Publications

2024
Working Paper

The Impact of Culture Consistency on Subunit Outcomes

By: Jasmijn Bol, Robert Grasser, Serena Loftus and Tatiana Sandino

We examine the association between subunit culture consistency—defined as the congruence between the organizational values espoused by top management and those perceived and practiced by subunit employees—and subunit outcomes. Using data from 235 subunits of a... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Culture; Employees; Creativity; Satisfaction

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09 Dec 2015
Research Event

How Do You Predict Demand and Set Prices For Products Never Sold Before?

predict demand with prescriptive analytics to make tactical decisions?” she said to a packed audience of executives, data scientists, and scholars. “I believe the answer lies in data.” Ferreira presented field work she and colleagues... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail; Retail

September 2020 (Revised June 2023)
Exercise

Artea: Designing Targeting Strategies

By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli

This collection of exercises aims to teach students about 1)Targeting Policies; and 2)Algorithmic bias in marketing—implications, causes, and possible solutions. Part (A) focuses on A/B testing analysis and targeting. Parts (B),(C),(D) Introduce algorithmic bias. The... View Details

July 2020
Case

Karen Bruck: Growing Managers at MercadoLibre

By: Joshua D. Margolis, Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal

Karen Bruck, Corporate Sales Director at MercadoLibre, Latin America's largest e-commerce platform, needs to make a decision about one of her managers, who, while analytically savvy, has an approach that does not fit in with the company's culture. View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Employee Relationship Management; Decision Making; Interpersonal Communication; Organizational Culture; Retail Industry; Latin America; Argentina

Antonio (Toni) Moreno is the Sicupira Family Associate Professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit. He teaches courses related to technology and operations management in the MBA, executive, and doctoral programs. Before joining HBS, he was an... View Details

Keywords: retailing; retailing; retailing

07 Dec 1999
Research & Ideas

Henry Heinz and Brand Creation in the Late Nineteenth Century

was not new to the late nineteenth century. Rural consumers had long bartered butter, eggs, horseradish, and other foodstuffs with storekeepers in exchange for sugar, coffee, and other items that could not be made at home. 55 Retailers... View Details

Keywords: by Nancy F. Koehn

15 Dec 2015
Blog Post

One MBA's Path to Boston Consulting Group

These days it seems like many MBAs are focused on launching the next big startup. Entrepreneurship is awesome but you might call me a traditionalist. Consulting was my goal for my summer internship from the start. I have always been View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products / Retail; Consumer Products / Retail

October 2021 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Customer-Centric Design with Artificial Intelligence: Commonwealth Bank

By: Karim R. Lakhani, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Jin Hyun Paik and Steven Randazzo

As Commonwealth Bank (CommBank) CEO Matt Comyn delivered the full financial year results in August 2021 over videoconference, it took less than two minutes for him to make his first mention of the organization's Customer Engagement Engine (CEE), the AI-driven customer... View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Customer-centricity; Banks and Banking; Customer Focus and Relationships; Technological Innovation; Transformation; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Performance; AI and Machine Learning; Financial Services Industry; Australia

20 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 20

be complemented with quantitative analyses. The development of quantitative methods for the study of business models, however, has trailed that of their qualitative peers. In this paper, we develop an analytical framework based on the... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

Ayelet Israeli

Ayelet Israeli is the Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School Marketing Unit. She is the co-founder of the Customer Intelligence Lab at the Digital Data Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard Business School. She teaches... View Details

Keywords: retailing; retailing; retailing; retailing

September 2010
Article

Do Inventory and Gross Margin Data Improve Sales Forecasts for U.S. Public Retailers?

By: Saravanan Kesavan, Vishal Gaur and Ananth Raman

Firm-level sales forecasts for retailers can be improved if we incorporate cost of goods sold, inventory, and gross margin (defined here as the ratio of sales to cost of goods sold) as three endogenous variables. We construct a simultaneous equations model, estimated... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Forecasting and Prediction; Distribution; Goods and Commodities; Cost; Public Sector; Profit; Mathematical Methods; Analytics and Data Science; Retail Industry; United States

Find at Harvard

16 Feb 2016
First Look

February 16, 2016

answer two key questions. Can anyone, including MBAs and executives with superb analytical skills, learn to think more innovatively? If so, how might we go about developing these skills? Through close collaboration with individuals from... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

June 2023
Simulation

Artea Dashboard and Targeting Policy Evaluation

By: Ayelet Israeli and Eva Ascarza

Companies deploy A/B experiments to gain valuable insights about their customers in order to answer strategic business problems. In marketing, A/B tests are often used to evaluate marketing interventions intended to generate incremental outcomes for the firm. The Artea... View Details

10 Apr 2018
First Look

First Look at New Research, April 10, 2018

Spring 2018 MIT Sloan Management Review The Store Is Dead—Long Live the Store By: Bell, David R., Santiago Gallino, and Antonio Moreno Abstract—In this article, we pursue two interconnected themes: the expansion of online-first retailers... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

19 Aug 2008
First Look

First Look: August 19, 2008

Working PapersExploring Inventory Trends in Six U.S. Retail Segments Authors:Adenekan (Nick) Dedeke and Noel H. Watson Abstract Our paper describes inventory trends for both public and private U.S. firms in six View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

03 Dec 2014
HBS Seminar

Ginger Jin, University of Maryland

04 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 4

tribal governments, the history of tribal sovereignty, the origins of Indian gaming, the legal framework that governs tribal gaming activities, as well as an analytic approach to negotiations, this paper explains the Foxwoods deal and its... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

January 1995 (Revised November 1996)
Case

Avalon Information Services, Inc.

By: Lynn S. Paine and Wilda White

The Privacy Review Committee of Avalon Information Services must decide how to deal with concerns voiced by its retail supermarket customers about the privacy of consumer data collected through Avalon's point-of-sale data collection program. One customer is proposing... View Details

Keywords: Mission and Purpose; Safety; Demand and Consumers; Rights; Analytics and Data Science; Information Technology; Ethics; Information Industry