Publications

December 2022
Technical Note

Risks and Opportunities from the Transition to a Low Carbon Economy: A Business Analysis Framework

By: George Serafeim

The transition to a low carbon economy introduces many risks and opportunities for businesses. Risks emerge from regulatory actions, such as carbon taxes and cap and trade systems, technological innovation that develop alternatives for customers making existing... View Details

Keywords: Risk Assessment; Opportunities; Environmental Sustainability; Carbon Footprint; Risk Management; Competitive Dynamics; Business Analysis; Climate Change; Accounting; Finance; Valuation; Business and Shareholder Relations; Technological Innovation; Transition; Product Positioning; Renewable Energy; Analysis

28 May 2019
News

Case Study: Building the Base

initial step in his quest to help readers—particularly millennials and Gen Zers—better understand how the news is spun. The company’s launch product is a free daily newsletter that aggregates headlines from both the left and the right, with View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

16 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

What Customers Want from Your Products

understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that's precisely targeted to the job. In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that... View Details

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

February 2024 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

Travelogo: Understanding Customer Journeys

By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei Huang

Teaching Note for HBS Exercise 524-044. The exercise aims to teach students about 1) Customer Segmentation; and 2) constructing buying personas, 3) Get actionable insights from clickstream data. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Analysis; Analytics and Data Science; Marketing Strategy; Segmentation; Consumer Behavior; Travel Industry; United States

January 1995 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Citibank: Global Customer Management

By: Michael Y. Yoshino and Thomas W. Malnight

Describes Citibank's worldwide operations, which include activities in developing and developed markets. The bank's structure also varies across markets and regions, varying from autonomous national affiliates to an industry/product-based structure in its domestic U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Global Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Multinational Firms and Management; SWOT Analysis; Emerging Markets; Banking Industry; United States

October 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Case

Pilgrim Bank (A): Customer Profitability

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Provides a context in which students can explore managerial decision making that is critically informed by data analysis. The setting is a retail bank and the decision making relates to the bank's policy toward online banking. The management team is evaluating whether... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Customers; Profit; Banking Industry

01 Mar 2025
News

On The Case: The Base Factor

In her research as a marketing modeler, Professor Eva Ascarza focuses on understanding customers—and predicting, in particular, who will be a good one and how best to retain them. Without customers, obviously, there is no business. That could also be the tagline for... View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint

December 2011 (Revised October 2014)
Background Note

Business Model Analysis for Entrepreneurs

By: Thomas Eisenmann

This note defines a business model and its major elements: a customer value proposition, a technology and operations management plan, a go-to-market plan, and a profit formula. For each element, the note lists questions that an entrepreneur must address when evaluating... View Details

Keywords: Business Model

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Keeping Your Balance With Customers

price-based competition, an engineering company identified a market segment built on partnering with the customer, outsourcing and risk sharing. Its challenge was to migrate its customer base in this... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton

November 2011 (Revised August 2012)
Background Note

Customer Discovery and Validation for Entrepreneurs

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Thomas Eisenmann and Steven G. Blank

Provides practical guidelines for conducting market research to explore and validate demand for entrepreneurial offering. Explains how the research objectives of entrepreneurs might differ from those relevant to managers evaluating product or service offerings to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Entrepreneurship

27 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Customer Loyalty Programs That Work

understanding about what brands matter to consumers," says Alvarez. "So if consumers are switching brands, or buying based on promotions, you can drive the customer to your own label."... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Retail

June 2013
Case

Olympic Rent-A-Car U.S.: Customer Loyalty Battles

By: John Deighton and James T. Kindley

The marketing and operations managers for Olympic Rent-A-Car meet to decide how to respond to changes in the loyalty rewards program at the market-leading competitor. The competitor's program gives awards based on dollars spent instead of days rented and eliminates... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Strategy; Marketing; Operations; Auto Industry; Service Industry

2015
Working Paper

Service Quality, Inventory and Competition: An Empirical Analysis of Mobile Money Agents in Africa

By: Karthik Balasubramanian and David F. Drake

The use of electronic money transfer through cellular networks ("mobile money") is rapidly increasing in the developing world. The resulting electronic currency ecosystem could improve the lives of the estimated 2 billion people who live on less than $2 a day by... View Details

Keywords: Operations Strategy; Base Of The Pyramid; Mobile Money; Inventory Management; Competition; Currency; Service Operations; Mobile and Wireless Technology

SSRN

04 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

Don’t Lose Money With Customers

systems are designed to track profitability only at the market and segment levels. Consequently, many managers are often forced to make important customer decisions based on hunches and imprecise... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

February 2003 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Internet Customer Acquisition Strategy at Bankinter

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

Bankinter, a relatively small Spanish bank, has a large presence as an Internet financial services provider. Leading the way to profitability through the Internet will give Bankinter a major competitive advantage over the larger, more established Spanish banks. Ann... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Internet and the Web; Activity Based Costing and Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Spain

Article

Are Self-service Customers Satisfied or Stuck?

By: Ryan W. Buell, Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei

This paper investigates the impact of self-service technology (SST) usage on customer satisfaction and retention. Specifically, we disentangle the distinct effects of satisfaction and switching costs as drivers of retention among self-service customers. Our empirical... View Details

Keywords: Service Delivery; Information Technology; Customer Satisfaction; Competition; Cost; Banks and Banking; Behavior; Market Transactions; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques

Find at Harvard

16 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

"It doesn't happen overnight. Based on my observation of companies for almost a decade, I map out four levels that exemplify distinct stages through which companies may evolve on this journey." In our e-mail Q&A, we asked... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products

16 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

First 1,000 Customers, we explored how these two-sided platforms got their start and attracted a significant number of early adopters based on a Harvard Business School case that professor Teixeira wrote with Morgan Brown. “Airbnb... View Details

Keywords: by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding; Retail; Transportation; Accommodations

April 2006
Background Note

Informing Service Management with Customer Data

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Taught as the third module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations. Explores the role of data analysis in ongoing service management. Describes how to realize the maximum amount of value from analyses and use this information in... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Design; Analytics and Data Science; Service Operations; Mathematical Methods; Value