Consumer Power - Publications - Faculty & Research

09 Dec 2008
First Look

First Look: December 9, 2008

providers, health insurers, and consumers are held accountable for their performance and the entrepreneurial opportunities thus created. Purchase the note: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

28 Aug 2017
Research & Ideas

Should Industry Competitors Cooperate More to Solve World Problems?

to lift wages by $2 per hour. However, increasing wages by $1 could still leave these people with below-living wages. Second, there are cases where improving a firm’s social impact does not help financially. In some cases consumers are... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services; Manufacturing; Agriculture & Agribusiness; Mining

19 Nov 2018
Sharpening Your Skills

E-Santa: Is Retail Ready for Digital Christmas?

Is Amazon's growing retail power capable of breaking the "wheel of retailing" theory? Retail Reaches a Tipping Point—Which Stores Will Survive? E-commerce is about to deal severe blows to many familiar store-based brands. How to... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

20 Jan 2017
Research & Ideas

Here’s How Businessman Trump Is Likely to Approach the Presidency

clear that inciting such animosity — and indeed hatred — among certain groups of Americans toward their fellow citizens will serve our country well. Certainly, history offers no such assurances. In fact, leaders who have risen to power by... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese

12 Aug 2008
First Look

First Look: August 12, 2008

Working Papers Dirty Work, Clean Hands: The Moral Psychology of Indirect Agency Authors: Paharia, Karim S. Kassam, Joshua D. Greene, and Max H. Bazerman Abstract When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Jun 2002
Research & Ideas

How to Look at Globalization Now

standardized products. Yet the bulk of the related literature, which focuses on whether consumers prefer global brands, misses out on supply-side considerations related to costs. Q: How can the study of strategy and competition contribute... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

April 17, 2023
Article

Crypto-Influencers Give Poor Investment Advice—and the SEC Is Taking Notice

By: Joseph Pacelli

Keywords: Cryptocurrency; Power and Influence; Investment; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Investment Return; Consumer Behavior

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10 Jan 2005
Research & Ideas

Motivation and the Cross-Sector Alliance

Altruism and solidarity were also significant drivers in the private sector, resulting in large part from the long-standing tradition of charity and civil commitment derived from the region's powerful Catholic background.2 For some... View Details

Keywords: by James Austin, Ezequiel Reficco & SEKN research team

30 Mar 2010
First Look

First Look: March 30

Surveys of Consumer Finances Authors:Daniel Bergstresser and John Beshears Abstract We find evidence that households selecting adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) during the recent decade were disproportionately those who were less... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

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 price and the quality?... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Consumer Products

2010
Article

The Strategic Use of Brand Biographies

By: Jill Avery, Neeru Paharia, Anat Keinan and Juliet Schor

We introduce the concept of a brand biography to describe an emerging trend in branding in which firms author a dynamic, historical account of the events that have shaped the brand over time. Using a particular type of brand biography, "the underdog," we empirically... View Details

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26 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

How Grocery Bags Manipulate Your Mind

out that an everyday item has the power to act as both angel and devil every time we go to the grocery store. It lurks in car trunks and pantries all over the world, waiting to guide us simultaneously down paths of virtue and vice. What... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

06 May 2002
Research & Ideas

A Toolkit for Customer Innovation

manufacturer required. Indeed, the trend toward customers as innovators has the power to completely transform industries. In the semiconductor business, it has led to a custom-chip market that has grown to more than $15 billion. The... View Details

Keywords: by Stefan Thomke & Eric Von Hippel

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

Rapid Response: Inside the Retailing Revolution

Once upon a time, suppliers held all the cards. Henry Ford's dictum that consumers could have any color car they wanted as long as it was black proved wrong in the extreme, but for years manufacturers in this country kept their hands... View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

21 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Are We Thinking Too Little, or Too Much?

The most captivating item in Michael Norton's office is a Star Wars The Force Trainer, a toy that allows would-be Jedi warriors to levitate a Ping-Pong ball within a tube using only the power of focused thinking. Norton, a marketing... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

11 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: ’Entrepreneurship and Multinationals’

As the pace of globalization speeded up from the 1960s, the term "multinational enterprise" (hereafter MNE) was coined, and there was an outpouring of discussion, much of it critical, about the political, social, and economic role of large global firms. MNEs... View Details

Keywords: Re: Geoffrey G. Jones

06 Oct 2011
What Do You Think?

How Will the ‘Moneyball Generation’ Influence Management?

Gaurav Goel: "Analytics is a powerful weapon but we need prudent processes for data capture that ensure a consistent quality of data." The tone of responses suggested that there was little question that the analytics of... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

11 Feb 2019
Research & Ideas

The Business of Saving the Planet

Roundtable, 200 powerful CEOs said corporations should widen their missions beyond just maximizing profits for shareholders. These Entrepreneurs Take a Pragmatic Approach to Solving Social ProblemsUsing business to create social change... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Energy; Green Technology

25 Sep 2000
Research & Ideas

More Than the Sum of Its Parts: The Impact of Modularity on the Computer Industry

The computer age began some six decades ago with general-purpose machines with Star Wars-like names such as ENIAC and EDVAC. They were powered by vacuum tubes, big enough to fill an entire room, and developed by mathematicians under the... View Details

Keywords: by Staff; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

March 2006
Background Note

Influencing Customer Behavior in Service Operations

By: Frances X. Frei and Amy C. Edmondson

Explores ways in which service firms can influence the behavior of their customers. Drawing from research on employee motivation and applying it to customer motivation, the note describes two levels of managerial control: instrumental control, which shapes behavior... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Governance Controls; Consumer Behavior; Service Operations; Emotions; Motivation and Incentives; Power and Influence; Service Industry

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