Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(401)
- Faculty Publications (104)
- April 2015 (Revised March 2017)
- Case
Instacart and the New Wave of Grocery Startups
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
Instacart is testing an Uber-style solution to the challenge of building a home-delivered grocery business. It is backed by $220 million of venture funding. Will this model succeed where businessses like Webvan failed? What are the questions that this exploratory... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Match Your Own Price? Self-Matching as a Retailer's Multichannel Pricing Strategy
By: Pavel Kireyev, Vineet Kumar and Elie Ofek
Multichannel retailing has created several new strategic choices for firms. With respect to pricing, an important decision is whether to offer a "self-matching policy." Self-matching allows a multichannel retailer to offer the lowest of its online and in-store prices... View Details
- September 2014 (Revised March 2015)
- Case
Managing Multi-Media Audiences at WHDH (Boston)
By: Thales Teixeira and V. Kasturi Rangan
WHDH's Channel 7 News rose to the #1 position in Boston-area news broadcasting through its embrace of an innovative format and for affiliating with NBC. Since the early 2000s, however, other news programs had copied their format, and young audiences had begun to use... View Details
Keywords: Online News; Television Advertising; Attention Economics; Cross-media Efforts; Competition; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Change Management; Marketing Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions; Digital Marketing; Television Entertainment; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Boston
- August 2014
- Case
Netflix in 2011
By: Willy Shih and Stephen Kaufman
Reed Hastings founded Netflix to provide a home movie service that would do a better job satisfying customers than the traditional retail rental model. But as it encountered challenges it underwent several major strategy shifts, ultimately developing a business model... View Details
Keywords: Netflix; DVD; DVD-by-mail; Streaming; Online Entertainment; Online Video; Disruptive Innovation; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Business Model; Disruption; Operations; Service Operations; Entertainment; Film Entertainment; Television Entertainment; Media; Strategy; Business or Company Management; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Corporate Strategy; Expansion; Technology; Technology Adoption; Technology Platform; Web; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; United States
- June 2014
- Teaching Note
Google Glass
By: Thomas Eisenmann
In early 2014, business development executives at Google were formulating a distribution strategy for Glass, a wearable computer that projected information on a display viewable with an upward glance. Options, which were not mutually exclusive, included 1) continuing... 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
- April 2014 (Revised June 2014)
- Case
Google Glass
By: Thomas Eisenmann, Lauren Barley and Liz Kind
In early 2014, business development executives at Google were formulating a distribution strategy for Glass, a wearable computer that projected information on a display viewable with an upward glance. Options, which were not mutually exclusive, included 1) continuing... View Details
- November 2013
- Article
Adding Bricks to Clicks: On the Role of Physical Stores in a World of Online Shopping
By: Jill Avery, Thomas Steenburgh, John A. Deighton and Mary Caravella
Buying a product has never been easier. Consumers can shop online, over the phone or via mail order, from home or on the go, and if they want to experience touch and feel, they can also visit a "real" store. Often, one and the same retailer offers several of these... View Details
- December 2012 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
BabbaCo
By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Gaurav Jain
Having just raised a Series B financing, the case protagonist is faced with a tough decision: should she "step on the gas" and scale the customer base, or continue focusing on fine-tuning the product and business model. The case describes the various marketing channels... View Details
- Winter 2013
- Article
The New Patent Intermediaries: Platforms, Defensive Aggregators and Super-Aggregators
By: Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie
The patent market consists mainly of privately negotiated, bilateral transactions, either sales or cross-licenses, between large companies. There is no eBay, Amazon, New York Stock Exchange, or Kelley's Blue Book equivalent for patents, and when buyers and sellers do... View Details
- February 2011 (Revised December 2012)
- Case
Coca-Cola on Facebook
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
In late 2008, executives at Coca-Cola had to decide what to do with a fan-created page on Facebook that had amassed over one million followers in three months. From a legal point of view the fan-created page was in violation of Facebook's terms of service as a... View Details
- January 2011 (Revised April 2012)
- Case
BBVA Compass: Marketing Resource Allocation
By: Sunil Gupta and Joseph Davies-Gavin
BBVA Compass, the 15th largest commercial bank in the U.S., is a part of the BBVA Group of Spain, the second largest bank in Spain with $755 billion in assets. In December 2010, Frank Sottosanti, Chief Marketing Officer of BBVA Compass, was reviewing the marketing... 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
- May 2010
- Article
Bye Bye Bundles: The Unbundling of Music in Digital Channels
By: Anita Elberse
Fueled by digital distribution, unbundling is prevalent in many information industries. What is the effect of this unbundling on sales? And what bundle characteristics drive this effect? I empirically examine these questions in the context of the music industry, using... View Details
- March 2010 (Revised June 2019)
- Case
Major League Baseball Advanced Media: America's Pastime Goes Digital
By: Anita Elberse and Brett Laffel
In January 2010, Bob Bowman, chief executive officer of Major League Baseball Advanced Media -- MLB's digital arm -- is facing a number of decisions related to its 'app' for Apple's new iPad. What are the best name, price, and set of features for MLBAM's iPad app? The... View Details
- March 2010
- Background Note
Airline Travel in the U.S.
By: Sunil Gupta and Kavita Shukla
How should airlines respond to the rising share of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) as consumers increasingly search the web to buy tickets? View Details
- Article
The Cost Structure, Customer Profitability, and Retention Implications of Self-Service Distribution Channels: Evidence from Customer Behavior in an Online Banking Channel
By: Dennis Campbell and Frances X. Frei
This paper uses the context of online banking to investigate the consequences of employing self-service distribution channels to alter customer interactions with the firm. Using a sample of retail banking customers observed over a 30-month period at a large U.S. bank,... View Details
- October 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Hulu: An Evil Plot to Destroy the World?
By: Anita Elberse and Sunil Gupta
In July 2009, Jason Kilar, the chief executive officer of Hulu, is debating whether the online video aggregator should move away from a purely advertising-supported model, and whether it should participate in an industry-wide initiative to develop and test... View Details
- July – August 2008
- Article
Should You Invest in the Long Tail?
By: Anita Elberse
The blockbuster strategy is a time-honored approach, particularly in media and entertainment. When space is limited on store shelves and in traditional distribution channels, producers tend to focus on a few likely best sellers, hoping that one or two big hits will... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
A Taste For Obscurity: An Individual-Level Examination of 'Long Tail' Consumption
By: Anita Elberse
Because online retailers are often able to provide products in a more cost-efficient manner than bricks-and-mortar stores, online channels are characterized by a vast assortment of products. Proponents of the "long tail" principle recently argued that the demand for... View Details