Publications

19 Dec 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

New Year, New Habits

When a new year rolls around, many of us ponder resolutions to improve our work habits. Maybe we wish to behave a little better with colleagues, become more organized, or actually take breaks during the day. But can we really change our own ingrained behavior? The... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

February 1987 (Revised August 1988)
Case

Gillette Personal Care Division: Marketing Planning and Control

Bill Ryan, president of the Gillette Co.'s Personal Care Division, is considering changing the division's planning and control system for marketing. White Rain, the division's most recent success, had been launched by taking shortcuts through the system, while other... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Management Systems; Consumer Products Industry; United States

03 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Marketing Your Way Through a Recession

need to know more than ever how consumers are redefining value and responding to the recession. Price elasticity curves are changing. Consumers take more time searching for durable View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

16 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer

analysis reveals that, contrary to intuition, prices low enough to "kill" p2p are not optimal in large markets. The industry is better off setting higher prices and attracting those consumers ready to pay due to congestion.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

05 Jun 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, June 5, 2018

facilitated by mechanisms of value recombining, temporal distancing, identity marking, and conceptual bridging and a second phase marked by a redefinition of market boundaries and facilitated by mechanisms of competitive set reclaiming and enthusiast View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

02–03 Dec 2022
HBS Alumni Events

D^3 Catalyst: No Code Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Do you want to delve into Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, but you feel overwhelmed and intimidated? Do you want to leverage the power of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence without writing any code? Do you want to leverage Machine Learning and... View Details

Research Summary

Dissertation - Social Structure and Mechanisms of Collective Production:Evidence from Wikipedia

Andreea's dissertation research examines social networks in the setting of collective production, defined as collective action oriented towards production of collective goods - goods available for consumption by all members of a group whenever they... View Details

May 1988 (Revised March 1990)
Case

Matsushita Electric Industrial (MEI) in 1987

By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal

Describes the development of Matsushita's international operations and the building of its dominant competitive position in the consumer electronics industry. Picks up the major challenges facing the company in 1987 as both its product focus and geographic posture are... View Details

Keywords: Global Strategy; Goods and Commodities; Product Positioning; Problems and Challenges; Business Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Value; Electronics Industry

Research Summary

Rooting Marketing Strategy in Human Universals

Localization strategies can be costly to implement while globalization strategies may fail to develop or create demand by stressing readily shared product features rather than shared needs. Thus the question: Is there, somewhere between the extremes of localization... View Details

February 2022
Case

Paul Polman

By: Elizabeth A. Keenan, Youngme Moon and Susie Ma

Over his 40-year career, Paul Polman had led some of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, making his biggest mark as CEO of Unilever—a multi-national corporation that produced everything from soap to soup. Polman was also well-regarded as a leader in corporate... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Leadership; Corporate Accountability; Personal Development and Career; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Social Issues; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving

Research Summary

Business and Low Income Sectors: The Creation of Economic and Social Value

In the last three decades, innovative commercial solutions have emerged in developing nations focusing on providing effective responses to the hugely underserved needs of low-income populations, both as consumers as well as active participants in productive value... View Details

26 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

Why the US-China Tariff Standoff Hurts American Companies More

significantly cut their prices, while Chinese exporters have not reduced the prices of the goods they sell to US importers. "This nearly complete pass-through of tariffs to the total price paid by importers suggests the tariff... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Retail; Manufacturing; Steel

July 2022
Supplement

General Mills: Responding to the Killing of George Floyd (B)

By: Debora L. Spar and Alicia Dadlani

Jeff Harmening, CEO of General Mills, one of the world's largest manufacturers of breakfast cereals and packaged foods, was deeply disturbed and instantly aware that he and General Mills would need to respond. George Floyd, an African-American man who had been accused... View Details

Keywords: Race; Decisions; Social Issues; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Consumer Products Industry; Minneapolis; Minnesota; United States

02 Nov 2006
Working Paper Summaries

Managing Functional Biases in Organizational Forecasts: A Case Study of Consensus Forecasting in Supply Chain Planning

Keywords: by Rogelio Oliva & Noel H. Watson

September 2016 (Revised February 2017)
Case

Angie's List: Ratings Pioneer Turns 20

By: Robert J. Dolan and Ayelet Israeli

In 1995, before people “googled” or “yelped,” Angela Hicks (HBS, 2000) was establishing her Angie’s List as a pioneer in the accumulation and dissemination of consumer rating information. Hicks focused on the home repair and maintenance market and, as she put it,... View Details

Research Summary

Consumer's Relationships with Technologies

Susan M. Fournier is involved with two lines of research investigating consumers' relationships with technological products. The first project (with Professor David Mick of the University of Wisconsin) concerns 'everyday technologies' such as... View Details

April 2013
Case

Sterling Household Products Company

By: William E. Fruhan and Craig Stephenson

Sterling Household Products manufactures and markets a broad line of consumer goods from laundry soap and cosmetics to cleaning, disinfecting, and sanitizing products. The company has many highly regarded brand names and consistently reports impressive sales and... View Details