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  • 24 Feb 2014
  • Research & Ideas

Busting Six Myths About Customer Loyalty Programs

differentiation is difficult in retail as well because development of such advantages takes time and is difficult to execute. All the while, low-price players are constantly looming to pounce. Can low-margin retailers afford customer... View Details
Keywords: by Marcel Corstjens & Rajiv Lal; Retail; Consumer Products
  • September 2019 (Revised February 2020)
  • Teaching Note

Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation

By: Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John
Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

This Teaching Note explains the theory of the case and teaching plan for the case: Commonwealth Bank of Australia: Unbanklike Experimentation (619-018). In August 2017,... View Details
Keywords: Transparency; Experimentation; Banks and Banking; Credit Cards; Customer Focus and Relationships; Competitive Strategy; Banking Industry; Australia
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  • January 2015 (Revised October 2015)
  • Case

Trouble at Tessei

By: Ethan Bernstein and Ryan W. Buell
In 2005, Teruo Yabe is asked to revive Tessei, the 669-person JR-East subsidiary responsible for cleaning its Shinkansen ("bullet") trains. Operational mistakes, customer complaints, safety issues, and employee turnover are at or near all-time highs, even as the... View Details
Keywords: Service Management; Employee Engagement; Employee Motivation; Leadership And Managing People; Quality Improvement; Efficiency; Japan; Operational Transparency; Employee Coordination; Transparency; Leadership; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Employees; Quality; Transportation Industry; Japan
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  • Web

Online Transforming Customer Experiences Course | HBS Online

Enroll Now Key Concepts Design a defined, service-driven value proposition Understand sustainable pricing, the service-profit chain, and customer journeys Motivate employees to deliver exceptional, mission-aligned services by leveraging... View Details
  • 22 Feb 2021
  • Book

Reaching Today's Omnichannel Customer Takes a New Sales Strategy

components: actionable customer selection criteria (because resources spent on accounts A and B are not available for accounts C, D, and so on); clarity about the buying process for target customers as it... View Details
Keywords: by Kristen Senz
  • October 2015 (Revised February 2020)
  • Teaching Note

Trouble at Tessei

By: Ethan Bernstein and Ryan Buell
In 2005, Teruo Yabe is asked to revive Tessei, the 669-person JR-East subsidiary responsible for cleaning its Shinkansen ("bullet") trains. Operational mistakes, customer complaints, safety issues, and employee turnover are at or near all-time highs, even as the... View Details
Keywords: Service Management; Employee Engagement; Employee Motivation; Leadership And Managing People; Quality Improvement; Efficiency; Japan; Operational Transparency; Employee Coordination; Transparency; Leadership; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Employees; Quality; Transportation Industry; Japan
Related
  • March 2016
  • Supplement

Trouble at Tessei

By: Ethan Bernstein and Ryan W. Buell
In 2005, Teruo Yabe is asked to revive Tessei, the 669-person JR-East subsidiary responsible for cleaning its Shinkansen ("bullet") trains. Operational mistakes, customer complaints, safety issues, and employee turnover are at or near all-time highs, even as the... View Details
Keywords: Service Management; Employee Engagement; Employee Motivation; Leadership And Managing People; Quality Improvement; Efficiency; Japan; Operational Transparency; Employee Coordination; Transparency; Leadership; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Employees; Quality; Transportation Industry; Japan
Related
  • July 2021
  • Article

Information Transparency, Multihoming, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market

By: Hui Li and Feng Zhu
Platform competition is shaped by the likelihood of multi-homing (i.e., complementors or consumers adopt more than one platform). To take advantage of multi-homing, platform firms often attempt to motivate their rivals’ high-performing complementors to adopt their own... View Details
Keywords: Platform Competition; Multi-homing; Information Transparency; Daily Deals; Groupon; LivingSocial; Digital Platforms; Information; Competition
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  • March 2021
  • Article

Last Place Aversion in Queues

By: Ryan W. Buell
This paper documents the effects of last place aversion in queues and its implications for customer experiences and behaviors as well as for operating performance. An observational analysis of customers queuing at a grocery store, and four online studies in which... View Details
Keywords: Behavioral Operations; Queues; Reference Effects; Last Place Aversion; Transparency; Customers; Behavior; Satisfaction; Service Operations
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  • 27 May 2015
  • News

Companies ignore ‘customer avengers’ at their peril

  • 27 Feb 2020
  • News

Psychological Safety Will Win You The Best Business Ideas

  • December 2003 (Revised February 2004)
  • Case

Scott Lawson's Dilemma

By: Thomas R. Piper
The head of SysCom's test equipment division is concerned about how to answer employee and customer questions concerning the possible sale or liquidation of the division. The consequences of alternative approaches (full transparency vs. strong optimism and reassurance)... View Details
Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Interpersonal Communication; Business Divisions; Corporate Governance; Ethics; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry
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  • 27 Feb 2024
  • Research & Ideas

Why Companies Should Share Their DEI Data (Even When It’s Unflattering)

diversity, it is better to disclose before your customers learn that you are withholding—especially if they find out you are withholding from a disclosing competitor. Make transparency a differentiator.... View Details
Keywords: by Shalene Gupta
  • 03 Jul 2013
  • What Do You Think?

What Are the Limits of Transparency?

Summing Up What Is Transparency's "Sweet Spot"? We generally think of transparency as an admirable organization quality. But commenting on this month's column, Kapil Kumar Sopory summed up a lot of the thinking with the... View Details
Keywords: by James Heskett
  • June 2012
  • Article

Pricing to Create Shared Value

By: Marco Bertini and John T. Gourville
Many companies are in competition with their customers to extract as much value as possible from every transaction. Pricing is their weapon of choice, and consumers fight back by rooting out and disseminating pricing policies that seem unfair. The problem is that... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Marketing Strategy; Price; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Relationship Management; Value Creation; Fairness
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  • 2017
  • Working Paper

Cellophane, the New Visuality, and the Creation of Self-Service Food Retailing

By: Ai Hisano
This working paper examines how innovations in transparent packaging, specifically cellophane in the mid-twentieth century United States, helped retailers create full self-service merchandising systems, including selling perishable food. While self-service stores began... View Details
Keywords: Food; Product Marketing; Business History; Food and Beverage Industry; United States
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  • May 2016 (Revised March 2020)
  • Case

Fasten: Challenging Uber and Lyft with a New Business Model

By: Feng Zhu and Angela Acocella
Fasten, a new ridesharing start-up in Boston, entered the scene in September 2015 hoping its unique vision of transparency for both driver and passenger and strategy to keep riders' fares low and charge drivers a flat $0.99 fee per ride as opposed to the 20-30%... View Details
Keywords: Information Technology; Transportation; Business Startups; Business Model; Transportation Industry; Boston
Related
  • 02 Sep 2015
  • What Do You Think?

What's Wrong With Amazon’s Low-Retention HR Strategy?

added: “I think there may be too many variables left out here The relative happiness of an employee base has bottom-line repercussions far beyond customer satisfaction.” What’s to be done? At the very least, FISSINNF suggests that greater... View Details
Keywords: by James Heskett; Web Services; Retail; Apparel & Accessories; Consumer Products; Fashion
  • March 24, 2015
  • Article

Starbucks' 'Race Together' Campaign and the Upside of CEO Activism

By: Aaron Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel
When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz asked his baristas to engage customers in a discussion about race in America, it was a clear case of the growing trend of "CEO activism." Despite the criticism of that particular initiative, CEO activism—from Shultz to Chick-Fil-A's... View Details
Keywords: Leadership; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Communication Strategy; Race
Related
  • 17 Jan 2024
  • HBS Case

Psychological Pricing Tactics to Fight the Inflation Blues

compete with players like Temu and Shein, others may want to distinguish themselves by emphasizing the quality of their products and services, thus justifying their higher prices, Ofek says. In fact, being transparent with View Details
Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald; Consumer Products; Retail