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Publications
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- Faculty Publications (554)
- June 2014 (Revised March 2017)
- Teaching Note
Agero: Enhancing Capabilities for Customers
By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred
This is the teaching note for Agero: Enhancing Capabilities for Customers (HBS No. 113-001) View Details
- June 2014 (Revised March 2016)
- Case
Relating to Peapod
By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery
Explores the relationships formed between consumers and the Peapod consumer-direct grocery delivery service, as revealed through an ethnographic study of Boston-area Peapod shoppers conducted between the Summer of 1997 and the Fall of 1999. Three representative case... View Details
- 2014
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Marketing Reading: Brand Positioning
By: Jill Avery and Sunil Gupta
This Reading addresses the principles of brand positioning and demonstrates how companies can strategically craft powerful, resonant, and unique brand positions to help products stand out amidst the cacophony of the marketplace. Strategic brand positioning provides... View Details
Keywords: Brand Positioning; Branding; Consumer Research; Defensive Strategies; Market Positioning; Marketing; Product Differentiation; Product Positioning; Strategic Positioning; Value Proposition; Customer Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Customer Satisfaction; Brands and Branding
- March 2014
- Article
Choosing the Right Customer
By: Robert Simons
Companies that win in competitive markets identify a primary customer and dedicate maximum resources to meeting that customer's needs. This article will show you how to identify the best primary customer for your business by analyzing perspective, capabilities, and... View Details
- January 2014 (Revised November 2021)
- Case
Filene's Basement: Inside a Fired Customer's Relationship
By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier
How, in a business climate in which building relationships with customers has dominated both managerial thought and marketing budgets, could Filene's Basement have fired a loyal customer, one who was formally and informally recognized as a best customer? This case... View Details
- 2013
- Tool
Harvard Business Review's Go to Market Tools: Customer Lifetime Value
By: Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery
How much are your customers worth? Has your marketing budget been slashed? Need to figure out the best place to invest your time and effort to reach your growth target? HBR's Go to Market Tool helps calculate your customer's lifetime value, allowing you to prioritize... View Details
- October 2013
- Article
The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care
By: Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee
In health care, the days of business as usual are over. Around the world, every health care system is struggling with rising costs and uneven quality, despite the hard work of well-intentioned, well-trained clinicians. Health care leaders and policy makers have tried... View Details
- September 2013
- Case
SafeBlend Fracturing
By: Benson P. Shapiro, Frank V. Cespedes and Alisa Zalosh
The CEO of SafeBlend Technologies must set a price for the company's environmentally friendly fracturing fluid additive. The firm is negotiating a new contract with its biggest client, Bristol Natural Gas. For the last two years, SafeBlend has been the sole provider of... View Details
- 2019
- Working Paper
Managing Churn to Maximize Profits
By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta
Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability, or their responsiveness to a... View Details
- September 2013 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Marquee: Reinventing the Business of Nightlife
By: Anita Elberse, Ryan Barlow and Sheldon Wong
In January 2013, nightlife impresarios Jason Strauss and Noah Tepperberg are celebrating the re-opening of their famed New York City–based nightclub Marquee. While most clubs are over within their first one and a half years, Strauss and Tepperberg managed to keep... View Details
- September–October 2013
- Article
Learning from Customers: Individual and Organizational Effects in Outsourced Radiological Services
By: Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
The ongoing fragmentation of work has resulted in a narrowing of tasks into smaller pieces that can be sent outside the organization and, in many instances, around the world. This trend is shifting the boundaries of organizations and leading to increased outsourcing.... View Details
- August 2013 (Revised August 2014)
- Case
Catalina In the Digital Age
By: Robert J. Dolan and Uma R. Karmarkar
Catalina in the Digital Age considers how a company with a dominant market position should evolve its established product lines given the rise of novel digital technologies. Since its founding in 1983, Catalina had enjoyed a distinct position in the world of consumer... View Details
- 2013
- Working Paper
Where do the Most Active Customers Originate and How Can Firms Keep Them Engaged?
By: Clarence Lee, E. Ofek and Thomas Steenburgh
In this paper, we study how firms offering Web services can acquire and develop an active customer base. We focus on two basic questions. First, how does the method of customer acquisition affect the way customers use the service to meet their own needs and to interact... View Details
- June 2013
- Case
Olympic Rent-A-Car U.S.: Customer Loyalty Battles
By: John Deighton and James T. Kindley
The marketing and operations managers for Olympic Rent-A-Car meet to decide how to respond to changes in the loyalty rewards program at the market-leading competitor. The competitor's program gives awards based on dollars spent instead of days rented and eliminates... View Details
- May 2013
- Case
Transport Corporation of India (A): The Cross-selling Conundrum
By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi
Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details
- May 2013
- Supplement
Transport Corporation of India (B): Choosing the Right Candidate
By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi
Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details
- May 2013
- Supplement
Transport Corporation of India (D): Business Development across Divisions
By: V.G. Narayanan and Saloni Chaturvedi
Transport Corporation of India was a logistics company that provided multi-modal transport solutions to its customers. Set up in 1958, TCI had grown from a 'one man, one truck, one office' set-up to a company with revenues of $400 million in half a century. TCI's... View Details
- May 2013 (Revised May 2014)
- Case
Innovation at the Boston Consulting Group
By: Robert G. Eccles, Das Narayandas and Penelope Rossano
This case is about how the Boston Consulting Group has approached innovation from its founding to the present day. It discusses the role of the firm's talent market and client market in developing these innovations. View Details
Keywords: Innovation; Strategy Consulting; Professional Service Firm; Knowledge Management; Client Management; Product Development; Leadership; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Independent Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Value Creation; Consulting Industry
- 2012
- Chapter
Firing Your Best Customers: How Smart Firms Destroy Relationships Using CRM
By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier
With incidences in the 20%–25% range, the practice of firing customers has become increasingly attractive as firms try to maximize the lifetime value of their customer portfolios. This chapter traces the relationship trajectory of a 30-year customer of Filene's... View Details
- February 2013 (Revised March 2013)
- Case
Agero: Enhancing Capabilities for Customers
By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred
This case illustrates the importance of choosing a primary customer as the basis for organization design. Cross Country Group managers adjusted resource allocation, organization design and performance measures over time to transform Cross Country Group from an... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Entrepreneurial Gap; Entrepreneurship; Auto Industry; Insurance; Performance Management; Performance Measurement; Performance Measures; Performance Pressure; Decisions; Family Business; Resource Allocation; Organizational Design; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Evaluation; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry