Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(449)
- Faculty Publications (62)
- August 2022
- Background Note
Retail Media Networks
By: Eva Ascarza, Ayelet Israeli and Celine Chammas
In 2022, retail media was one of the fastest growing segments in digital advertising. A retail media network (RMN) allows a retailer to use its assets for advertising. Retailers set up an advertising business by allowing marketers to buy advertising space across their... View Details
Keywords: Advertisers; Advertising Media; Media And Broadcasting Industry; Retail; Retail Analytics; Retail Promotion; Retailing; Ecommerce; E-Commerce Strategy; E-commerce; Marketing Communication; Targeting; Targeted Advertising; Targeted Marketing; Advertising; Marketing; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Media; Marketing Channels; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Advertising Industry; United States
- 2022
- Working Paper
Banking on Transparency for the Poor: Experimental Evidence from India
By: Erica M. Field, Natalia Rigol, Charity M. Troyer Moore, Rohini Pande and Simone G. Schaner
Do information frictions limit the benefits of financial inclusion drives for the rural poor? We evaluate an experimental intervention among recently banked poor Indian women receiving government cash transfers via direct deposit. Treated women were provided automated... View Details
- Article
Early Withdrawal of Pandemic Unemployment Insurance: Effects on Earnings, Employment and Consumption
By: Kyle Coombs, Arindrajit Dube, Calvin Jahnke, Raymond Kluender, Suresh Naidu and Michael Stepner
In June 2021, 22 states ended all supplemental pandemic unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, eliminating benefits entirely for over 2 million workers and reducing benefits by $300 per week for over 1 million workers. Using anonymous bank transaction data and a... View Details
- April 2022
- Teaching Note
Banorte Móvil: Data-Driven Mobile Growth
By: Ayelet Israeli and Carla Larangeira
In mid-2019, Carlos Hank was deliberating over the results for Banorte Móvil—the mobile application for Banorte, Mexico’s most profitable and second-largest financial institution. Hank, who had been appointed as Banorte´s Chairman of the Board in January 2015, had... View Details
- March 2022
- Case
In Data We Trust: Be Mobile Africa and Furthering Financial Inclusion Across the African Continent
By: Lauren Cohen, Grace Headinger and Pierre Marchesseault
To Cédric Jeannot, leveraging technology to promote financial inclusion was personal. After no established financial institution would accept his technology platform to lower transaction costs for free, Jeannot launched FinTech company Be Mobile Africa in May 2020.... View Details
Keywords: Finance; Fintech; Emerging Market; Fundraising; Financial Inclusion; Strategy; Expansion; Management; Entrepreneurship; Personal Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Growth and Development Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Banking Industry; Africa; Togo; Nigeria; Ghana
- 2022
- Working Paper
E-commerce During COVID: Stylized Facts from 47 Economies
By: Joel Alcedo, Alberto Cavallo, Bricklin Dwyer, Prachi Mishra and Antonio Spilimbergo
We study e-commerce across 47 economies and 26 industries during the COVID-19 pandemic using aggregated and anonymized transaction-level data from Mastercard, scaled to represent total consumer spending. The share of online transactions in total consumption increased... View Details
- 2021
- Working Paper
Friends and Family Money: P2P Transfers and Financially Fragile Consumers
By: Tetyana Balyuk and Emily Williams
We assess the impact that real time money transfer technology has on consumer outcomes, particularly during periods of financial fragility. We do this by developing a new data set that documents use of Zelle—the most widely used P2P money transfer technology in the... View Details
- October 2021
- Article
Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach
By: Nicolas Padilla and Eva Ascarza
The success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs ultimately depends on the firm's ability to understand consumers' preferences and precisely capture how these preferences may differ across customers. Only by understanding customer heterogeneity, firms can... View Details
- August 2021
- Case
Wymsee
By: Julia Austin, Sarah Mehta and Tom Quinn
Wymsee was a company that aimed to develop a mobile application (app) that would allow television audience members to identify and purchase clothing or accessories worn by characters in the program they were watching, with the Wymsee founders taking a percentage of... View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Business Plan; Business Startups; Film Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Technological Innovation; Knowledge Acquisition; Product Positioning; Opportunities; Adaptation; Mobile Technology; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Technology Industry; United States; New York (city, NY)
- 2021
- Working Paper
Granular Corporate Hedging Under Dominant Currency
By: Laura Alfaro, Mauricio Calani and Liliana Varela
Foreign currency use can be a source of risk associated with currency mismatches, which firms can hedge using FX derivatives. This paper uncovers five novel facts about firms’ use of foreign currency (FX) derivatives employing a unique dataset covering the universe of... View Details
- April 2021 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
StockX: The Stock Market of Things (Abridged)
By: Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton, Annelena Lobb and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2015 by Dan Gilbert, Josh Luber, and Greg Schwartz, StockX was an online platform where users could buy and sell unworn luxury and limited-edition sneakers. Sneaker resale prices often fluctuated over time based on supply and demand, creating a robust... View Details
Keywords: Markets; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior; Analytics and Data Science; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Market Transactions; Marketplace Matching; Supply and Industry; Analysis; Price; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Fashion Industry; North and Central America; United States; Michigan; Detroit
- 2021
- Working Paper
Hidden Software and Veiled Value Creation: Illustrations from Server Software Usage
By: Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Ran Zhuo and Shane Greenstein
How do you measure the value of a commodity that transacts at a price of zero from an economic standpoint? This study examines the potential for and extent of omission and misattribution in standard approaches to economic accounting with regards to open source... View Details
- March 2021
- Article
The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance
This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility – the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them – on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the... View Details
- January 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Amazon Shopper Panel: Paying Customers for Their Data
By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli
This case introduces a new Amazon program that has consumers upload their receipts from transactions outside of Amazon, in exchange for money. Through the discussion, the case aims to explore issues in customers’ privacy in the digital age, the value of customers’ own... View Details
Keywords: Data Analytics; Data Privacy; Data Management; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Marketing Communication; Marketing Research; Data-driven Management; E-Commerce Strategy; Ethical Decision Making; CRM; Consumer Protection; Targeted Advertising; Targeted Policies; Data Ownership; Marketing; Research; Marketing Communications; Analytics and Data Science; Management; Customer Relationship Management; Ethics; E-commerce; Retail Industry; Technology Industry; United States
- Working Paper
Measuring the Perceived Liquidity of the Corporate Bond Market
By: Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam
We propose a novel measure of bond market liquidity that does not depend on transaction data: the strength of the cross-sectional relationship between mutual fund cash holdings and fund flow volatility. Our measure captures how liquid funds perceive their portfolio... View Details
- February 2020 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
StockX: The Stock Market of Things
By: Chiara Farronato, John J. Horton, Annelena Lobb and Julia Kelley
Founded in 2015 by Dan Gilbert, Josh Luber, and Greg Schwartz, StockX was an online platform where users could buy and sell unworn luxury and limited-edition sneakers. Sneaker resale prices often fluctuated over time based on supply and demand, creating a robust... View Details
Keywords: Markets; Auctions; Bids and Bidding; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior; Analytics and Data Science; Market Design; Digital Platforms; Market Transactions; Marketplace Matching; Supply and Industry; Analysis; Price; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Fashion Industry; North and Central America; United States; Michigan; Detroit
- 2020
- Working Paper
The Effects of Information on Credit Market Competition: Evidence from Credit Cards
By: C. Fritz Foley, Agustin Hurtado, Andres Liberman and Alberto Sepulveda
We show empirically that public credit information increases competition in credit markets. We access data that cover all credit card borrowers in Chile and include details about relationship borrowers have with each lender. We exploit a natural experiment whereby a... View Details
- January 2020
- Case
Banorte Móvil: Data-Driven Mobile Growth
By: Ayelet Israeli, Carla Larangeira and Mariana Cal
In mid-2019, Carlos Hank was deliberating over the results for Banorte Móvil—the mobile application for Banorte, Mexico’s most profitable and second-largest financial institution. Hank, who had been appointed as Banorte´s Chairman of the Board in January 2015, had... View Details
- December 2019
- Article
The Impact of Increasing Search Frictions on Online Shopping Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Donald Ngwe, Kris J. Ferreira and Thales Teixeira
Many online stores are designed such that shoppers can easily access any available discounted products. We propose that deliberately increasing search frictions by placing small obstacles to locating discounted items can improve online retailers’ margins and even... View Details
- 2019
- Book
Operations in an Omnichannel World
By: Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
The world of retailing has changed dramatically in the past decade. Sales originating at online channels have been steadily increasing, and even for sales transacted at brick-and-mortar channels, a much larger fraction of sales is affected by online channels in... View Details