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- All HBS Web (576)
- Faculty Publications (127)
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- September 2007
- Supplement
Corning: Convertible Preferred Stock (CW)
By: Malcolm P. Baker and James Quinn
- March – April 2008
- Article
Customer Preference Discontinuities: A Trigger for Radical Technological Change
By: Mary Tripsas
What factors cause a mature industry to re-enter a period of technological turbulence? This paper addresses this question by developing a model of technological evolution that incorporates both technological trajectories and a new concept: preference trajectories, ... View Details
Keywords: History; Technology; Transition; Consumer Behavior; Industry Structures; Product Development
Tripsas, Mary. "Customer Preference Discontinuities: A Trigger for Radical Technological Change." Managerial and Decision Economics 29 (March–April 2008): 79–97.
- 2011
- Article
The Consumer Psychology of Mail-in Rebates
By: John T. Gourville and Dilip Soman
Consumers who buy a product intending to use an accompanying mail-in rebate often do not redeem the rebate. To explain this behavior, we argue that consumers use an anchoring and adjustment approach to predicting the likelihood of redeeming a rebate. In keeping with... View Details
Gourville, John T., and Dilip Soman. "The Consumer Psychology of Mail-in Rebates." Journal of Product & Brand Management 20, no. 2 (2011).
- 26 Mar 2012
- Research & Ideas
What Neuroscience Tells Us About Consumer Desire
brain-tracking tools to determine why we prefer some products over others. "People are fairly good at expressing what they want, what they like, or even how much they will pay for an item," says Uma R. Karmarkar, an assistant... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
A Preference for Revision Absent Improvement
By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien and Michael I. Norton
People regularly encounter revised stimuli (e.g., revised versions of products, new editions of
books, tweaked recipes, and technological updates). In principle, a world of constant revision
should benefit people by affording them the most up-to-date offerings. In... View Details
Keywords: Product Change; Versioning; Expectancy Effects; Heuristics; Intuitive Processing; Product Marketing; Change; Perception; Consumer Behavior
Garcia-Rada, Ximena, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien, and Michael I. Norton. "A Preference for Revision Absent Improvement." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-087, February 2019. (Revised April 2025.)
- January 2017
- Article
Should You Sleep on It? The Effects of Overnight Sleep on Subjective Preference-based Choice
By: Uma R. Karmarkar, Baba Shiv and Rebecca M.C. Spencer
Conventional wisdom and studies of unconscious processing suggest that sleeping on a choice may improve decision-making. Though sleep has been shown to benefit several cognitive tasks, including problem solving, its impact on everyday choices remains unclear. Here we... View Details
Keywords: Decision Making; Choice; Sleep; Choice Sets; Confidence; Consumer Psychology; Consumer Preferences; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior
Karmarkar, Uma R., Baba Shiv, and Rebecca M.C. Spencer. "Should You Sleep on It? The Effects of Overnight Sleep on Subjective Preference-based Choice." Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 30, no. 1 (January 2017): 70–79.
- 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
Lockwood, Benjamin B., and Matthew Weinzierl. "De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution." Journal of Public Economics 124 (April 2015): 74–80. (Also NBER Working Paper Series, No. 17784, September 2014 and Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-063, January 2012.)
- June 2009
- Article
Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals
By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman
We report on a field study demonstrating systematic differences between the preferences people anticipate they will have over a series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the... View Details
Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Forecasting and Prediction; Film Entertainment; Demand and Consumers; Renting or Rental; Power and Influence; Prejudice and Bias; Online Technology; Motion Pictures and Video Industry
Milkman, Katherine L., Todd Rogers, and Max H. Bazerman. "Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals." Management Science 55, no. 6 (June 2009): 1047–1059.
- 13 Sep 2010
- Research & Ideas
The Consumer Appeal of Underdog Branding
attractive. Why? The reason might be an increasing willingness on the part of consumers to identify with the underdog. In today's economically difficult times, it appears, underdog brands are gaining psychological, and real, power in the... View Details
Keywords: by Martha Lagace
- August 2014
- Technical Note
Conjoint Analysis: A Do it Yourself Guide
By: Elie Ofek and Olivier Toubia
Conjoint Analysis has become one of the most commonly used quantitative market research methods. It has been successfully employed across a wide variety of industries to quantify consumer preferences for products and services. This technical note is intended to provide... View Details
Keywords: Market Research; Conjoint Analysis; Consumer Preferences; Segmentation; Product Development; Demand Measurement; Demand and Consumers; Analysis; Markets
Ofek, Elie, and Olivier Toubia. "Conjoint Analysis: A Do it Yourself Guide." Harvard Business School Technical Note 515-024, August 2014.
- 05 Jul 2006
- Working Paper Summaries
A Survey-Based Procedure for Measuring Uncertainty or Heterogeneous Preferences in Markets
- 06 Dec 2022
- Research & Ideas
Latest Isn’t Always Greatest: Why Product Updates Capture Consumers
Because consumers gravitate to merchandise labeled as “updated,” even if the items are not necessarily improved, according to the results. "Once something says ‘revised’ on it, it makes you suspend critical judgment." “After showing... View Details
- 12 Nov 2015
- Research & Ideas
Can Consumers be Trusted with Their Own Health Care?
empowerment. The preference for the precise mix of these elements differs from consumer to consumer, depending on patients’ individual needs. “It probably also differs according to the situation, if it’s an... View Details
- Research Summary
Consumer Response to Online Ratings and Recommendations
Jolie is currently conducting several laboratory and field experiments to assess the tendency of individuals to employ predictable heuristics in complex information aggregation tasks, thus leading to search and choice behavior that is suboptimal relative to the fully... View Details
- Research Summary
Overview
Professor MacKay combines theory and measurement to deliver new insights about price competition and consumer preferences. In current and published papers, his research addresses how strategic pricing decisions may be influenced by algorithms, long-term contracts,... View Details
- September 2023
- Article
Consuming Contests: The Effect of Outcome Uncertainty on Spectator Attendance in the Australian Football League
By: Patrick Ferguson and Karim R. Lakhani
Contests that non-contestants consume for entertainment are a fixture of economic, cultural and political life. We exploit injury-induced changes to teams' line-ups in a professional sports setting to examine whether individuals prefer to consume contests that have... View Details
Ferguson, Patrick, and Karim R. Lakhani. "Consuming Contests: The Effect of Outcome Uncertainty on Spectator Attendance in the Australian Football League." Economic Record 99, no. 326 (September 2023): 410–435.
- 28 Jun 2007
- Working Paper Summaries
Film Rentals and Procrastination: A Study of Intertemporal Reversals in Preferences and Intrapersonal Conflict
- 24 Jul 2000
- Research & Ideas
Global Brands: Connecting With Consumers Across Boundaries
What's in a name? Plenty if you're a consumer marketer trying to build a brand. "They are road signs that help people find orientation in the jungle of supply", said Hans G. Gueldenberg, CEO of Nestlé Deutschland AG. According... View Details
Keywords: by James E. Aisner
- 13 Jan 2003
- Research & Ideas
The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer (And How To Reach It)
Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman's latest book, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, delves into the subconscious mind of the consumer—the place where most purchasing decisions are made. The question: How can marketers... View Details
Keywords: by Manda Mahoney
- July 2019
- Article
I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice
By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Ioannis Evangelidis
People often speculate about why others make the choices they do. This paper investigates how such inferences are formed as a function of what is chosen. Specifically, when observers encounter someone else's choice (e.g., of political candidate), they use the chosen... View Details
Keywords: Self-other Difference; Social Perception; Inference-making; Preferences; Consumer Behavior; Prediction; Prediction Error; Decision Choices and Conditions; Perception; Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction
Barasz, Kate, Tami Kim, and Ioannis Evangelidis. "I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice." Special Issue on The Cognitive Science of Political Thought. Cognition 188 (July 2019): 85–97.