Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,713)
- Faculty Publications (483)
- February 2014 (Revised August 2016)
- Case
Strava
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Sid Misra
Strava is a new fast-growing social network for the avid cyclist and runner. The Strava case traces the entrepreneurial journey of two serial entrepreneurs who have been co-founders in a prior venture, and who have co-founded Strava 3 years ago. The protagonists must... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Cycling; Biking; Running; Sports; Technology; Mobile App; Mobile; GPS; Motivation; Behavioral Science; Founders; Term Sheet; Investment; Terms; Silicon Valley; Lifestyle; Strava; Financing; Fundraising; Angel; Valuation; Growth; Forecast; Business Startups; Business Plan; Trends; Forecasting and Prediction; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Institutional Investing; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Technological Innovation; Management Succession; Growth Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Timing; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; California; New England
- 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
- Working Paper
Separating Homophily and Peer Influence with Latent Space
By: Joseph P. Davin, Sunil Gupta and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
We study the impact of peer behavior on the adoption of mobile apps in a social network. To identify social influence properly, we introduce latent space as an approach to control for latent homophily, the idea that "birds of a feather flock together." In a series of... View Details
- January 2014
- Technical Note
Learning From Extreme Consumers
By: Jill Avery and Michael Norton
Traditional market research methods focus on understanding the average experiences of average consumers. This focus leads to gaps in our knowledge of consumer behavior and often fails to uncover insights that can drive revolutionary, rather than evolutionary... View Details
- Article
Anger and Regulation
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We study a model in which agents experience anger when they see a firm that has displayed insufficient concern for the welfare of its clients (i.e., altruism) making high profits. Regulation can increase welfare, for example, through fines (even with no changes in... View Details
- 2014
- Article
Drivers and Dynamics of Online Word of Mouth
By: Frank Nagle and Christoph Riedl
- October 2013 (Revised January 2016)
- Case
J.C. Penney's 'Fair and Square' Strategy (Abridged)
By: Elie Ofek and Jill Avery
As he gets ready to release 2nd quarter 2012 results, Ron Johnson, the new CEO of department store J.C. Penney, is reconsidering the dramatic changes he initiated for the business model and brand image of his company. A new pricing scheme he put in place in February,... View Details
- September 2013 (Revised August 2015)
- Background Note
Leadership and Teaming
By: Ethan Bernstein
Small differences in the leadership of teams can have large consequences for the success of their efforts. Many initiatives fail not because of a fatal error in judgment or insufficient ideas, knowledge, motivation, or capabilities to deliver a solution. They fail... View Details
Keywords: Teams; Teaming; Leadership And Managing People; Leadership; Team Effectiveness; Team Performance; Team Design; Team Leadership; Teamwork; Team Process; Team Function; Team Launch; 60/30/10 Rule; Team Boundary; Distribution Of Leadership Authority; Self-Managed Teams; Virtual Teams; Unbounded Teams; Acts Of Leadership; Execution Teams; Decision Making Teams; Creativity Teams; Team Size; Task Design; Team Timeline; Team Roles; Team Representation; Diversity; Team Familiarity; Collective Intelligence; Team Stages Of Development; Team Coaching; Performance Pressure; X-Teams; Team Focus; Interaction; Management Teams; Managerial Roles; Management Systems; Management Style; Management Skills; Management Practices and Processes; Organizational Design; Organizational Structure; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Efficiency; Performance Productivity; Groups and Teams; Networks; Social Psychology; Behavior; Conflict and Resolution; Creativity; Social and Collaborative Networks; Satisfaction; Prejudice and Bias; Power and Influence; Personal Characteristics; Familiarity; Cognition and Thinking; Attitudes; Projects; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Knowledge Sharing; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Innovation Leadership; Design; Interpersonal Communication; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Asia; North and Central America; South America; Atlantic Ocean; Central Asia; Europe; Latin America; Middle East; Oceania; West Indies
- 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
- Article
Consumers' Misunderstanding of Health Insurance
By: George Loewenstein, Joelle Y. Friedman, Barbara McGill, Sarah Ahmad, Suzanne Linck, Stacey Sinkula, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Jonathan Kolstad, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, John A. List and Kevin G. Volpp
We report results from two surveys of representative samples of Americans with private health insurance. The first examines how well Americans understand, and believe they understand, traditional health insurance coverage. The second examines whether those insured... View Details
- 2013
- Article
Rituals Enhance Consumption
By: J. Vohs, Y. Wang, F. Gino and M. I. Norton
Four experiments tested the novel hypothesis that ritualistic behavior potentiates and enhances the enjoyment of ensuing consumption—an effect found for chocolates, lemonade, and even carrots. Experiment 1 showed that ritual behaviors, compared to a no-ritual... 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
- August 2013
- Article
Customer-Driven Misconduct: How Competition Corrupts Business Practices
By: Victor Manuel Bennett, Lamar Pierce, Jason A. Snyder and Michael W. Toffel
Competition among firms yields many benefits but can also encourage firms to engage in corrupt or unethical activities. We argue that competition can lead organizations to provide services that customers demand but that violate government regulations, especially when... 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
- July 2013
- Case
Montreaux Chocolate USA: Are Americans Ready for Healthy Dark Chocolate?
By: John A. Quelch and Diane Badame
Andrea Torres, director of new product development at a high-end chocolate confectionery company, leads her team through a carefully sequenced program of market research to support the development and launch of a new product, healthy dark chocolate with fruit. This is... View Details
- July–August 2013
- Article
A Joint Model of Usage and Churn in Contractual Settings
By: Eva Ascarza and Bruce G.S. Hardie
As firms become more customer-centric, concepts such as customer equity come to the fore. Any serious attempt to quantify customer equity requires modeling techniques that can provide accurate multiperiod forecasts of customer behavior. Although a number of researchers... View Details
- 2013
- Dissertation
Designing Freemium: A Model of Consumer Usage, Upgrade, and Referral Dynamics
By: Clarence Lee, Vineet Kumar and Sunil Gupta
Abstract. Over the past decade "freemium" (free + premium) has become the dominant business model among internet start-ups for its ability to acquire and monetize a large install-base with limited marketing resources. Freemium is a hybrid strategy where a firm offers... View Details
- June 2013
- Article
What Is Privacy Worth?
By: Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie K. John and George Loewenstein
Understanding the value that individuals assign to the protection of their personal data is of great importance for business, law, and public policy. We use a field experiment informed by behavioral economics and decision research to investigate individual privacy... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Online Word of Mouth and Product Review Disagreement
By: Frank Nagle and Christoph Riedl
Studies of online word of mouth have frequently posited―but never systematically conceptualized and explored―that the level of disagreement between existing product reviews can impact the volume and the valence of future reviews. In this study we develop a theoretical... View Details
- 2013
- Book
Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed and How We Can Stick to the Plan
By: Francesca Gino
You may not realize it but simple, irrelevant factors can have profound consequences on your decisions and behavior, often diverting you from your original plans and desires. Sidetracked will help you identify and avoid these influences so the decisions you make do... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Decision-making; Judgment; Decisions; Strategy; Behavior; Ethics; Attitudes