Publications

2010
Case

Playa Dorado

By: W. Earl Sasser

Playa Dorada Beach & Resort in Boca Raton, Florida, faces a growing seasonal demand for tennis services. The number of guests is expected to double in the next few years, and while the tennis facilities are a popular and well-promoted amenity at the resort, court space... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Expansion; Planning; Mathematical Methods; Price; Profit; Sales; Operations; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Performance Capacity; Accommodations Industry; Florida

Research Summary

Overview

Yanhua Bird's research encompasses two streams: (1) entrepreneurship and social innovation — how the design and structure of alternative forms of enterprises influence their activities and success, with a focus on peer-to-peer markets and social enterprises, and (2)... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Strategy; Social Evaluation; Entrepreneurship; Social Innovation; Social Movements; Non-market Strategy; Corporate Sustainability

Research Summary

Putting Patients First: Marketing Strategies for Treating HIV in Developing Nations

It is more than mere coincidence that the highest rates of HIV occur in the world’s poorest countries. Of the over 40 million people currently living with HIV, 95 percent are in the developing world. The first half of this paper explores the economics of HIV and... View Details

Naked Wines: The Profit vs. Growth Decision

Nick Devlin faced a difficult strategic decision in October 2022. As the CEO of a UK-based subscription business connecting wine drinkers in the US, UK, and Australia with winemakers from around the world (which one journalist called the “Netflix of Wine”), he had... View Details

W. Earl Sasser

Earl Sasser is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and has been a member of the faculty there since 1969. He received a B.A. in Mathematics from Duke University in 1965, an MBA from the University of North Carolina in 1967, and a Ph.D. in... View Details

May 2023 (Revised November 2023)
Case

Arcos Dorados: Decarbonizing McDonald’s in Latin America

By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel, Jenyfeer Martinez Buitrago and Mariana Cal

This case describes the decarbonization strategy of Arcos Dorados—McDonald’s largest independent franchisee, operating in 20 countries and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean—and how the company measured its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including those... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Accounting; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Change Management; Forecasting and Prediction; Environmental Sustainability; Food; Growth Management; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Strategy; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Green Technology Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Latin America; North and Central America; South America

October 2021
Article

Overcoming the Cold Start Problem of CRM Using a Probabilistic Machine Learning Approach

By: Nicolas Padilla and Eva Ascarza

The success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs ultimately depends on the firm's ability to understand consumers' preferences and precisely capture how these preferences may differ across customers. Only by understanding customer heterogeneity, firms can... View Details

Keywords: Customer Management; Targeting; Deep Exponential Families; Probabilistic Machine Learning; Cold Start Problem; Customer Relationship Management; Programs; Consumer Behavior; Analysis

October 2018 (Revised October 2018)
Teaching Note

La-Z-Boy (A)

By: Joseph B. Fuller and Julia Kelley

Kurt Darrow, CEO of La-Z-Boy furniture, must decide whether to continue an overhaul of the company's strategy in the face of a collapse in demand during the great recession. Having pared back La-Z-Boy's portfolio of brands and manufacturing network, he intends to... View Details

2007
Working Paper

Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer

By: Katherine L. Milkman, John Beshears, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman

We study the effect of small windfalls on consumer spending decisions by examining the purchasing behavior of a sample of online grocery shoppers over the course of a year. We compare the purchases customers make when redeeming a $10-off coupon they received from their... View Details

Keywords: Spending; Consumer Behavior; Mathematical Methods; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry

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October 2005
Case

Saskatchewan Wheat Pool 2005

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Mary L. Shelman

CEO Mayo Schmidt had just guided his firm through five difficult years. Survival had come with the difficult decision to change the 80-year-old agricultural cooperative into a Canadian business corporation. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP) now faced the future with a... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Capital; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Demand and Consumers; Partners and Partnerships; Expansion; Technology Adoption; Food and Beverage Industry; Canada

June 2020
Teaching Note

Understanding the Brand Equity of Nestlé Crunch Bar

By: Jill Avery and Gerald Zaltman

Teaching Note for HBS Case Nos. 519-061 and 519-062. In early 2018, Nestlé announced the sale of its U.S. candy-making division and a select collection of twenty of its confectionery brands, including the Nestlé Crunch Bar, to Ferrero SpA for $2.8 billion. Under the... View Details

Keywords: Brand Management; Brand Storytelling; Brand Equity; Market Research; Qualitative Methods; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Marketing Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry

February 2001 (Revised October 2002)
Background Note

Entrepreneurial History: A Conceptual Overview

By: Nancy F. Koehn

Analyzes HBS cases on five entrepreneurs and the companies they built: Josiah Wedgwood, Henry Heinz, Marshall Field, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Michael Dell. These five cases and their accompanying teaching notes comprise a course module on entrepreneurial... View Details

Keywords: Transition; Demand and Consumers; Competition; Business History; Entrepreneurship; Customer Focus and Relationships; Business Strategy; Society

07 Oct 2014
Working Paper Summaries

Lifting the Veil: The Benefits of Cost Transparency

Keywords: by Bhavya Mohan, Ryan W. Buell & Leslie K. John; Retail

November 2021
Article

A Salient Sugar Tax Decreases Sugary Drink Buying

By: Grant E. Donnelly, Paige Guge, Ryan Howell and Leslie John

Many governments have introduced sugary drink excise taxes to reduce purchasing and consumption of such drinks; however, they do not typically stipulate how such taxes should be communicated at point-of-purchase. Historical, field, and experimental data entailing over... View Details

Keywords: Decision-making; Open Data; Open Materials; Preregistered; Health; Policy; Taxation; Consumer Behavior; Decision Making

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Spring 2013
Article

Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings

By: Michael Luca and Jonathan Smith

How do rankings affect demand? This paper investigates the impact of college rankings, and the visibility of those rankings, on students' application decisions. Using natural experiments from U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, we present two main... View Details

Keywords: Rank and Position; Demand and Consumers; Quality; Decisions; Newspapers; United States

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July 2015
Article

BYOB: How Bringing Your Own Shopping Bags Leads to Treating Yourself, and the Environment

By: Uma R. Karmarkar and Bryan Bollinger

As concerns about pollution and climate change have become more central in public discourse, shopping with reusable grocery bags has been strongly promoted as environmentally and socially conscious. In parallel, firms have joined policy makers in using a variety of... View Details

Keywords: Grocery Shopping; Reusable Bags; Licensing; Priming; Goals; Hedonic; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Environmental Sustainability; Retail Industry

Web

Placement - Doctoral

Placement Tradition of Success The demand for faculty at business schools has never been greater. Graduates of the HBS Doctoral Programs have gone on to become prominent scholars in a wide range of disciplines at many of the world’s most... View Details

02 Oct 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, October 2, 2018

shopping environment. We build a demand model in which consumers choose how to allocate their spending over different product categories to maximize their direct utility under contingent free shipping. We... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

March 2002 (Revised November 2003)
Case

Satellite Radio

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Alastair Brown

In early 2002, XM and Sirius were fighting for control of the emerging U.S. market for satellite radio. Each company targeted consumers in automobiles, providing 100 channels of CD-quality audio for a monthly subscription fee of $10-$13. Wall Street analysts predicted... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Price; Risk and Uncertainty; Problems and Challenges; Network Effects; Partners and Partnerships; Information Technology; Business Model; Investment Return; Auto Industry; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States