Publications

May 2002 (Revised September 2002)
Teaching Note

Creating New Services, Module Overview Note TN

By: Frances X. Frei

Taught in Managing Service Operations, an elective course in the Harvard Business School MBA program. Appropriate for any service course or service module within an operations or new product development course that targets MBA or executive education students.... View Details

Keywords: Service Operations; Product Development; Business Education; Product Positioning

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

April 2002 (Revised March 2008)
Teaching Note

eBay: The Customer Marketplace (A) and Combating Fraud (B) (TN)

By: Frances X. Frei

Teaching Note for (9-602-071) and (9-602-152). View Details

Keywords: Web Services Industry

April 2002 (Revised July 2002)
Case

eBay (B): Combating Fraud

By: Frances X. Frei and Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Management; Web Services Industry

April 2002 (Revised March 2006)
Background Note

Economics of Retail Banking Note

Explains the financial operations of retail banking, highlighting profitability challenges facing the industry. For U.S. banks, it is quite common for more than half of the customer base to be unprofitable and to have relatively few customers make up the vast majority... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Economics; Cost; Banks and Banking; Profit; Revenue; Service Operations; Banking Industry; United States

2002
Working Paper

Effects of Demographic Factors and Provider Structures on the Cost and Length of Stay for Hemodialysis Patients with Vascular Access Failure

By: Louis Brenner, Dennis Campbell, Frances X. Frei and Ajay Singh

January 2002 (Revised November 2002)
Teaching Note

Le Petit Chef TN

By: Alan D. MacCormack and Sandra J. Sucher

Teaching Note for (9-602-080). View Details

Keywords: Paris

2002
Working Paper

Do Better Customers Utilize Electronic Distribution Channels? The Case of PC Banking

By: Lorin M. Hitt and Frances X. Frei

November 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Supplement

Store24 (B): Service Quality and Employee Skills

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Employees; Service Delivery; Retail Industry

November 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Case

GuestFirst Hotel (A): Customer Loyalty

Provides a hotel context in which to explore the link between customer loyalty and financial performance, using four years of hotel data. Challenges students to find the extent of the relationship between loyalty and performance. View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Mathematical Methods; Finance; Performance; Relationships; Customer Focus and Relationships; Data and Data Sets; Accommodations Industry

November 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Supplement

GuestFirst Hotel (B): Taking Advantage of Panel Data

Supplements the (A) case. View Details

Keywords: Accommodations Industry

November 2001 (Revised August 2005)
Case

BigEast Bank (A): Credit Card Approval

BigEast is considering adopting a relationship-centric view in its credit card approval process. This would shift the bank's current practice of analyzing applications based on the merits of a single product to one where the customer's existing relationship is... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Forecasting and Prediction; Banks and Banking; Analytics and Data Science; Managerial Roles; Relationships; Adoption; Banking Industry

October 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Store24 (A): Managing Employee Retention

Provides a retailing context in which employee retention strategies are explored through analyzing detailed store-level data. View Details

Keywords: Retention; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Analytics and Data Science; Strategy; Mathematical Methods; Retail Industry

October 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Pilgrim Bank (A): Customer Profitability

Provides a context in which students can explore managerial decision making that is critically informed by data analysis. The setting is a retail bank and the decision making relates to the bank's policy toward online banking. The management team is evaluating whether... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Customers; Profit; Banking Industry