Direct To Consumer Marketing - Publications - Faculty & Research

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

XTV: Xerox’s Attempted Recovery From “Fumbling the Future”

By the end of the second spin-off regime, Xerox's position in the copier market had begun to improve. While its share of the market would never return View Details

Keywords: by Henry Chesbrough

23 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 23, 2008

welfare. Yet, our understanding of this decision is limited. Using an instrumental variables strategy and dataset new to this literature, we provide the first precise, causal estimates of the effects of education on financial View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

April 1985 (Revised September 1986)
Case

CML Group, Inc.: Going Public (B)

By: William A. Sahlman

Contains a description of some issues confronting management of CML Group as the company progresses toward making an initial public offering. Among the issues and topics addressed in the case are: considerations in choosing an underwriting team, the initial public... View Details

Keywords: Business or Company Management; Initial Public Offering; Financial Markets; Financial Strategy; Planning; Cost vs Benefits; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

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10 Jan 2005
What Do You Think?

Public Pension Reform: Does Mexico Have the Answer?

Summing Up Judging from responses to the January column, the debate concerning reform of the social security system in the U.S. will take many directions before the question can even be framed adequately. If... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Financial Services

01 Dec 2005
News

Buy the Book

As a longtime authority on marketing communications, HBS professor John Deighton has analyzed the consumer-product relationship from every angle. But when he heard the best-selling author James Patterson address a meeting of the View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Market Research, Photo, Translation, Veterinary and Other Services; Market Research, Photo, Translation, Veterinary and Other Services; Market Research, Photo, Translation, Veterinary and Other Services; Market Research, Photo, Translation, Veterinary and Other Services

21 May 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network?

Keywords: by Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han & Sunil Gupta; Technology

Article

De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution

By: Benjamin B Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl

The prominent but unproven intuition that preference heterogeneity reduces redistribution in a standard optimal tax model is shown to hold under the plausible condition that the distribution of preferences for consumption relative to leisure rises, in terms of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Income; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Taxation; Microeconomics; Macroeconomics

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22 Mar 2010
Research & Ideas

One Strategy: Aligning Planning and Execution

deep culture of direct sales to corporate customers, the company was slow to take advantage of a rapidly emerging consumer market—at least until... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Video Game; Web Services

14 May 2013
Blog Post

Exploring new opportunities at HBS

startup approximately 10% of the size of our entire RC class. Prior to joining the startup, I had a slightly more traditional occupation working on the Loyalty Marketing team at a national luxury retailer... View Details

Keywords: Technology

03 Nov 2008
HBS Case

Economics of the Ethanol Business

What happens when a group of Missouri corn farmers gets into the energy business? With consumers paying more than double for gasoline than they did a year ago, turning crops into fuel, not food, seems like a good way View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Agriculture & Agribusiness; Energy

27 Apr 2010
First Look

First Look: April 27

our results suggest that the predictive value of accruals and market participants' ability to process it are a significant driver of accrual-based anomalies. Consumer Policy... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

November 2016 (Revised July 2018)
Case

Selling on Amazon at Tower Paddle Boards

By: Thales S. Teixeira and David Lopez-Lengowski

By June 2012, Stephan Aarstol felt that he had successfully passed the first critical stage of his ecommerce business. As the founder and CEO of a standup paddleboard (SUP) business, he had built a strong relationship with Asian manufacturers, built a small warehouse... View Details

Keywords: Tower Paddle Boards; Amazon; E-commerce; Online Shopping; Distribution; Internet and the Web; Business Growth and Maturation; Marketing Channels; Distribution Channels; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

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13 May 2013
Blog Post

Being Uncomfortable at HBS

novelty. If curiosity killed the cat. Then, lucky I am not a cat. Therefore, it isn’t a surprise that I enjoyed my time as a consultant, because it enabled me to jump from helping to develop a strategy for a... View Details

05 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 5, 2018

help consumers and make markets more efficient. Yet, the effectiveness of disclosure policies can be undermined if firms strategically make unfavorable information unnecessarily complicated View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

18 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: December 18

more likely to return to work when initial socialization focused on personal identity as compared to a focus on organizational identity or a control condition. In addition,... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

May 2020 (Revised December 2022)
Case

Soofa: Displaying the Right Path?

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang, Amy Klopfenstein and Amram Migdal

In November 2019, Sandra Richter, co-founder and CEO of Soofa, a network of advertising-supported digital bulletin boards, must decide between two different fundraising and expansion plans for her company. One plan entails raising $15 million in a Series A round and... View Details

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21 Jun 2011
First Look

First Look: June 21

by Beijing is unlikely to suffice. Product Positioning in a Two-Dimensional Vertical Differentiation Model: The Role of Quality Costs Authors: Dominique Lauga and Elie Ofek Publication: Marketing Science... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

May 4, 2023
Article

Falling Insulin Prices—What Just Happened?

By: Leemore S. Dafny

Recently, more than 100 years after insulin was developed, manufacturers announced price reductions for insulin products. Pressure to reduce prices had long been building, so why would they act now? View Details

Keywords: Price; Health Care and Treatment; Public Opinion; Demand and Consumers; Pharmaceutical Industry

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Spring 2013
Article

Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings

By: Michael Luca and Jonathan Smith

How do rankings affect demand? This paper investigates the impact of college rankings, and the visibility of those rankings, on students' application decisions. Using natural experiments from U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, we present two main... View Details

Keywords: Rank and Position; Demand and Consumers; Quality; Decisions; Newspapers; United States

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October 2016
Case

La-Z-Boy (A)

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Natalie Kindred

Kurt Darrow, CEO of La-Z-Boy furniture, must decide whether to continue an overhaul of the company's strategy in the face of a collapse in demand during the great recession. Having pared back La-Z-Boy's portfolio of brands and manufacturing network, he intends to... View Details