Publications

05 Aug 2010
What Do You Think?

What Is Customer Opinion Good For?

initial response to reports that customers were having trouble with the antennae on Apple's iPhone 4, its latest "superproduct." It was reported that he commented that iPhone 4 users would have to learn not... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Technology

February 2021
Article

How Transparency into Internal and External Responsibility Initiatives Influences Consumer Choice

By: Ryan W. Buell and Basak Kalkanci

Amid growing calls for transparency and social and environmental responsibility, companies are employing different strategies to improve consumer perceptions of their brands. Some pursue internal initiatives that reduce their negative social or environmental impacts... View Details

Keywords: Sustainable Operations; Corporate Social Responsibility; Operational Transparency; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Operations; Environmental Sustainability; Consumer Behavior; Perception

SSRN

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May 16, 2016
Article

Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer

By: Dina Gerdeman and John A. Quelch

Chipotle Mexican Grill’s ongoing struggle to win customers back months after a contaminated food crisis highlights the challenges companies face with keeping food safe.

Chipotle has seen its shares tumble and recently reported its first-ever quarterly loss... View Details

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02 Apr 2019
News

The Right Way to Get Your First 1,000 Customers

July 2008
Case

Hilton Hotels: Brand Differentiation through Customer Relationship Management

By: Lynda M. Applegate, Gabriele Piccoli and Chekitan Dev

This case analyzes the Hilton Hotels Corporation's CRM strategy at a key juncture in its history, immediately after the firm has been taken private by Blackstone. The case provides students with a comprehensive history of the evolution and IT enablers of Hilton's CRM... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Marketing Strategy; Privatization; Performance Evaluation; Information Technology; Accommodations Industry

25 Aug 2016
News

Announcing the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative

customized curriculum, instructional and technology tools—most of which will be made freely available to the world—and cases focused on innovative city leadership. The initiative will also create student... View Details

Keywords: Government

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Companies Must Forget—and Borrow

As companies ride the digital wave, many find that switching up old, tired practices and deviating from the norm can be crucial to survival. But sometimes things can be taken too far. During the Digital Initiative Summit at Harvard... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Education; Advertising

16 Jun 2020
Research & Ideas

Your Customers Have Changed. Here's How to Engage Them Again.

COVID-deaccession, it is even more critical for firms to become more customer centric by researching and understanding their customers’ new problems caused by fear, isolation, physical distancing, and... View Details

Keywords: by Rohit Deshpandé, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim; Retail; Service

09 Dec 2019
Research & Ideas

Identify Great Customers from Their First Purchase

School. By incorporating data most companies discard, Ascarza and her co-researcher devised an algorithm capable of quickly analyzing more than 40 variables to create a “first impression” of the customer after the View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail; Service

01 Sep 2003
News

Dean Clark Reflects on the School’s Key Initiatives

As we begin the new academic year, I welcome the opportunity to share the exciting initiatives and activities under way at Harvard Business School. All our efforts are designed to pursue with excellence the School’s mission: to educate... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

02 Apr 2015
Research & Ideas

Digital Initiative Summit: Freeing Patient Data to Enable Innovation

Patients are not actually the customers in the United States health care system, a fact largely to blame for the dearth of communication and data sharing between providers, according to experts at a recent Harvard Business School... View Details

Keywords: Re: Karim R. Lakhani; Health

Forthcoming
Article

Engaging Customers with AI in Online Chats: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

By: Shunyuan Zhang and Das Narayandas

We examine how artificial intelligence (AI) affected the productivity of customer service agents and customer sentiment in online interactions. Collaborating with a meal delivery company, we conducted a randomized field experiment that exploited exogenous variation in... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Efficiency

February 2006
Case

Millions of Customers and the Search for a Business: the Challenge of IRC-Hispano

Like many online services, IRC-Hispano, the world's largest Spanish-language chat organization, has many customers but sees few revenues. As an association, its structure presents many limitations and hurdles to overcome involving investing in technology platform... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Decision Choices and Conditions; Digital Platforms; Technology Adoption; Internet and the Web; Organizational Structure; Technological Innovation; Revenue; Web Services Industry; Technology Industry; Spain

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March 2022
Case

GrowSari (A): Design for the Last Mile Customer

By: Brian Trelstad, Cam Carag and Michi Ferreol

Reymund (ER) Rollan and Shivapratim (Shiv) Choudhury, founders of the digital technology platform GrowSari, were at a crossroads. The feedback from their initial product roll-out were not what they had expected, and they needed to decide how to proceed. The pair,... View Details

Keywords: Fast Moving Consumer Goods; Product Launch; Information Technology; Analytics and Data Science; Digital Platforms; Retail Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Technology Industry; Philippines

27 Sep 2010
Research & Ideas

Customer Experts Lose Influence When Teams are Pressured

It's a common problem: A work team tackles a high-pressure project for a client, but along the way something goes wrong with team dynamics and the client ends up feeling shortchanged. Even though team members initially recognize and value... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert

21 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Don’t Get Buried in Customer Data—Use It

their companies' CRM initiatives had failed to deliver profitable growth and had damaged long-term customer relationships. Tempting as it may be to point the finger at your CRM technology, that won't help... View Details

Keywords: by Jean Ayers

December 2014 (Revised October 2015)
Case

Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization (Abridged)

By: Linda A. Hill, Anthony J. Mayo and Dana M. Teppert

This case describes how to champion and implement organizational change from the middle by recounting the experiences of Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization. View Details