Direct To Consumer Marketing - Publications - Faculty & Research

17 Jun 2016
News

E-tailers won't be able to push brick-and-mortar businesses towards irrelevance

September–October 2020
Article

Managing Churn to Maximize Profits

By: Aurelie Lemmens and Sunil Gupta

Customer defection threatens many industries, prompting companies to deploy targeted, proactive customer retention programs and offers. A conventional approach has been to target customers either based on their predicted churn probability or their responsiveness to a... View Details

Keywords: Churn Management; Defection Prediction; Loss Function; Stochastic Gradient Boosting; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Profit

Citation

SSRN

Find at Harvard

01 Sep 2010
News

Dare to be Different

to do something extraordinary and every other brand in the market simply emulates it, those other brands lose, the marketplace loses, consumers lose, and you end up destroying... View Details

Keywords: Jeff Cruikshank;Youngme Moon; Advertising, Public Relations, and Related Services; Professional Services

14 Oct 2015
News

When People Pay Attention to Video Ads and Why

16 Jul 2016
News

As our gender spectrum blurs, brands fight to keep the lines drawn

July 2022
Teaching Note

Arçelik (A), (B): From a Dealer Network to an Omnichannel Experience

By: Ayelet Israeli, Fares Khrais and Menna Hassan

Arçelik Turkey, the country’s market leader in household appliances, was at an omnichannel crossroads in January 2020. Arçelik was a B2B player utilizing a dealership network with an umbrella of brands and had one of the largest brick-and-mortar store networks in... View Details

Citation

Purchase

23 Jun 2008
Research & Ideas

Innovative Ways to Encourage Personal Savings

have legs—and whether they generate new savings. On the credit side, I think the presentation of information to credit card borrowers may influence the way they use their credit. We are currently working on a field experiment View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services

June 2016
Teaching Note

Filene's Basement: Inside a Fired Customer's Relationship

By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier

How, in a business climate in which building relationships with customers has dominated both managerial thought and marketing budgets, could Filene's Basement have fired a loyal customer, one who was formally and informally recognized as a best customer? This case... View Details

Keywords: CRM; Customer Profitability Analysis; Customer Lifetime Value; Consumer Behavior; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Customer Focus and Relationships; Brands and Branding; Customer Relationship Management; Retail Industry; United States

Citation

Purchase

Web

Ways to Give Today - Alumni

Donor name, degree/year, and intended gift purpose (fund name) Stock Transfer When giving long-term appreciated stock to HBS, donors may take a charitable income tax deduction for its mean fair market value... View Details

04 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage

the business environment cause economic shifts that destabilize industries, companies, and even countries. They allow new entrants or forward-thinking established players to introduce innovations—in products, markets, or processes—that... View Details

Keywords: by Lynda M. Applegate

September 2013
Exercise

An Exercise in Designing a Travel Coffee Mug

By: Elie Ofek and Michael Norris

In recent years design has emerged as a critical factor in the success of many new products. This case exercise provides a hands-on way to experience the design process and offers a structured approach for incorporating key considerations that can aid in effective... View Details

Keywords: New Product Development; Innovation; Market Research; Competitive Positioning; Design; Product Development; Consumer Products Industry

Citation

Purchase

November 2023
Case

From Imitation to Innovation: Zongshen Industrial Group (Abridged)

By: Willy Shih and Nancy Dai

Like other small shops based in Chongqing, China, Zongshen Industrial Group started by assembling motorcycles from "standard" parts. The quality of its early products was good enough for rural Chinese buyers, though wealthier consumers usually purchased premium... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Competitive Strategy; Supply Chain; Product Positioning; Manufacturing Industry; Motorcycle Industry; China

Citation

Educators

Purchase

05 Aug 2013
Research & Ideas

To Buy Happiness, Purchase an Experience

Video directed and produced by Joanie Tobin Conventional wisdom says that money can't buy happiness. Behavioral science begs to differ. In fact, research shows that money can make us happier—but only if we... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

April 2020
Teaching Note

Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community

By: Jill Avery

Teaching Note for HBS No. 519-022. Flush with cash from its Series C fundraise, cult beauty brand Glossier considers its next phase of growth, facing critical decisions on how to allocate its capital to support various marketing communications and distribution... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Crowdsourcing; CRM; Startup; Direct-to-consumer; DTC; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Customer Relationship Management; Venture Capital; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Social Media; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; United States

Citation

Purchase

23 Sep 2022
Research & Ideas

8 Strategies to Sustain Business Innovation

help leaders more successfully innovate and change in their industries as they parse mixed messages about the global economy, with rampant inflation wearing on consumers and investors preparing for recession. Productive Tensions covers... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

02 May 2025
Blog Post

How to Work with Search Firms

Instead of reaching out to a general firm inbox, find the partner who leads the practice area most relevant to you or the associates who support that partner. For example, a practice area might focus... View Details

01 Jun 2009
News

Too Big To Fail

Capitol Hill. The Case for More Regulation Looking at the historical record, Moss makes a strong case that targeted government regulation of financial markets has worked in the past to lower risk and instill... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; federal bailouts; Credit Intermediation and Related Activities; Finance

March 2006 (Revised November 2006)
Case

China: To Float or Not To Float? (D)- Bank of America's Strategic Investment in China Construction Bank

By: Laura Alfaro, Rafael M. Di Tella and Ingrid Vogel

With its $3 billion investment in Chinese state bank China Construction Bank, Bank of America--the second U.S. bank behind Citigroup in terms of assets and market capitalization--was one of several foreign banks directly participating in China's banking sector reform.... View Details

Keywords: Currency Exchange Rate; Banks and Banking; Foreign Direct Investment; International Relations; Banking Industry; China; United States

Citation

Educators

Purchase

29 Sep 2008
Research & Ideas

How Economics May Lead to Better Football Games

increased," write Roth, Fréchette, and Ünver. Their paper, "Unraveling Yields Inefficient Matchings: Evidence from Post-Season College Football Bowls," is available for download [pdf]. According to the authors, "The present paper... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Sports

Forthcoming
Article

An AI Method to Score Celebrity Visual Potential from Human Faces

By: Flora Feng, Shunyuan Zhang, Xiao Liu, Kannan Srinivasan and Cait Lamberton

It has long been a mantra of marketing practice that, particularly in low-involvement situations, spokespeople should be physically attractive. This paper suggests there is a higher probability of gaining fame and influence (i.e., celebrity potential) than is captured... View Details

Keywords: Personal Characteristics; AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing