Publications

July 20, 2016
Article

To Increase Sales, Get Customers to Commit a Little at a Time

By: Frank V. Cespedes and David Hoffeld

This article discusses what behavioral research does and does not tell us about factors that aid the "closing" of a sales call. View Details

Keywords: Research; Consumer Behavior; Sales

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winter 2009
Journal Article

Interactivity's Unanticipated Consequences for Markets and Marketing

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

The digital interactive transformation in marketing is not unfolding, as some thought it would, on the model of direct marketing. That model anticipated that marketing, empowered by digital media using rich profiling data, would intrude ever more deeply and more... View Details

Keywords: Communication Intention and Meaning; Interactive Communication; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks; Online Technology

2018
Working Paper

Shipping Fees and Product Assortment in Online Retail

By: Chaoqun Chen and Donald Ngwe

Shipping fees are an important aspect of online retail for both consumers and sellers. A common fee structure is contingent free shipping, in which consumers are granted free shipping for basket sizes above a minimum value and are charged a flat fee for orders below... View Details

Keywords: Shpping Fee; E-commerce; Multi-category Demand; Search Costs; Shipping Membership; Spending; Consumer Behavior; Retail Industry

July 2021
Article

Consumers—Especially Women—Avoid Buying from Firms with Higher Gender Pay Gaps

By: Tobias Schlager, Bhavya Mohan, Katherine DeCelles and Michael I. Norton

We document a unique driver of consumer behavior: the public disclosure of a firm’s gender pay gap. Four experiments provide causal evidence that when firms are revealed to have gender pay gaps, consumers are less willing to pay for their goods, a reaction driven by... View Details

Keywords: Pay Gap; Perceived Wage Fairness; Purchase Intention; Gender; Wages; Fairness; Perception; Consumer Behavior

15 Jun 2021
Cold Call Podcast

IKEA Navigates the Future While Staying True to its Culture

Keywords: Re: Juan Alcacer & Cynthia A. Montgomery; Retail

11 Aug 2010
Working Paper Summaries

The Influence of Prior Industry Affiliation on Framing in Nascent Industries: The Evolution of Digital Cameras

Keywords: by Mary J. Benner & Mary Tripsas; Electronics

March 2015
Case

Unilever: Combatting Global Food Waste

By: David F. Drake, Janice H. Hammond and Matthew G. Preble

The global consumer goods company Unilever was on pace to hit a number of aggressive targets by 2020 as part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Project, including a goal to halve the waste associated with the disposal of its products. Unilever's chief supply chain... View Details

Educators

February 2021 (Revised May 2021)
Case

SafeGraph: Selling Data as a Service

By: Ramana Nanda, Abhishek Nagaraj and Allison Ciechanover

Set in January 2021, the CEO of SafeGraph, a four-year-old startup that sold Data as a Service, looked to the future. His aim was to become the most trusted source for data about a physical place. The company provided points of interest (POI) and foot traffic data on... View Details

Keywords: Data As A Service; Monetization; Pricing; Business Startups; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior; Analysis; Business Model; Health Pandemics; Information Industry; United States

Educators

29 Mar 2017
Research & Ideas

The Story of Why Humans Are So Careless With Their Phones

'Be Careless with That!' Availability of Product Upgrades Increases Cavalier Behavior Toward Possessions ABOUT THE AUTHOR Comics journalist Josh Neufeld is the writer/artist of The New York Times bestseller A.D.: New Orleans After the... View Details

Keywords: by Josh Neufeld; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

September 2014
Article

Structural Models of Complementary Choices

By: Steven T. Berry, Ahmed Khwaja, Vineet Kumar, Andres Musalem, Kenneth C. Wilbur, Greg Allenby, Bharat Anand, Pradeep K. Chintagunta, W. Michael Hanemann, Przemyslaw Jeziorski and Angelo Mele

Complementary choices are important and pervasive yet occasionally elusive. Single consumers make complementary choices in purchase decisions (e.g., chips and salsa), product inter-operabilities (smartphones and networks), and dynamic decisions (current exercise and... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior

March 2020
Article

The Role of Numbers in the Customer Journey

By: Shelle Santana, Manoj Thomas and Vicki Morwitz

At each stage in customers’ journeys, they encounter different types of numeric information that they process using different judgment strategies. Relevant numbers might include budgets, price, product attributes, product counts, product ratings, numbers in brand... View Details

Keywords: Numbers; Heuristics; Numerical Cognition; Pricing; Customer Journey; Information; Consumer Behavior

15 May 2013
Research & Ideas

From McRibs to Maseratis: The Power of Scarcity Marketing

Editor's note: Think money can't buy happiness? Behavioral economists Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton beg to differ. It actually can, they say—but only if we spend it the right way. In their book released this week, Happy Money: The... View Details

Keywords: Re: Michael I. Norton

Jeremy Yang

Jeremy Yang is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Marketing in the MBA required curriculum. He develops data products for... View Details

Keywords: consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products; consumer products

05 Apr 2017
Research & Ideas

For Women Especially, It Pays to Know What Car Repairs Should Cost

very excited about this because, even though the attention-grabbing result here is that women get price discriminated, we can fix it with a relatively low cost,” she says. “But the other aspect is that consumers actually are able to... View Details

Keywords: by Wendy Guild Swearingen; Auto; Service

May 2024
Article

Design of Off-Grid Lighting Business Models to Serve the Poor: Field Experiments and Structural Analysis

By: Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Serguei Netessine, Ioanna Popescu and Rowan P. Clarke

A significant proportion of the world's population has no access to grid-based electricity and so relies on off-grid lighting solutions. Rechargeable lamp technology is gaining popularity as an alternative off-grid lighting model in developing countries. In this paper,... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Developing Countries and Economies; Consumer Behavior; Poverty; Logistics; Business Model; Utilities Industry

Research Summary

Moving Beyond Direct-to-Consumer

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger

Changing consumer behaviors have redefined what it means to be direct to consumer ("DTC"). What once began online a decade ago as a distribution and disintermediation strategy has since evolved into a multifaceted approach for the modern-day brand.

The... View Details

2010
Working Paper

Cognitive Barriers to Environmental Action: Problems and Solutions

By: Lisa L. Shu and Max Bazerman

We explore interventions at the individual level and focus on recognized cognitive barriers from behavioral decision-making literature. In particular, we highlight three cognitive barriers that impede sound individual decision making that have particular relevance to... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Judgments; Consumer Behavior; Environmental Sustainability; Cognition and Thinking; Prejudice and Bias

2019
Working Paper

Optimal Interventions for Increasing Healthy Food Consumption Among Low Income Households

By: Retsef Levi, Elisabeth Paulson and Georgia Perakis

The federal government currently spends over $100 billion per year on policies aimed to increase fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption among low income households. These include price-, nutrition education-, and access-related interventions. Currently, the government... View Details

Keywords: Bi-level Optimization; Optimal Subsidies; Public Policy; Food Policy; Central Planner; Government Administration; Poverty; Food; Nutrition

SSRN

August 2023
Background Note

Pricing and Customer Psychology

By: Elie Ofek

This note provides an overview of how psychological principles may be used as part of a seller’s pricing strategy. The note defines the concept of psychological pricing and explains the motivations for firms to engage in it. Prominent practices and tactics, with... View Details

Keywords: Price; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior

Educators