Publications

2008
Book

Business Market Management: Understanding, Creating, and Delivering Value

By: James C. Anderson, James A. Narus and Das Narayandas

For business-to-business marketing courses. The authors build the book around a framework of understanding, creating, and delivering value. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Business Processes; Value

September 1992
Case

Star Cablevision Group (A): Harvesting in a Bull Market

By: William A. Sahlman

First case in a series of six cases that follow the experience of a cable television company as it adjusts to the rapid rise and precipitous decline of the stock market in the late 1980s. In this case Don Jones, the company's founder and owner, sees the rise in public... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Finance; Financial Markets; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Restructuring; Corporate Strategy; SWOT Analysis; Wealth; Business Cycles; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

28 Apr 2020
Blog Post

A Crash Course in Saving a Family Business

Jiyoon Han (MBA 2021) is getting a taste of what it’s like to be a case protagonist—learning how to pivot while measuring unforeseen challenges against new opportunities. When news broke View Details

2008 - 2008
Conference Presentation

Organizational Identity as an Anchor for Adaptation: An Emerging Market Perspective

By: Andres Hatum, Luciana Silvestri and Roberto Vassolo

There is little doubt that organizational identity—that which is central, distinctive, and enduring about an organization—mediates in adaptive processes. Exactly how this mediation takes place, and whether it is favorable or unfavorable to adaptation, must still be... View Details

Keywords: Identity; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Family Business; Strategy; Emerging Markets

December 2000 (Revised April 2006)
Case

Promise (A): Building a Consumer Finance Company in Japan

Describes Promise, the third-largest consumer finance company in Japan. Promise was created in 1963 by an entrepreneur and has grown rapidly, especially in the 1990s when commercial banks struggled. Promise's core business consists of providing unsecured loans of up to... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Entrepreneurship; Financial Institutions; Financial Services Industry; Japan

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01 Dec 2005
News

A Renter’s Market

says Lee, noting that it’s a business that’s fairly common in Europe, whereas Redbrick has virtually no U.S. competitors. Through its three funds financed by private investors,... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; Real Estate

March 2017 (Revised May 2019)
Case

Marketing Transformation at Mastercard

By: Sunil Gupta, Srinivas K. Reddy and David Lane

Since 2013, Mastercard CMO M.V. Rajamannar (Raja) had transformed the firm's marketing by using unique experiences, digital technology, and social media to intensify linkages not only with cardholders, but also with Mastercard's direct bank and merchant stakeholders.... View Details

Keywords: Mastercard; Financial Services; Ingredient Brand; B2B2C; Experiential Marketing; Digital Marketing; ROI; Marketing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Brands and Branding; Internet and the Web; Investment Return; Financial Services Industry

30 May 2014
News

Finding a Niche in the Menswear Market

Keywords: Retail Trade

November 2013
Case

Groupon for Local Businesses

By: Thales Teixeira and Leora Kornfeld

Local businesses' experiences with using Groupon to promote themselves ran the gamut of roaring success to absolute failure. Why is there such a large range in outcomes for firms that used daily deal sites such as Groupon? This case examines the effectiveness of online... View Details

Keywords: Online Business; Online Marketing; Digital Marketing; Marketing; Advertising Industry; North and Central America

June 2001 (Revised May 2002)
Case

Spir-It, Inc. (A): Building the Business

Early in February 1934, two and a half months after the end of prohibition, Jack Sindler sat with a friend in Boston's Ritz Hotel bar enjoying a drink. Sindler worked for the Converse Rubber Co., and he was always inventing something. He held several patents for rubber... View Details

Keywords: Business History; Production; Market Entry and Exit; Management Succession; Entrepreneurship; Product Launch; Acquisition; Growth and Development; Product Development; Manufacturing Industry; Boston

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08 Aug 2022
HBS Case

Building an 'ARMY' of Fans: Marketing Lessons from K-Pop Sensation BTS

communicate directly with fans. The band members often visited Weverse to reply to ARMY members’ posts and sometimes posted their own messages. From a business perspective, BTS’ strength lay View Details

Keywords: by Shalene Gupta; Media & Broadcasting; Music

Video Clips & Discussion Questions - Creating Emerging Markets

Aziz Managing Director of Sefam Private Limited, explains how, in the early 1980s, she and her brother decided to innovate the entire production chain of Pakistani cotton embroidery in order to prove that... View Details

Building small business utopia: how artificial intelligence and Big Data can increase small business success

Small business lending has remained unchanged for decades, laden with frictions and barriers that prevent many small businesses from accessing the capital they need to succeed. Financial technology, or “fintech,” promises to change this trajectory. In 2010, new fintech... View Details

October 2012
Article

Target the Right Market

By: Jill Avery and Thomas Steenburgh

SparkPlace is a two-year-old business with a hot new product: software that manages and measures the effectiveness of permission-based marketing campaigns for social media. The company is in the process of deciding on which of two customer segments to focus its... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Market Segmentation; Customer Defection; Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Relationship Management; CRM; Market Segmentation And Target Market Selection; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Technology Industry; United States

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Teaching Interest

MBA Elective Curriculum Business Marketing and Sales

Business markets differ from consumer markets in important ways. Typically, the buying process is more complex, the buying units and purchase criteria differ, and marketing decisions are more closely interrelated with firm-wide strategic choices. In addition,... View Details

March 2020 (Revised January 2022)
Case

Michelin: Building a Digital Service Platform

By: Sunil Gupta and Christian Godwin

Michelin, a tire company with over a century of experience, attempts to develop a digital service platform for its fleet and dealer customers. The case focuses on the challenges of bringing a large, well-established company into the digital age. Concerned about the... View Details

Keywords: Change; Transformation; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Making; Leading Change; Growth and Development; Strategy; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Auto Industry; Travel Industry; Transportation Industry; United States; France

May–June 2023
Article

A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand: How to Communicate Your Value

By: Jill Avery and Rachel Greenwald

For better or worse, in today’s world everyone is a brand. Whether you’re applying for a job, asking for a promotion, or writing a dating profile, your success will depend on getting others to recognize your value. So you need to get comfortable marketing... View Details

Keywords: Personal Brand; Influencer Marketing; Leadership Development; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Identity; Reputation; Competency and Skills