Publications

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

24 May 2022
Blog Post

Get to Know 2022 Class Day Student Speaker Peter James Kiernan

View Video Peter James Kiernan (MBA 2022) has been selected as the student speaker for Harvard Business School’s (HBS) Class Day celebration, held this year on Wednesday, May 25. Class Day honors graduating... View Details

November 2021
Article

Ratings, Reviews, and the Marketing of New Products

By: Itay P. Fainmesser, Dominique Olié Lauga and Elie Ofek

We study how user-generated content (UGC) about new products impacts a firm's advertising and pricing decisions and the effect on profits and market dynamics. We construct a two-period model where consumers value quality and are heterogeneous in their taste for the new... View Details

Keywords: Online Reviews; Product Ratings; Social Networks; Word Of Mouth; Pricing; User-generated Content; Advertising; Product Marketing; Price; Consumer Behavior; Product Positioning; Social Media

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January 8, 2010
Other Article

Multinational Firms, Agglomeration, and Global Networks

By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen

Agglomeration effects are important but difficult to measure. This column uses a new database with precise geographical information to investigate the locational interdependence of multinational firms. Knowledge spillovers and capital- and labour-market externalities... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Business Subsidiaries; Industry Clusters; Multinational Firms and Management; Network Effects

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2007
Working Paper

Proprietary vs. Open Two-Sided Platforms and Social Efficiency

By: Andrei Hagiu

This paper identifies a fundamental economic welfare tradeoff between two-sided open platforms and two-sided proprietary (closed) platforms connecting consumers and producers. Proprietary platforms create two-sided deadweight losses through monopoly pricing but at the... View Details

Keywords: Two-Sided Markets; Platforms; Indirect Network Effects; Product Variety; Social Efficiency; Two-Sided Platforms; Network Effects; Welfare or Wellbeing

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14 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

The Widening Rift Between Corporations and Society

now? Zuboff and Maxmin: A century ago mass consumption was on the rise. People wanted more things. The answer was to produce more goods at an ever-lower cost—mass production. Corporations were organized around a managerial hierarchy... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

24 Jun 2014
First Look

First Look: June 24

terms that require prepayment. During the recent crisis, the exporter was more likely to demand cash in advance terms when transacting with new customers, and customers that traded on cash in advance and... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

19 May 2021
Blog Post

Instagram Takeover - Ja’ Saint-Tulias (MBA 2022)

sewing pieces for high school fashion shows to becoming a certified esthetician and beauty blogger pre-HBS. Bachelor's in hand, Ja’ has set her sights on earning a master's degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School to... View Details

22 May 2007
First Look

First Look: May 22, 2007

resulting currency position tends to rise in value when equity markets fall. This strategy works well for investment horizons of one month to one year. In the past 15 years the risk-minimizing View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

14 Dec 2011
Research & Ideas

The New Measures for Improving Nonprofit Performance

direction and the internal data to understand its own strengths and weaknesses can be overly influenced by outside demands for metrics that may not always be relevant to its ultimate success. “Without understanding outcomes, you can't get... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

October 2009
Case

Digital Chocolate

By: Linda A. Hill and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld

Trip Hawkins founded Digital Chocolate in Silicon Valley in 2003 to develop outstanding games for mobile devices. By 2008, the company had expanded its operations into four countries, and Digital Chocolate was one of the top developers of soloplayer games for standard... View Details

Keywords: Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Innovation and Management; Leading Change; Product Development; Groups and Teams; Creativity; Video Game Industry; Video Game Industry

12 May 2009
First Look

First Look: May 12, 2009

R. Kerr Publication:The American Economic Review (forthcoming) Abstract Why do firms cluster near one another? We test Marshall's (1920) theories of industrial agglomeration by examining which industries locate near View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

March–April 2024
Article

Retailers and Health Systems Can Improve Care Together

By: Robert S. Huckman, Vivian S. Lee and Bradley R Staats

Health systems are struggling to address the many shortcomings of health care delivery: rapidly growing costs, inconsistent quality, and inadequate and unequal access to primary and other types of care. However, if retailers and health systems were to form strong... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Retail; Retailers; Consumer; Health Care and Treatment; Value; Consumer Behavior; Business Model; Partners and Partnerships; Health Industry; Retail Industry; United States

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March 2016 (Revised November 2021)
Teaching Note

T-Mobile in 2013: The Un-Carrier

By: John Beshears and Francesca Gino

By 2013, the U.S. wireless industry was in the midst of a costly transition. As consumers began to embrace more sophisticated mobile devices, the industry's four main players spent heavily to improve their infrastructures for providing reliable high-speed data... View Details

Keywords: Wireless Industry; Telecommunications; Mobile; Service Contracts; Behavioral Economics; Add-on Fees; Shrouded Attributes; Contracts; Competitive Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Infrastructure; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; United States

May 2020
Article

Digitizing Disclosure: The Case of Restaurant Hygiene Scores

By: Weijia (Daisy) Dai and Michael Luca

Collaborating with Yelp and the city of San Francisco, we revisit a canonical example of quality disclosure by evaluating and helping to redesign the posting of restaurant hygiene scores on Yelp.com. We implement a two-stage intervention that separately identifies... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Consumer Behavior; Knowledge Dissemination; Food and Beverage Industry

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September 1974 (Revised April 1975)
Case

Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. (B)

A consumer attitude survey involving more than 1,000 cranberry users has been conducted. Multivariate statistical procedures including factor analysis, cluster analysis and multiple discriminant analysis have been employed to suggest four attitude segments in the... View Details

Keywords: Surveys; Product Positioning; Mathematical Methods; Consumer Behavior; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry