Publications

24 Aug 2016
Research & Ideas

Behavioral Economists Can Make You a Healthier Consumer and Smarter Marketer

behavioral science, specifically, behavioral economics, tries to understand consumers as they actually behave and promote changes in their decision making around those biases.... View Details

Keywords: by Amelia Kunhardt

May 1999
Background Note

Note on Behavioral Pricing

By: John T. Gourville

The note introduces the behavioral or psychological aspects of consumer price acceptance. Begins by reviewing the traditional economic approach to product pricing and consumer price acceptance--namely, that consumers should be willing to purchase anytime a product's... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Decisions; Fairness; Price; Marketing Strategy; Behavior; Perspective; Public Opinion

2 Mar 2023 - 4 Mar 2023
Conference Presentation

Speedy Activists: Firm Response Time to Sociopolitical Events Influences Consumer Behavior

By: Maya Balakrishnan, Julian De Freitas and Alison Wood Brooks

June 2020
Case

Agile Consumer Product Innovation with Alibaba's Tmall Innovation Center

By: William R. Kerr, Daniel O'Connor and James Palano

Consumer products companies were beset by changes on all sides during the 2010s. Customers were increasingly turning to ecommerce platforms rather than shopping in-store. Meanwhile, nimble, digitally-savvy competitors were gaining market share by capitalizing on the... View Details

Keywords: Future Of Work; Retail; Ecommerce; Alibaba; Consumer Products; Innovation; Innovation and Invention; Product Development; Consumer Behavior; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; China

2021
Working Paper

The Situational Samaritan: How and Why Marketplace Conditions Shape Prosocial Consumer Behaviors

By: Julia von Schuckmann, Lucia S.G. Barrios, Grant E. Donnelly and Marco Bertini

February 2015 (Revised September 2016)
Teaching Note

Making stickK Stick: The Business of Behavioral Economics

By: Leslie K. John and Michael Norton

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

This Teaching Note explains the theory of the case and teaching plan for the case: Making sticK Stick: The Business of Behavioral Economics (514019). The case focuses on a... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Behavior Change; B2B Vs. B2C; Human Resource Management; Marketing Of Innovations; Health ＆ Wellness; Weight Loss; Charitable Giving; Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Entrepreneurship; Internet and the Web; Health; Business Model; Sales; Human Resources; Health Industry; United States

2022
Working Paper

Product2Vec: Leveraging Representation Learning to Model Consumer Product Choice in Large Assortments

By: Fanglin Chen, Xiao Liu, Davide Proserpio and Isamar Troncoso

We propose a method, Product2Vec, based on representation learning, that can automatically learn latent product attributes that drive consumer choices, to study product-level competition when the number of products is large. We demonstrate Product2Vec’s... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Choice; Consumer Behavior; Competition; Product Marketing

SSRN

2023
Working Paper

Rising Markups and the Role of Consumer Preferences

By: Hendrik Döpper, Alexander MacKay, Nathan H. Miller and Joel Stiebale

We characterize the evolution of markups for consumer products in the United States from 2006 to 2019. We use detailed data on prices and quantities for products in more than 100 distinct product categories to estimate demand systems with flexible... View Details

Keywords: Market Power; Markups; Demand Estimation; Consumer Products; Retailers; Product; Price; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

2021
Working Paper

Consuming Contests: Outcome Uncertainty and Spectator Demand for Contest-based Entertainment

By: Patrick J. Ferguson and Karim R. Lakhani

Contests that are designed to be consumed for entertainment by non-contestants are a fixture of economic, cultural and political life. In this paper, we examine whether individuals prefer to consume contests that have more uncertain outcomes. We look to... View Details

Keywords: Contest Design; Information Preferences; Consumer Demand; Sports; Entertainment; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Demand and Consumers; Outcome or Result

SSRN

October 1994
Article

When Worlds Collide: The Implications of Panel Data-Based Choice Models for Consumer Behavior

By: R. S. Winer, R.E. Bucklin, J. A. Deighton, J. Erdem, P.S. Fader, J.J. Inman, H. Katahira, Katherine N. Lemon and A. Mitchell

Keywords: Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions

Find at Harvard

2021
Article

Consumer Disclosure

By: Tami Kim, Kate Barasz and Leslie John

As technological advances enable consumers to share more information in unprecedented ways, today’s disclosure takes on a variety of new forms, triggering a paradigm shift in what “disclosure” entails. This review introduces two factors to conceptualize consumer... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure; Passive Disclosure; Information; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Situation or Environment

November 2017
Teaching Note

Predicting Consumer Tastes with Big Data at Gap

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

CEO Art Peck was eliminating his creative directors for The Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic brands and promoting a collective creative ecosystem fueled by the input of big data. Rather than relying on artistic vision, Peck wanted the company to use the mining of big... View Details

January 2014
Technical Note

Learning From Extreme Consumers

By: Jill Avery and Michael Norton

Traditional market research methods focus on understanding the average experiences of average consumers. This focus leads to gaps in our knowledge of consumer behavior and often fails to uncover insights that can drive revolutionary, rather than evolutionary... View Details

Keywords: Market Research; Ethnography; Design Thinking; Innovation; New Product Development; Research; Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Innovation and Invention

2015
Chapter

The Consumer Psychology of Online Privacy: Insights and Opportunities from Behavioral Decision Theory

By: Leslie K. John

Find at Harvard

16 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist?

be that they should weigh carefully the costs of breaking trust and of risking reputation. The formal study of behavioral economics exactly relates psychological factors to economic behavior, and even more recently has been exploring the... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: John T. Gourville

John studies consumer behavior, broadly defined. He specializes in pricing, product assortment, the marketing of innovation, and new product adoption. View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior

11 Aug 2014
HBS Case

The Business of Behavioral Economics

specializing in the burgeoning field of behavioral economics. "Standard economic theory suggests that as long as people understand the full consequences of their actions, they tend to act in their self interest," says John. "If they want... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage; Health

Article

Behavioral Hazard in Health Insurance

By: Katherine Baicker, Sendhil Mullainathan and Joshua Schwartzstein

A fundamental implication of standard moral hazard models is overuse of low-value medical care because copays are lower than costs. In these models, the demand curve alone can be used to make welfare statements, a fact relied on by much empirical work. There is ample... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Consumer Behavior; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance Industry

March 1999 (Revised December 2001)
Background Note

Analyzing Consumer Perceptions

By: Robert J. Dolan

Describes the perceptual mapping techniques in a non-technical fashion. The procedure is useful for the depiction of the structure of the market. Discusses alternative methods, presents examples of each, and shows how the maps can be used in marketing decision making. View Details

Keywords: Industry Structures; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior