Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(3,789)
- Faculty Publications (1,198)
- March 2011 (Revised August 2012)
- Case
Groupon
By: Sunil Gupta, Ray Weaver and Dharmishta Rood
On November 4, 2011, Groupon, a marketing services company that promoted local businesses by selling deeply discounted vouchers for their products and services, completed its initial public offering that valued the company at $17 billion. Within a year Groupon's share... View Details
- March 2011
- Teaching Note
Patagonia (TN)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Hyunjin Kim and Forest Reinhardt
Teaching Note for 711020. View Details
Keywords: Consumer Products Industry
- March 2011
- Module Note
Quantitative Analysis of Competitive Position: Customer Demand and Willingness to Pay
By: David J. Collis
This note is designed to provide strategists with tools to perform two critical customer-related analyses: determining willingness to pay — the estimation of how much a given customer would be willing to pay for a particular product or service; and demand estimation —... View Details
- 2011
- Book
Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It
By: Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel
When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
The 'IKEA Effect': When Labor Leads to Love
By: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely
In a series of studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate the boundary conditions for what we term the "IKEA effect&"—the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their... View Details
- February 2011 (Revised May 2011)
- Case
Utilis: Designing, Producing, and Selling Rapid Deployment Shelters for a Troubled World
By: Herman B. Leonard, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Simon Harrow
How can a company that supplies disaster response and humanitarian agencies best handle the intrinsically unpredictable and highly volatile demand for its products? Utilis is a French supplier of rapid-deploy high-end tent solutions for civilian and military uses (such... View Details
- February 2011 (Revised March 2021)
- Case
Hindustan Unilever's 'Pureit' Water Purifier
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Mona Sinha
The case asks students to formulate a strategy to respond to various competitive threats to its Pureit Water purifier, launched in 2008, targeted at millions of low-income Indian consumers who did not have access to safe drinking water. The case describes in detail the... View Details
- February 2011
- Article
The Underdog Effect: The Marketing of Disadvantage and Determination Through Brand Biography
By: Neeru Paharia, Anat Keinan, Jill Avery and Juliet B. Schor
We introduce the concept of an underdog brand biography (UBB) to describe an emerging trend in branding in which firms author an historical account of their humble origins, lack of resources, and determined struggle against the odds. We identify two essential... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Brand Management; Brands; Brand Building; Brand Positioning; Competitive Positioning; Advertising; Marketing Communication; Biography; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Emerging Markets; Network Effects; Demand and Consumers; Marketing Communications; Cost vs Benefits; Perspective; Advertising Campaigns; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry
- January 2011 (Revised January 2011)
- Case
Marvel Enterprises, Inc. (Abridged)
By: Anita Elberse
The management team of Marvel Enterprises, known for its universe of superhero characters that includes Spider-Man, the Hulk, and X-Men, must reevaluate its marketing strategy. In June 2004, only six years after the company emerged from bankruptcy, Marvel has amassed a... View Details
- January 2011
- Case
AIC Netbooks: Optimizing Product Assembly
By: Steven C. Wheelwright and Sunru Yong
AIC Systems, located in Taichung, Taiwan, is a manufacturer of printed circuit boards, primarily for motherboards and video cards for personal computers. The firm is considered an original design manufacturer (ODM) and takes an active role in innovating and designing... View Details
- January 2011
- Case
Clean Edge Razor: Splitting Hairs in Product Positioning
By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham
After three years of development, Paramount Health and Beauty Company is preparing to launch a new technologically advanced vibrating razor called Clean Edge. The innovative new design of Clean Edge provides superior performance by stimulating the hair follicles to... View Details
- January 2011 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Triangulate (A)
By: Thomas Eisenmann and Lauren Barley
In October 2010, Triangulate's founder/CEO must determine what product features to develop and what marketing programs to pursue in order to boost the odds of successfully raising another venture capital round for his nine month-old Facebook dating application. The... View Details
- January – February 2011
- Article
'Bricks and Clicks': The Impact of Product Returns on the Strategies of Multichannel Retailers
By: Elie Ofek, Zsolt Katona and Miklos Sarvary
The Internet has increased the flexibility of retailers, allowing them to operate an online arm in addition to their physical stores. The online channel offers potential benefits in selling to customer segments that value the convenience of online shopping, but it also... View Details
- 2011
- White Paper
Brands Are People Too! Harnessing the Power of Brand Warmth and Competence
By: Chris Malone, Jill Avery and S. T. Fiske
Research in customer behavior has revealed that the way humans respond to brands is simply an extension of the way they instinctively perceive, judge, and behave towards one another. Understanding how consumers judge brands using social processes akin to those used in... View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
Consumers' Relationships with Brands
By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery
This chapter presents a brand management paradigm based on the foundational principles of relationships. (1) Brand relationships are a means to an end: brand relationship managers must consider the whole person and understand how the brand adds meaning into people's... View Details
- 2011
- Article
The Consumer Psychology of Mail-in Rebates
By: John T. Gourville and Dilip Soman
Consumers who buy a product intending to use an accompanying mail-in rebate often do not redeem the rebate. To explain this behavior, we argue that consumers use an anchoring and adjustment approach to predicting the likelihood of redeeming a rebate. In keeping with... View Details
- Article
The Social Utility of Feature Creep
By: Debora V. Thompson and Michael I. Norton
Previous research shows that consumers frequently choose products with too many features that they later find difficult to use. Our research shows that this seemingly suboptimal behavior may in fact confer benefits when factoring in the social context of consumption.... View Details
- 2012
- Working Paper
Learning from Customers: Individual and Organizational Effects in Outsourced Radiological Services
By: Jonathan R. Clark, Robert S. Huckman and Bradley R. Staats
The ongoing fragmentation of work has resulted in a narrowing of tasks into smaller pieces that can be sent outside the organization and, in many instances, around the world. This trend is shifting the boundaries of organizations and leading to increased outsourcing.... View Details
- December 2010
- Article
Why You Aren't Buying Venezuelan Chocolate
By: Rohit Deshpandé
The article discusses the "provenance paradox," wherein consumers are unwilling to buy high-quality products from regions not commonly associated with excellence in certain product categories. Venezuelan chocolate maker Chocolates El Rey does little international... View Details
- November 2010
- Article
Capitalizing on the Underdog Effect
By: Anat Keinan, Neeru Paharia and Jill Avery
This article presents the results of a study that investigated the use of the underdog effect in marketing. The idea of triumphing over disadvantages by impassioned determination is said to be a powerfully positive image, which can lead consumers to choose a brand over... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Brand Management; Brands; Brand Positioning; Competitive Positioning; Competition; Brands and Branding; Advertising Campaigns; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry