Consumer Prices - Publications - Faculty & Research

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

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June 2012
Case

GlaxoSmithKline in Brazil: Public-Private Vaccine Partnerships

By: Arthur A. Daemmrich and Ian McKown Cornell

Three years into a major public-private partnership between GlaxoSmithKline and Fiocuz, Brazil's principal health institute, the company assesses technology transfer and joint research under the agreement. GSK was selling its Synflorix vaccine (against pediatric... View Details

Keywords: Public-Private Partnerships; Business and Government Relations; Foreign Direct Investment; Health Care and Treatment; Globalized Firms and Management; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Brazil

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12 Feb 2008
First Look

First Look: February 12, 2007

Moskowitz, and Annette Vissing-Jørgensen Abstract We provide new evidence on the success of long-run risks in asset pricing by focusing on the risks borne by stockholders. Exploiting micro-level household consumption data, we show that... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

30 Sep 2013
Research & Ideas

Do Mergers Hurt Product Quality?

There's a lot of worry afoot whenever companies merge. Wall Street worries about the stock price. Employees worry about potential job cuts. And consumers worry about the fate of their favorite products: Whither the View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Consumer Products

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

26 Nov 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Demand Estimation in Models of Imperfect Competition

Keywords: by Alexander MacKay and Nathan H. Miller

05 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

If Your Customers Don't Care What You Charge, What Should You Charge?

motorists represent the prevalence of “consumer inertia” in the retail gas market. Consumer inertia is the tendency of some customers to buy or continue buying a product, even when superior options exist. Companies that can accurately... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Energy

January 1990 (Revised February 1993)
Case

Selling Durable Goods

Examines the pricing policy for a firm that is a monopoly supplier of a durable good. Lowering price over time in an attempt to increase market penetration seems desirable. But doing so may also cause some buyers to postpone their purchases. Describes these... View Details

Keywords: Price; Consumer Behavior; Monopoly

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29 Nov 2005
News

It's the Purpose Brand, Stupid

April 2016 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Moleskine (A)

By: Ryan Raffaelli, Raffaella Sadun and Kathy Qu

Describes the founding and growth challenges facing Moleskine, an Italian-based consumer products company known for its oilcloth-covered notebooks once used by Ernest Hemingway and Vincent van Gogh. CEO Arrigo Berni and co-founder Maria Sebregondi aim to transform the... View Details

Keywords: Creative Industries; Brand Building; Digital Innovation; Digital Services And Strategy; Process Improvement; Culture; Identity Construction; Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Innovation Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

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Article

Divide and Conquer: Competing with Free Technology under Network Effects

By: Deishin Lee and Haim Mendelson

We study how a commercial firm competes with a free open source product. The market consists of two customer segments with different preferences and is characterized by positive network effects. The commercial firm makes product and pricing decisions to maximize its... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Product Launch; Network Effects; Open Source Distribution; Adoption; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage

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February 2016 (Revised September 2020)
Case

T-Mobile in 2013: The Un-Carrier

By: John Beshears, Francesca Gino, Jonathan Lee and Sean (Yixiang) Wang

By 2013, the U.S. wireless industry was in the midst of a costly transition. As consumers began to embrace more sophisticated mobile devices, the industry's four main players spent heavily to improve their infrastructures for providing reliable high-speed data... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Product Positioning; Competition; Wireless Technology; Telecommunications Industry; United States

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19 May 2014
Research & Ideas

Why Companies Should Compete for Your Privacy

Consumers are increasingly wary about sharing personal information with firms. Yet when they benefit from providing information in exchange for lower prices or better services, many View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Consumer Products

March – April 2009
Article

Market Research and Innovation Strategy in a Duopoly

By: Dominique Lauga and Elie Ofek

We model a duopoly in which ex-ante identical firms must decide where to direct their innovation efforts. The firms face market uncertainty about consumers' preferences for innovation on two product attributes and technology uncertainty about the success of their R&D... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Innovation and Management; Demand and Consumers; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Research and Development; Competitive Strategy

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March 2005
Case

Henkel Iberica (A)

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

In 2002, Esteban Garriga, customer service director at Henkel Iberica, questions whether Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) would help manage retail promotions and limit their impact on the stock-outs and obsolete inventory. Describes the... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Forecasting and Prediction; Price; Distribution Channels; Strategic Planning; Commercialization; Valuation; Rail Industry; Germany; Spain

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June 2020
Teaching Note

Armarium: Luxury Fashion Brands for Rent

By: Jill Avery and David Fubini

Armarium, a two-sided digital platform that offered consumers the opportunity to rent the most coveted, current season high fashion clothing and accessories from the top global luxury brands, had emerged from its first sales season with two distinct customer segments:... View Details

Keywords: Luxury Brand; Fashion; Sharing Economy; Two-sided Marketplace; Target Market; Customer Selection; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Two-Sided Platforms; Business Model; Growth and Development Strategy; Customer Value and Value Chain; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; North America

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October 2004 (Revised August 2007)
Case

Alibris in 2004

Alibris, an online marketplace for rare, used, and out-of-print books, is trying to communicate to the professional book dealers who are its main suppliers that they are in the middle of a crisis. Supply is flooding the market, in part from individuals who simply want... View Details

Keywords: Price; Books; Crisis Management; Supply and Industry; Service Operations; Online Technology; Consumer Products Industry

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20 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

How to be a Customer

the contract price if the seller's costs clearly exceed expectations or promise to refer the supplier to a friend. You may want to do business with the same supplier again. (Why waste time on selecting another vendor from scratch?) If you... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

April 1999 (Revised March 2002)
Background Note

Aluminum Industry in 1994, The

After reaching all-time highs in excess of $2,500 per ton in 1988 and 1989, aluminum prices fall dramatically in the early 1990s as the former Soviet Union begins exporting far larger quantities of metal. By the beginning of 1994, the price has hit all-time lows (in... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Price; Supply and Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Soviet Union

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March 2013
Case

Singapore Metals Limited

By: John T. Gourville

Singapore Metals Limited (SML) has declining sales but has developed a new product (curled metal pile driver pads) that, in field tests, delivers customer benefits that are many times SML's manufacturing costs. Jonathan Lee and Alex Tan of SML's Engineered Products... View Details

Keywords: Metals and Minerals; Marketing Strategy; Price; Business Strategy; Product Development; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Singapore

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