Publications

March 2022 (Revised April 2022)
Teaching Note

Spotify's Audio-First Strategy: Leading the Podcasting Market

By: Hong Luo and Carol Lin

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-439. Within 15 years, CEO Daniel Ek had led Spotify from an ambitious startup to a multi-billion dollar company that had transformed the music industry. As part of Spotify’s next phase of growth, the platform would invest heavily in... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Divisions; Customer Relationship Management; Revenue; Music Industry

December 2004 (Revised February 2005)
Case

Exporting Spanish Olive Oil to the U.S. Market

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Hal Hogan and Miguel Angel Llano Irusta

Spain is the largest olive oil producer, yet it sells much of its product to Italy, where it is repackaged as Italian olive oil. The decision maker in the case wants to develop Spain as the olive oil leader not just in production but in quality and value added. He... View Details

Keywords: Plant-Based Agribusiness; Trade; Goods and Commodities; Demand and Consumers; Supply and Industry; Brands and Branding; Decisions; Customization and Personalization; Product Design; Product Development; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Spain; United States; Italy

01 Sep 2008
News

Is Market Capitalism Headed for Trouble?

In June, Professor Joe Bower (with fellow HBS professors Dutch Leonard, David Moss, and Lynn Paine) led an HBS faculty colloquium on “The Future of Market Capitalism.” The Bulletin spoke with Bower shortly after the event. BOWER: On the... View Details

Keywords: Garry Emmons; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services; Professional Services

March 2011 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Poweo: David and Goliath in the French Electricity Market

By: Noel Maurer and Elisa Farri

Charles Beigbeder, the president and founder of Poweo, an alternative electricity and gas operator in France, needs to decide on the company's strategy in light of electricity deregulation and the dominant position of Électricité de France (EDF) in the French market.... View Details

Keywords: Energy Generation; Competitive Strategy; Competition; Privatization; Monopoly; Market Entry and Exit; Energy Industry; France

spring 1988
Article

Product Market Competition and Managerial Slack

By: David S. Scharfstein

Keywords: Product; Markets; Competition; Management

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April 1990 (Revised January 1993)
Case

Ad Council's AIDS Campaign (A): Advertising Strategy

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Janet Montgomery

Ad Council wished to run an educational campaign aimed at preventing the spread of AIDS. They were challenged to find acceptable ways to address this very sensitive subject matter--ways that the media and the public would approve. One of the big challenges was to make... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Goals and Objectives; Social Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Success; Problems and Challenges; Social Issues; Health Industry

November 2021
Article

Ratings, Reviews, and the Marketing of New Products

By: Itay P. Fainmesser, Dominique Olié Lauga and Elie Ofek

We study how user-generated content (UGC) about new products impacts a firm's advertising and pricing decisions and the effect on profits and market dynamics. We construct a two-period model where consumers value quality and are heterogeneous in their taste for the new... View Details

Keywords: Online Reviews; Product Ratings; Social Networks; Word Of Mouth; Pricing; User-generated Content; Advertising; Product Marketing; Price; Consumer Behavior; Product Positioning; Social Media

Find at Harvard

11 Mar 2008
Working Paper Summaries

Finding Missing Markets (and a disturbing epilogue): Evidence from an Export Crop Adoption and Marketing Intervention in Kenya

Keywords: by Nava Ashraf, Xavier Giné & Dean Karlan; Food & Beverage

Article

Fly-by-Night Firms and the Market for Product Reviews

By: Gerald R. Faulhaber and Dennis A. Yao

This paper presents a model that permits third-party information provision in a market characterized by information asymmetries and reputation formation. The model is used to examine how the market for information provision affects prices and supply in the primary... View Details

Keywords: Markets; Reputation; SWOT Analysis; Mathematical Methods; Price Bubble; Inflation and Deflation; Duopoly and Oligopoly; Cost; Information; Quality; Price; Competitive Advantage; Information Industry

Find at Harvard

17 Aug 2022
News

To Serve and Protect the Markets

Every day, in her role as the director of the Atlanta Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nekia Hackworth Jones (MBA 2003) stands in the breach between the $100 trillion in securities traded on U.S. equity View Details

Keywords: Margie Kelley

Web

Suppliers - Institute For Strategy And Competitiveness

carefully examine the outcomes relative to cost for every new drug and device introduced. Key Action Steps for Suppliers Base strategies on creating unique value for patients Focus on cycles of care rather than narrow product usage Sell... View Details

December 2011
Article

Data Impediments to Empirical Work on Health Insurance Markets

By: Leemore S. Dafny, David Dranove, Frank Limbrock and Fiona Scott Morton

We compare four datasets that researchers might use to study competition in the health insurance industry. We show that the two datasets most commonly used to estimate market concentration differ considerably from each other (both in levels and in changes over time),... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Analytics and Data Science; Market Participation; Insurance Industry

June 2025
Case

TfL Pension Fund and the 2022 Gilt Market Crisis

By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Vincent Dessain, Emer Moloney and Carlota Moniz

On September 27, 2022, Padmesh Shukla, CIO of the Transport for London (TfL) Pension Fund, was keeping a careful eye on the turmoil in the U.K. sovereign bond (or gilt) market. When the new government announced the largest tax cuts the U.K. had seen in half a century,... View Details

March 9, 2021
Article

Addressing Consolidation in Health Care Markets

By: Leemore S. Dafny

This Viewpoint proposes three steps the Biden administration can take to slow consolidation within health care, which has been shown to raise costs without improving service or quality: better fund federal antitrust enforcement agencies; appoint agency heads committed... View Details

Keywords: Antitrust Issues And Policies; Health Care and Treatment; Markets; Consolidation; Competition; Government Administration

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2008
Working Paper

An Investigation of Earnings Management through Marketing Actions

By: Craig James Chapman and Thomas J. Steenburgh

Prior research hypothesizes managers use "real actions," including the reduction of discretionary expenditures, to manage earnings to meet or beat key benchmarks. This paper examines this hypothesis by testing how different types of marketing expenditures are used... View Details

Keywords: Performance Expectations; Earnings Management; Marketing Strategy; Financial Reporting; Brands and Branding; Food and Beverage Industry

SSRN

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10 Feb 2020
In Practice

6 Ways That Emerging Technology Is Disrupting Business Strategy

Even though the internet has been publicly available for almost three decades, executives at just about every company are wrestling with how to use digital technology to advance their business strategy. We asked professors from Harvard Business School’s View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

September 2020 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

Artea (A), (B), (C), and (D): Designing Targeting Strategies

By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

Teaching Note for HBS No. 521-021,521-022,521-037,521-043. This collection of exercises aims to teach students about 1)Targeting Policies; and 2)Algorithmic bias in marketing—implications, causes, and possible solutions. Part (A) focuses on A/B testing analysis and... View Details

Keywords: Targeted Advertising; Targeting; Race; Gender; Diversity; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Prejudice and Bias; Analytics and Data Science; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Technology Industry; United States

March 2021
Supplement

Artea (A), (B), (C), and (D): Designing Targeting Strategies

By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

Power Point Supplement to Teaching Note for HBS No. 521-021,521-022,521-037,521-043. This collection of exercises aims to teach students about 1)Targeting Policies; and 2)Algorithmic bias in marketing—implications, causes, and possible solutions. Part (A) focuses on... View Details

Keywords: Targeted Advertising; Targeting; Algorithmic Data; Bias; A/B Testing; Experiment; Advertising; Gender; Race; Diversity; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Prejudice and Bias; Analytics and Data Science; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Technology Industry; United States