Publications

SSRN

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01 Nov 2016
First Look

First Look - November 1, 2016

Behavioral Decision Making The Impact of 'Display-Set' Options on Decision-Making By: Karmarkar, Uma R. Abstract—The way a choice set is constructed can have a significant influence on how individuals perceive and evaluate their options... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

29 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

The Next Marketing Challenge: Selling to ’Simplifiers’

Editor's Note: Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge. Watch out for a new brand of consumer in... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Consumer Products; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

February 2022 (Revised April 2024)
Case

Aleph Farms: A New Culture of Meat

By: Elie Ofek and Jeff Huizinga

Aleph Farms, an Israeli food-tech start-up, was hoping to play a major role in disrupting the conventional meat sector. Compared to intensive agricultural practices, Aleph’s cultured (or lab-grown) meat solution held the promise of considerably reducing greenhouse gas... View Details

15 May 2007
Working Paper Summaries

I’ll Have the Ice Cream Soon and the Vegetables Later: Decreasing Impatience over Time in Online Grocery Orders

Keywords: by Todd Rogers, Katherine L. Milkman & Max H. Bazerman; Food & Beverage

December 2009 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Sony and the JK Wedding Dance

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

Executives at Sony Music Entertainment faced a dilemma: a user-generated video featuring controversial artist Chris Brown's music was netting millions of views per week on YouTube. Sony held the copyright to the song, and was entitled to issue a takedown notice to the... View Details

Keywords: Music Entertainment; Copyright; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Network Effects; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet; Music Industry

July 2021 (Revised September 2024)
Case

Supreme: Remaining Cool While Pursuing Growth

By: Jill Avery, Sandrine Crener, Marie-Cecile Cervellon and Ranjit Thind

Following VF Corporation’s acquisition of cult streetwear brand Supreme, consumers and industry pundits were nervous that becoming part of a large, public corporation would put an end to Supreme’s slow and careful growth trajectory as pressure for quarterly results... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Brands and Branding; Luxury; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Growth Management; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry; United States; North America

February 2005 (Revised May 2005)
Case

Intelliseek

Intelliseek harvests, filters, and mines the content of messages posted by consumers online and on discussion boards and blogs. For any specified consumer product brand, Intelliseek measures the volume of work-of-mouth and its valence (proportion of positive and... View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Information Technology; Consumer Behavior; Knowledge Management; Marketing Reference Programs; Web Services Industry

Research Summary

"How Social Networks Moderate Loss Aversion"

The literature on consumers’ relationships with their brands emphasizes that, when people form relationships with brands that mirror their social relationships, the norms of social relationships are used as guiding principles in their interactions with... 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

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12 Nov 2013
First Look

First Look: November 12

Publications November 2013 Journal of Consumer Research The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity By: Bellezza, Silvia, Francesca Gino, and Anat Keinan Abstract—We examine how people react to... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

23 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 23, 2018

in self-confidence, assessments of others, and behavior in a cooperative game. Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55101 forthcoming Management Science Effects of a Tournament Incentive Plan Incorporating... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

December 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Impossible Foods

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown started the company out of concern over livestock production’s impact on climate change. Impossible’s mission is to end consumption of animals by 2035, and its strategy is to develop and market plant-based foods so similar to... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach

By: Eva Ascarza

The success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs ultimately depends on the firm's ability to understand consumers' preferences and precisely capture how these preferences may differ across customers. Only by understanding customer heterogeneity, firms can... View Details

Keywords: Customer Management; Targeting; Deep Exponential Families; Probabilistic Machine Learning; Cold Start Problem; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Consumer Behavior; Analytics and Data Science; Mathematical Methods; Retail Industry

SSRN

September 1974 (Revised April 1975)
Case

Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. (B)

A consumer attitude survey involving more than 1,000 cranberry users has been conducted. Multivariate statistical procedures including factor analysis, cluster analysis and multiple discriminant analysis have been employed to suggest four attitude segments in the... View Details

Keywords: Surveys; Product Positioning; Mathematical Methods; Consumer Behavior; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

25 Apr 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 25

Economics & Management Strategy Measuring Consumer Preferences for Video Content Provision via Cord-Cutting Behavior By: Prince, Jeffrey, and Shane Greenstein Abstract—The television industry is... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

January 2015 (Revised July 2019)
Case

CVS Health: Promoting Drug Adherence

By: Leslie John, John Quelch and Robert Huckman

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

The case describes a program that CVS Health recently implemented to improve medication adherence, an important problem from a societal, public policy, and firm... View Details

04 May 2009
Research & Ideas

What’s Next for the Big Financial Brands

consumer trust is no longer a brand; it is merely a name. The Merrill Lynch brand is unlikely to ever recover and Bank of America should drop it. Merrill Lynch is no longer a brand. Both before and after the collapse of the Internet... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Banking; Financial Services

16 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

What Customers Want from Your Products

researcher then spent a long day in a restaurant seeking to understand the jobs that customers were trying to get done when they hired a milk shake. He chronicled when each milk shake was bought, what other products the customers purchased, whether these View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook & Taddy Hall; Consumer Products

2007
Working Paper

A Taste For Obscurity: An Individual-Level Examination of 'Long Tail' Consumption

By: Anita Elberse

Because online retailers are often able to provide products in a more cost-efficient manner than bricks-and-mortar stores, online channels are characterized by a vast assortment of products. Proponents of the "long tail" principle recently argued that the demand for... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Distribution Channels; Product; Renting or Rental; Online Technology; Motion Pictures and Video Industry; Music Industry; Retail Industry