feather” tendencies of like-minded people? Only by understanding the relative impacts of these factors can companies develop effective marketing strategies. Studying the adoption of a mobile app in Japan, Gupta... View Details

01 Jun 2003
News

Male Consumers as Man-of-Action Heroes

of the authors’ research, marketers may need to re-examine the idea that they should imbue their brands with either respectability or rebellion. Instead, as Holt and Thompson’s study suggests, it is in the... View Details

Keywords: Douglas; Holt; Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

April 2022
Article

Consumers Value Effort over Ease When Caring for Close Others

By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Mary Steffel, Elanor F. Williams and Michael I. Norton

Many products and services are designed to make caregiving easier, from premade meals for feeding families to robo-cribs that automatically rock babies to sleep. Yet, using these products may come with a cost: consumers may feel they have not exerted enough effort.... View Details

Keywords: Effor; Caregiving; Close Relationships; Symbolic Meaning; Signaling; Relationships; Consumer Behavior; Perception

Find at Harvard

30 Aug 2017
News

Looking to win the battle for consumer attention? Take the blindfold off.

February 2011
Article

The Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage and Determination Through Brand Biography

By: Neeru Paharia, Anat Keinan, Jill Avery and Juliet B. Schor

We introduce the concept of an underdog brand biography (UBB) to describe an emerging trend in branding in which firms author an historical account of their humble origins, lack of resources, and determined struggle against the odds. We identify two essential... View Details

Find at Harvard

June 2016
Teaching Note

Relating to Peapod

By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier

This case concerns the topics of relationship marketing, customer acquisition and retention, brand loyalty, service failure and recovery, new product introduction, and the use of consumer ethnography to study consumer behavior. Specifically, the case explores the... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Customer Relationship Management; CRM; Customer Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Retailing; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Channels; E-commerce; Retail Industry; United States

31 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Extremeness Seeking: When and Why Consumers Prefer the Extremes

Keywords: by John T. Gourville & Dilip Soman

June 1994 (Revised August 1994)
Case

Cunard Line Ltd.: Managing Integrated Marketing Communications

By: Stephen A. Greyser

Cunard, the world's oldest luxury line company, is confronted with several key issues involving its marketing and marketing communications strategy. One concerns the balance between image/positioning advertising and short-term-oriented promotional... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Consumer Behavior; Organizational Structure; Identity; Balance and Stability; Shipping Industry

2010
Working Paper

Regulating for Legitimacy: Consumer Credit Access in France and America

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull

Theories of legitimate regulation have emphasized the role of governments either in fixing market failures to promote greater efficiency or in restricting the efficient functioning of markets in order to pursue public welfare goals. In either case, features of markets... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Financial Markets; Personal Finance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Business History; Business and Government Relations; Welfare; France; United States