Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(5,159)
- Faculty Publications (1,388)
- July–August 2014
- Article
Unlock the Mysteries of Your Customer Relationships
By: Jill Avery, Susan Fournier and John Wittenbraker
Consumers have always had relationships with brands, but sophisticated tools for analyzing customer data are finally allowing marketing organizations to personalize and manage those relationships. With this new power comes a new challenge: people now expect companies... View Details
- June 2014
- Case
Financial Policy at Apple, 2013 (A)
By: Mihir A. Desai and Elizabeth A. Meyer
By the end of 2013, Apple had $137 billion dollars in cash and marketable securities. This case explores how companies can generate such large amounts of cash and how and if they should distribute it to shareholders, especially in the face of shareholder pressure. In... View Details
Keywords: Apple; Steve Jobs; Forecast; Forecasting; Forecasting And Prediction; Shareholder Activism; Share Repurchase; Dividends; Financial Ratios; Preferred Shares; Cash Distribution; Corporate Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; Republic of Ireland
- June 2014 (Revised March 2016)
- Case
Relating to Peapod
By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery
Explores the relationships formed between consumers and the Peapod consumer-direct grocery delivery service, as revealed through an ethnographic study of Boston-area Peapod shoppers conducted between the Summer of 1997 and the Fall of 1999. Three representative case... View Details
- June 2014
- Teaching Note
Lit Motors
By: Thomas Eisenmann
In mid-2012 Lit Motors had created both engineering and design prototypes and conducted initial customer tests on less than $750,000 of investment. Lit Motors' founder, Daniel Kim, had started the company to design and manufacture an efficient electric 2-wheeled... View Details
- June 2014
- Article
Building Brand Knowledge Structures: Elaboration and Interference Effects on the Processing of Sequentially Advertised Brand Benefit Claims
By: Susan E. Heckler, Kevin L. Keller, Michael J. Houston and Jill Avery
Two experiments are reported that examine the effects of an ad campaign designed to link two different benefit claims to a brand. The findings indicated that recall for a subsequently advertised claim depended on the strength of existing brand-benefit links in memory.... View Details
- Article
Integration of Online and Offline Channels in Retail: The Impact of Sharing Reliable Inventory Availability Information
By: Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
Using a proprietary data set, we analyze the impact of the implementation of a “buy-online, pick-up-in-store” (BOPS) project. The implementation of this project is associated with a reduction in online sales and an increase in store sales and traffic. These results can... View Details
- Summer 2014
- Article
When Does a Platform Create Value by Limiting Choice?
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Hanna Halaburda
We present a theory for why it might be rational for a platform to limit the number of applications available on it. Our model is based on the observation that even if users prefer application variety, applications often also exhibit direct network effects. When there... View Details
Keywords: Platform Governance; Direct Network Effects; Indirect Network Effects; Complements; Tragedy Of The Commons; Equilibrium Selection; Coordination; Foresight; Strategy; Value Creation; Digital Platforms; Balance and Stability; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Applications and Software; Network Effects
- May 2014 (Revised March 2017)
- Case
Unilever's Lifebuoy in India: Implementing the Sustainability Plan
Unilever's new Global Brand VP must not only revitalize Lifebuoy soap's sagging market performance, but simultaneously impact the health of one billion people worldwide. The latter challenge comes from Unilever's new CEO who has introduced the Unilever Sustainable... View Details
Keywords: Multinational Management; Corporate Social Responsibility; Strategy Implementation; Marketing Strategy; Mission And Purpose; Change Management; International Business; Global; Fast-moving Consumer Goods; Soap; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Health Care and Treatment; Environmental Sustainability; Global Strategy; Developing Countries and Economies; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Health Industry; India
- May 2014 (Revised July 2016)
- Case
RCA: Color Television and the Department of Justice (A)
By: Willy C. Shih and Gregory Dieterich
This case examines the early history of the color television receiver market and the global consequences of an historic 1958 consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that opened RCA's patents to licensing by domestic competitors royalty-free. This externality... View Details
- Article
Making 'Green Giants': Environment Sustainability in the German Chemical Industry, 1950s–1980s
By: Geoffrey Jones and Christina Lubinski
This article examines the evolution of corporate environmentalism in the West German chemical industry between the 1950s and the 1980s. It focuses on two companies, Bayer and Henkel, that have been identified as "green giants," and traces the evolution of their... View Details
- 2014
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Marketing Reading: Brand Positioning
By: Jill Avery and Sunil Gupta
This Reading addresses the principles of brand positioning and demonstrates how companies can strategically craft powerful, resonant, and unique brand positions to help products stand out amidst the cacophony of the marketplace. Strategic brand positioning provides... View Details
Keywords: Brand Positioning; Branding; Consumer Research; Defensive Strategies; Market Positioning; Marketing; Product Differentiation; Product Positioning; Strategic Positioning; Value Proposition; Customer Relationship Management; Organizational Structure; Customer Satisfaction; Brands and Branding
- April 2014 (Revised June 2015)
- Case
Making stickK Stick: The Business of Behavioral Economics
By: Leslie John, Michael Norton and Michael Norris
Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.
stickK.com, a website that uses behavioral economics to help users achieve their goals, must choose between a direct-to-consumer or business-to-business model. The case... View Details
stickK.com, a website that uses behavioral economics to help users achieve their goals, must choose between a direct-to-consumer or business-to-business model. The case... 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
- 2014
- Working Paper
The Organizational and Geographic Drivers of Absorptive Capacity: An Empirical Analysis of Pharmaceutical R&D Laboratories
By: Francesca Lazzeri and Gary P. Pisano
Scholars and practitioners alike now recognize that a firm's capacity to assimilate and use know-how from external sources—what Cohen and Levinthal (1990) called "absorptive capacity"—plays a central role in innovation performance. In recent years, a common strategy... View Details
- April 2014
- Article
The Limits of Scale: Companies That Get Big Fast Are Often Left Behind. Here's Why.
By: Hanna Halaburda and Felix Oberholzer-Gee
The value of many products and services rises or falls with the number of customers using them; the fewer fax machines in use, the less important it is to have one. These network effects influence consumer decisions and affect companies' ability to compete. Strategists... View Details
- Blog Post
Health Care Transparency: The Fox Is Guarding the Chicken Coop in Washington Again
Now that more people can shop directly for their own health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, they have been transformed from potential patients to consumers, and like any other consumers of goods or services, they want to know if what they're buying is any... View Details
- March 2014
- Case
Jurlique: Globalizing Beauty from Nature and Science
By: Geoffrey Jones and Andrew Spadafora
Considers the marketing and strategic challenges faced by natural beauty brands using the case of Australian-based Jurlique, which was acquired by Pola of Japan in 2011. The case opens two years later in July 2013 when Sam McKay, the chief executive officer, on a visit... View Details
- March 2014 (Revised March 2015)
- Case
Samsung Electronics: TV in an Era of Convergence
By: Karim R. Lakhani, Marco Iansiti and Kerry Herman
From the late 1990s to 2006/2007, Samsung Electronics moved from one of 170 TV manufacturers to gain dominant TV market share year over year from 2007-2013. As digital technologies increasingly converged in 2013-2014, the industry faced new questions: What was the... View Details
Keywords: Digital Innovation; Technology; Technology Management; Digital Convergence; Digital Technology; Innovation; Korea; Samsung; Television; Technological Innovation; Information Technology; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Innovation and Management; Product Development; Product Design; Electronics Industry; Korean Peninsula; Asia
- February 2014
- Case
Arcos Dorados: How to Lead and From Where
By: Krishna Palepu and Gustavo Herrero
Acros Dorados, an Argentina-based multinational, is facing new organizational challenges as it seeks to build on its recent turnaround, and grow in Brazil and Mexico. Woods Staton and his management team have to make some hard decisions on how to structure and lead the... View Details
- February 2014 (Revised August 2016)
- Case
Strava
By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Sid Misra
Strava is a new fast-growing social network for the avid cyclist and runner. The Strava case traces the entrepreneurial journey of two serial entrepreneurs who have been co-founders in a prior venture, and who have co-founded Strava 3 years ago. The protagonists must... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Cycling; Biking; Running; Sports; Technology; Mobile App; Mobile; GPS; Motivation; Behavioral Science; Founders; Term Sheet; Investment; Terms; Silicon Valley; Lifestyle; Strava; Financing; Fundraising; Angel; Valuation; Growth; Forecast; Business Startups; Business Plan; Trends; Forecasting and Prediction; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Institutional Investing; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation Leadership; Innovation Strategy; Innovation and Management; Technological Innovation; Management Succession; Growth Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Market Timing; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; California; New England
- February 2014
- Article
Learning by Supplying
By: Juan Alcacer and Joanne Oxley
Learning processes lie at the heart of our understanding of how firms build capabilities to generate and sustain competitive advantage: learning by doing, learning by exporting, learning from competitors, users, and alliance partners. In this paper we focus attention... View Details