Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,534)
- Faculty Publications (778)
- 2013
- Working Paper
Do Display Ads Influence Search?: Attribution and Dynamics in Online Advertising
By: Sunil Gupta
As firms increasingly rely on online media to acquire consumers, marketing managers feel comfortable justifying higher online marketing spend by referring to online metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and cost per acquisition (CPA). However, these standard online... View Details
- January 2013 (Revised March 2017)
- Case
CloudFlare, Inc.: Running Hot?
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alex Godden
In July 2012, the cofounders of CloudFlare, a Silicon Valley startup that protects websites and accelerates their traffic, are considering the implications of five employees' resignations over the prior three months. Was this natural attrition for a high-tech venture... View Details
Keywords: Management Practices and Processes; Employee Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Organizational Culture; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Growth Management; Internet and the Web; Entrepreneurship; Resignation and Termination; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; California
- January 2013
- Case
Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture (MM)
By: Frances X. Frei and Robin J. Ely
On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately-held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft-line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its Board of Directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details
- January 2013 (Revised June 2018)
- Case
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google 2018
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
Four businesses had, by 2012, grown to dominate the infrastructure that all firms rely on to reach online customers. Will the balance of power among the four persist, will one take command at the expense of the other three, or are all four more vulnerable than they... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
The Market That Wasn't: The Non-Emergence of the Online Grocery Category.
By: C. Navis, G. Fisher, Ryan Raffaelli and Mary Ann Glynn
In this paper, we examine the non-emergence of a potential new market category. In the late 1990s, the entrepreneurial firms that attempted to sell groceries online in the US attracted significant resources, made impressive technological advancements, and generated... View Details
- December 2012
- Background Note
Are Daily Deals Good for Merchants?
By: Sunil Gupta, Timothy Keiningham, Ray Weaver and Luke Williams
In the relatively short time since Groupon was founded, the response to "daily deals"—services that promote businesses by marketing deeply discounted, pre-paid vouchers to an online subscriber base—has by all accounts been spectacular. Our evaluation of daily deals is... View Details
- December 2012
- Case
Blink Booking
By: William R. Kerr, Magnus Thor Torfason and Alexis Brownell
Rebeca Minguela hopes to create an arbitrage platform, similar to Rocket Internet, that can bring start-up ideas and opportunities to Spain. However, Blink Booking, her first venture and proof of concept, is rocked by a co-founder's breach of confidence and departure.... View Details
- November 2012 (Revised May 2013)
- Case
ASUSTeK and the Google Nexus 7 Tablet
By: Willy C. Shih and Jyun-Cheng Wang
Days after Jerry Shen introduced a new tablet computer at the Consumer Electronics Show, a Google meeting convinced him to go with a lower price point and co-branding as the Nexus 7. While his company would have a premier position at launch, companies like Samsung... View Details
Keywords: Nexus; Google; ASUSTeK; Android; Tablet; Kindle; Kindle Fire; Notebook Computers; ODM; Apple; Price Point; App Store; Ecosystem; Open Handset Alliance; Reference Design; iPad; EMS; Electronic Manufacturing Services; Smartphone; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Technological Innovation; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Industry Structures; Product Design; Product Development; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Digital Platforms; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Technology Industry; Taiwan; United States
- 2014
- Working Paper
Search-Based Peer Firms: Aggregating Investor Perceptions Through Internet Co-Searches
By: Charles M.C. Lee, Paul Ma and Charles C.Y. Wang
Applying a "co-search" algorithm to Internet traffic at the SEC's EDGAR web-site, we develop a novel method for identifying economically-related peer firms and for measuring their relative importance. Our results show that firms appearing in chronologically adjacent... View Details
- November 2012
- Teaching Note
Groupon (TN)
By: Sunil Gupta, Ray Weaver and Yien Hao Lock
On November 4, 2011, Groupon, a marketing services company that promoted local businesses by selling deeply discounted vouchers for their products and services, completed its initial public offering that valued the company at $17 billion. Within a year Groupon's share... View Details
- Other Article
The Market That Wasn't: The Non-emergence of the Online Grocery Category
By: Chad Navis, Greg Fisher, Ryan Raffaelli and Mary Ann Glynn
We examine the non-emergence of a potential new market category. In the late 1990s the entrepreneurial firms that attempted to sell groceries online attracted significant resources, made meaningful technological advancements and generated immense publicity, yet online... View Details
- August 2012 (Revised October 2015)
- Case
LinkedIn Corporation, 2012
By: David Yoffie and Liz Kind
Since its inception in 2003, LinkedIn had become a leading Silicon Valley institution with a brand name that was recognizable throughout the U.S. and in many countries overseas. As of March 2012, LinkedIn was the world's largest professional network on the Internet... View Details
- June 2012 (Revised October 2012)
- Teaching Note
TripAdvisor (TN)
By: Sunil Gupta
By 2010, TripAdvisor (TA) was the largest travel site in the world operating in 24 countries and 16 languages, with listings for 455,000 hotels, 92,000 attractions and 564,000 restaurants in over 71,000 destinations worldwide. It had over 40 million reviews from 35... View Details
- June 2012 (Revised July 2012)
- Case
Business-driven Research at IBM Research India
By: Willy Shih, Margaret Pierson, Pankaj Agarwal, Diego Medicina and Juan Prajogo
What is the right mix between business-driven and pure research? This case considers the question in the setting of IBM Research India, where a management push for balance between exploratory research and the fulfillment of business needs meets some resistance from... View Details
- May 2012
- Article
Adding Bricks to Clicks: Predicting the Patterns of Cross-Channel Elasticities over Time
By: Jill Avery, Thomas J. Steenburgh, John Deighton and Mary Caravella
The authors propose a conceptual framework to explain whether and when the introduction of a new retail store channel helps or hurts sales in existing direct channels. A conceptual framework separates short- and long-term effects by analyzing the capabilities of a... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Channels; Channels Of Distribution; Distribution; Retailing; Channel Management; Channel Migration; Multichannel Retailing; Framework; Customers; Marketing Channels; Sales; Internet and the Web; Demand and Consumers; Competency and Skills; Distribution Channels; E-commerce; Retail Industry; United States
- 2012
- Other Unpublished Work
Lost in the Clouds: The Impact of Copyright Scope on Investment in Cloud Computing Ventures
By: Josh Lerner and Greg Rafert
Our analysis seeks to understand the impact of changes in copyright scope on investment in new firms. We begin by analyzing the investment effects of the Cartoon Network, et al. v. Cablevision decision in the U.S. and court rulings in France and Germany on venture... View Details
- April 2012 (Revised February 2017)
- Case
Dovernet
By: Robert Simons and Natalie Kindred
This case illustrates the implications of using stringent performance measurement systems to create performance pressure, motivate employee achievement, and sharpen a firm's competitiveness. It opens by describing the downsides of the ruthlessly competitive culture at... View Details
- 2012
- Article
A Study of Economic Impact of Cloud Computing
By: Marco Iansiti and Gregory L. Richards
In this paper we find that advances in cloud computing likely will extend the IT induced economic growth in developed economies and foster growth in economies where IT penetration is not yet fully mature. We conclude that governments should work together to take... View Details
- Article
Exclusivity, Contingent Control Rights, and the Design of Internet Portal Alliances
By: Josh Lerner and Dan Elfenbein
We explore the relationship between exclusivity and state-contingent control rights using a sample of over 100 Internet portal alliance contracts. We find that stronger exclusivity arrangements are associated with more frequent usage of contingent control rights. For... View Details
- 2012
- Book
Sleeping with Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24-7 Habit and Change the Way you Work
By: Leslie A. Perlow
Does it have to be this way? Can't resist checking your smartphone or mobile device? Sure, all this connectivity keeps you in touch with your team and the office—but at what cost? In "Sleeping with Your Smartphone," Leslie Perlow reveals how you can disconnect and... View Details