Publications

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Pietro Satriano is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. He sits on the boards of CarMax, the largest omni-channel used car retailer in the U.S. and Metro, a large regional grocery retailer in Canada. Pietro advises a number of food-tech startups and acts... View Details

28 Jun 2004
Research & Ideas

How to Avoid a Price Increase

quantity. As a result, one manufacturer was able to reduce its package sizing by 10 percent to 20 percent over the course of three years with little to no negative consumer response. Q: Can you share some... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Salls

21 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

Buy Now, Pay Later: How Retail's Hot Feature Hurts Low-Income Shoppers

Online shopping features that let consumers pay for goods in interest-free installments exploded during the pandemic, but new research questions the riskiness of such services: Are people getting in over... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Retail; Financial Services; Technology

2009
Working Paper

Industry Equilibrium with Open Source and Proprietary Firms

By: Gaston Llanes and Ramiro de Elejalde

We present a model of industry equilibrium to study the coexistence of Open Source (OS) and Proprietary (P) firms. Two novel aspects of the model are: (1) participation in OS arises as the optimal decision of profit-maximizing firms, and (2) OS and P firms may (or may... View Details

Keywords: Investment; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Sharing; Industry Structures; Open Source Distribution; Research and Development

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February 2008
Case

Campbell Soup Company: Selling Channel Innovation to Customers

Campbell Soup, like most food manufacturers, faced grocery chain and wholesale demand for its goods driven by Campbell's own promotional pricing structure rather than retail consumer demand. Former policies to encourage overstock created huge swings in production and... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Distribution Channels; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Manufacturing Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

Dr. Jill Avery is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration and C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator in the marketing unit at Harvard Business School. She is a respected authority on branding and brand management, customer relationship... View Details

Keywords: consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products

2025
Working Paper

Tracking the Short-Run Price Impact of U.S. Tariffs

By: Alberto Cavallo, Paola Llamas and Franco Vazquez

This paper examines the short-run impact of the 2025 U.S. tariffs on consumer prices using a unique integration of high-frequency retail pricing data, product-level country-of-origin information, and detailed tariff classifications. By linking daily prices from major... View Details

Keywords: Tariffs; Trade; Price; Inflation and Deflation

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June 2014
Case

Going Social: Durex in China

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski and Aaron Smith

When Reckitt Benckiser (RB), a leading consumer goods company, first entered China, it encountered significant challenges. RB's strategy relied on selling high margin products supported by cost-effective advertising and distribution, but the highly competitive Chinese... View Details

Keywords: Distribution; Multinational Firms and Management; Internet and the Web; Marketing Communications; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry; China

2011
Other Unpublished Work

Aligning Collective Production with Demand: Evidence from Wikipedia

Economic markets align supply and demand through prices. However, many social phenomena lack pricing to inform producers about consumer demand. This can lead to the over- or under-production of certain goods and services. In this paper, I propose a social mechanism... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry

SSRN

October 1994
Case

Campbell Soup Company: A Leader in Continuous Replenishment Innovations

Campbell Soup, like most food manufacturers, faced grocery chain and wholesale demand for its goods driven by Campbell's own promotional pricing structure rather than retail consumer demand. Former policies to encourage overstock created huge swings in production and... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Supply Chain Management; Logistics

14 Feb 2018
HBS Seminar

Ruomeng Cui, Emory University

November 2023
Case

From Imitation to Innovation: Zongshen Industrial Group (Abridged)

By: Willy Shih and Nancy Dai

Like other small shops based in Chongqing, China, Zongshen Industrial Group started by assembling motorcycles from "standard" parts. The quality of its early products was good enough for rural Chinese buyers, though wealthier consumers usually purchased premium... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Supply Chain; Product Positioning; Manufacturing Industry; Motorcycle Industry; China

20 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Why the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a Social Media Blockbuster

next to his became social currency across Canada. It's easy to write off these fads as simple stunts of digital narcissism, but they matter to marketing because they carry incidental meaning. It was not lost on Ford's reelection team that media coverage on Facebook was... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton

January 2016
Case

COFCO

By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred

In 2015, COFCO, China's state-owned agribusiness giant, was working to protect China's food security (a key national security priority) by extending its control of the global food system through overseas acquisitions. At the same time, COFCO sought to grow its market... View Details