Publications

April 2010 (Revised September 2011)
Case

The Dannon Company: Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility (A)

By: Christopher Marquis, Pooja Mehta Shah, Amanda Elizabeth Tolleson and Bobbi Thomason

At the end of 2009, The Dannon Company was considering pro actively communicating its CSR efforts to consumers. With the strong connection between Dannon's production of health foods and its commitment to health and nutrition-based CSR activities, communicating these... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Nutrition; Marketing Communications; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Natural Environment; Food and Beverage Industry

2021
Working Paper

The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing

By: Amitabh Chandra, Evan Flack and Ziad Obermeyer

We use the design of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit program to demonstrate three facts about the health consequences of cost-sharing. First, we show that an as-if-random increase of 33.6% in out-of-pocket price (11.0 percentage points (p.p.) change in... View Details

Keywords: Cost-sharing; Impact; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Health; Consumer Behavior

Read Now

12 Feb 2018
Research & Ideas

Customers at the Back of the Line Are Anxious—Can You Keep Them from Leaving?

line has an end and there is an identifiable person who occupies it,” says Buell. “They know they’re last and everyone around them knows it as well.” The anxiety we feel about being last can affect how consumers experience waiting for a... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service

2024
Working Paper

“If You’re Not There… You’re Not There”: How Art Market Platforms Induce Status Anxiety to Coerce Participation

By: James Riley and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan

This paper, an 18-month ethnographic investigation of international art fairs (IAFs), shows how market platforms can have a coercive effect, inducing sellers (i.e., art galleries) to participate despite ambivalence over their value and anxiety over the process by which... View Details

Keywords: Market Participation; Status and Position; Competition; Demand and Consumers; Fine Arts Industry

April 1994 (Revised January 1995)
Case

StarKist (A)

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Forest L. Reinhardt

Set in April 1990, this case focuses on H.J. Heinz and its subsidiary, StarKist, the largest producer of canned tuna in the United States. During the 1980s, the public became increasingly concerned about tuna fishing practices that killed dolphins. StarKist was the... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Decision Choices and Conditions; Laws and Statutes; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Environmental Sustainability; Competition; Mexico; United States

24 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Value Maximization and Stakeholder Theory

consuming their economic rents in this manner. Enlightened Stakeholder Theory Enlightened stakeholder theory is easy to explain. It can take advantage of most that stakeholder theorists offer in the way of processes and audits to measure... View Details

Keywords: by Michael C. Jensen

March 2011 (Revised February 2014)
Case

Cree, Inc.: Which Bright Future?

By: David J. Collis, Mary Furey and Matthew Shaffer

After its founding in the late 1980s, Cree Inc. quickly grew into a major player in the emerging LED market. By 2007, technological improvements in LEDs had made them suitable for TV, computer, and mobile "backlighting"; and concerns over global warning led to calls to... View Details

June 2020 (Revised October 2020)
Case

What Went Wrong with Boeing's 737 Max?

By: William W. George and Amram Migdal

This case describes the development of the Boeing 737 Max airplane model and the events leading up to two tragic plane crashes, in which a total of 346 people died: the crash of Lion Air flight 610 on October 29, 2018, in Indonesia, and the crash of Ethiopian Airlines... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Communication Intention and Meaning; Communication Strategy; Forms of Communication; Announcements; Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Globalization; Global Strategy; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Governance Controls; Human Resources; Resignation and Termination; Leadership; Leadership Style; Management; Business or Company Management; Crisis Management; Management Practices and Processes; Management Skills; Management Style; Management Systems; Risk Management; Time Management; Markets; Demand and Consumers; Digital Platforms; Supply and Industry; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Industry Structures; Operations; Product Development; Organizations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Outcome or Result; Failure; Success; Planning; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Business and Government Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Risk and Uncertainty; Safety; Strategy; Transportation; Air Transportation; Aerospace Industry; Air Transportation Industry; Africa; Ethiopia; Asia; Indonesia; North and Central America; United States; Seattle; Chicago

07 Jul 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron

"reserve requirement" to back up supply commitments. Enron had a major advantage over competitors as a middleman between producers and consumers because it operated one of the nation's largest natural gas pipeline networks.... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Energy; Utilities

11 Feb 2014
First Look

First Look: February 11

Using scanner panel data from a single California location of a major grocery chain, and completely controlling for consumer heterogeneity, we demonstrate that bringing your own bags simultaneously increases your purchases of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

01 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Dissent in Decision-Making

notion that a large segment of consumers might prefer automobiles that were safe and fuel-efficient. Coca-Cola ignored evidence that "New Coke" would fizzle and launched it anyway. Companies in the mechanical-watch and... View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons

27 Mar 2012
First Look

First Look: March 27

it and demonstrates why the easy short-term choice is often the most perilous in the long-term. The Founder's Dilemmas draws on the inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, while mining... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

15 Dec 2015
First Look

December 15, 2015

theatrical exhibition chain in the United States, many people in the U.S. were mystified. Unlike China where theatrical exhibition was experiencing rapid growth, the U.S. market was viewed as mature, and rapidly changing technology was giving View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

19 Mar 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 19, 2019

innovations might impact—and be impacted by—workers, consumers, organizations, and society. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55845 March 2019 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes Choice... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

21 Jun 2010
Research & Ideas

Strategy and Execution for Emerging Markets

therefore focus their research worldwide, not just on the BRICs. “Often the main prize today is the emerging middle class, which aspires to consume world class products at lower price points." -Krishna G. Palepu "We have been studying... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

16 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Breaking the Code of Change

academics from different fields frame research questions in a way that will lead to an integrative theory of change. Such a theory would clarify the trade-offs between different approaches to change and would aid in defining choices and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Beer & Nitin Nohria

January–February 2018
Article

Some Customers Would Rather Leave Without Saying Goodbye

By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Bruce G.S. Hardie

We investigate the increasingly common business setting in which companies face the possibility of both observed and unobserved customer attrition (i.e., “overt” and “silent” churn) in the same pool of customers. This is the case for many online-based services where... View Details

Keywords: Churn; Retention; Attrition; Customer Base Analysis; Hidden Markov Models; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior