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March 2021
Article

Active Choice, Implicit Defaults, and the Incentive to Choose

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

Home-delivered prescriptions have no delivery charge and lower copayments than prescriptions picked up at a pharmacy. Nevertheless, when home delivery is offered on an opt-in basis, the take-up rate is only 6%. We study a program that makes active choice of either home... View Details

Keywords: Active Choice; Defaults; Implicit Defaults; Incentives; Consumer Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Motivation and Incentives

20 Jun 2016
Research & Ideas

When Predicting Other People's Preferences, You're Probably Wrong

implications for anyone looking to impress others, for those who are tasked with forecasting consumer behavior, or for salespeople who consult with customers on prospective purchases. In short, it’s dangerous to predict what others will... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

07 Jun 2011
First Look

First Look: June 7

Frontiers of Social Psychology Series. Psychology Press, in press An abstract is unavailable at this time. Publisher's Link: http://www.psypress.com/social-judgment-and-decision-making-9781848729063... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Article

Payment Depreciation: The Behavioral Effects of Temporally Separating Payments from Consumption

By: J. T. Gourville and Dilip Soman

Keywords: Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Money

06 Feb 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas: February 6, 2018

previous approaches to assess cross-boundary teaming efforts and their innovation performance. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53290 forthcoming Management Science Budgeting, Psychological Contracts, and... View Details

2023
Working Paper

The Complexity of Economic Decisions

By: Xavier Gabaix and Thomas Graeber

We propose a theory of the complexity of economic decisions. Leveraging a macroeconomic framework of production functions, we conceptualize the mind as a cognitive economy, where a task’s complexity is determined by its composition of cognitive operations. Complexity... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Complexity; Perception; Consumer Behavior; Production

June 2009
Article

How Concepts Affect Consumption

By: Dan Ariely and Michael I. Norton

Duke behavioral economist Ariely and Harvard Business School professor Norton explore how our consumption of concepts influences physical consumption, both positively and negatively. View Details

Keywords: Spending; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Power and Influence

2013
Working Paper

Separating Homophily and Peer Influence with Latent Space

By: Joseph P. Davin, Sunil Gupta and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

We study the impact of peer behavior on the adoption of mobile apps in a social network. To identify social influence properly, we introduce latent space as an approach to control for latent homophily, the idea that "birds of a feather flock together." In a series of... View Details

Keywords: Social Influence; Social Network; Mobile App; Peer Effects; Latent Homophily; Latent Space; Proxy Variables; Familiarity; Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Social and Collaborative Networks; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Power and Influence; Social Media

02 May 2023
Blog Post

Sustainability Career Advice from the Career & Professional Development Office

about, whether it’s by eating a primarily plant-based diet or using clean products in my home. I am interested in the psychology of what will drive consumer decisions to make thoughtful choices so that we... View Details

08 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The Civic Benefits of Google Street View and Yelp

Even as citizens generate more data than ever before, most cities haven’t taken full advantage of that information flow to improve services and become more efficient. “Historically, cities have been moving in analog, trying to measure things with imperfect data in... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Consumer Products

20 Feb 2006
HBS Case

Oprah: A Case Study Comes Alive

of Winfrey and Harpo was bigger than Koehn's original vision. "I realized two years into the case-writing process that it's about more than serving a particular set of consumer needs of a given moment." "It is also a story... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

21 May 2009
Working Paper Summaries

Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network?

Keywords: by Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han & Sunil Gupta; Technology

27 Feb 2006
Research & Ideas

Corporate Values and Employee Cynicism

may be able to show employees the ways in which they are trying to sustain the values, while also managing business realities. (iv) Create a sense of psychological safety. Employees need to feel that it is safe for them to express... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

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

Purchase

March–April 2017
Article

What's the Value of a Like?: Social Media Endorsements Don't Work the Way You Might Think

By: Leslie John, Daniel Mochon, Oliver Emrich and Janet Schwartz

Brands spend billions of dollars a year on lavish efforts to establish and maintain a social media presence. But do those campaigns actually increase revenue? New research provides an answer to this question, which has vexed marketers ever since social media burst upon... View Details

Keywords: Social and Collaborative Networks; Consumer Behavior; Marketing Strategy; Digital Marketing; Social Media

Register to Read

October 2003 (Revised February 2004)
Case

Cape Wind

By: John T. Gourville and Kerry Herman

Cape Wind has proposed placing a 170-tower wind farm, with each tower more than 400-feet tall, in Nantucket Sound. Not surprisingly, public reaction is mixed. Some view the wind farm as clean, renewable energy. Others view it as an eyesore and a desecration of a valued... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Renewable Energy; Consumer Behavior; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Behavior; United States

Educators

Purchase

01 Dec 2015
News

Case Study: Bionic Banking

fees at 1 percent or higher, I get a really bad vibe from the fund. I think many consumers are wising up to how much fees eat into their portfolio performance over the long term, and 1 percent or more is a 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