Publications

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Keeping Your Balance With Customers

From product push to customer pull, technology has vastly reshaped the business transaction—and in turn, the customer's place in the value chain. Today, managing the customer... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton

January – February 2011
Article

Creating Shared Value

By: Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer

The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business has been criticized as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely thought to be prospering at the expense of their communities. Trust in business has fallen to new... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Economic Growth; Economic Systems; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Environmental Sustainability; Trust; Human Needs; Welfare; Competitive Advantage; Value Creation

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27 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Customer Loyalty Programs That Work

The customer rewards cards that clutter wallets and clog key chains of many a shopper may soon be no more, as retailers move from physical to digital (read: mobile apps) forms of loyalty program member identification. It's a smart... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Retail

16 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

own capabilities with those of its suppliers and partners to address some of those problems. The goal is to bring value to customers in ways that are beneficial for them while also creating additional View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products

2003
Class Lecture

Why Customers Matter

By: W. Earl Sasser Jr.

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain

June 2012
Article

Pricing to Create Shared Value

By: Marco Bertini and John T. Gourville

Many companies are in competition with their customers to extract as much value as possible from every transaction. Pricing is their weapon of choice, and consumers fight back by rooting out and disseminating pricing policies that seem unfair. The problem is that... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Marketing Strategy; Price; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Relationship Management; Value Creation; Fairness

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Read Now

04 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

Don’t Lose Money With Customers

products and services to each customer over time. Second, they need to be clear about how to sell the same product or service simultaneously to customers that have very different valuations of the firms'... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

25 Jul 2005
Research & Ideas

An Organization Your Customers Understand

viewing everyone as a customer, you fundamentally change the nature of the value proposition that exists between you and the entities with whom you interact."2 This theme is echoed in another recent book, Everyone Is a Customer:... View Details

Keywords: by Robert Simons

20 Dec 2017
Lessons from the Classroom

How to Design a Better Customer Experience

Click HereHarvard Business School Professor Stefan Thomke describes how his Executive Education students use LEGO blocks to design customer experiences. (Video by Executive Education) Why do some product or service experiences have enough... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Health; Entertainment & Recreation

December 2013
Article

Measuring the Value of Process Improvement Initiatives in a Preoperative Assessment Center using Time-driven Activity-based Costing

By: Katy E. French, Heidi W. Albright, John C. Frenzel, James R. Incalcaterra, Augustin C. Rubio, Jessica F. Jones and Thomas W. Feeley

Background: The value and impact of process improvement initiatives are difficult to quantify. We describe the use of time-driven activity-based costing(TDABC)in a clinical setting to quantify the value of process improvements in terms of cost, time and personnel... View Details

Keywords: Quality Improvement; Value Agenda; Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing; Accounting; Health; Measurement and Metrics; Value; Health Industry; North and Central America

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08 Aug 2005
Research & Ideas

A Balanced Scorecard Approach To Measure Customer Profitability

The Balanced Scorecard introduced customer metrics into performance management systems. Scorecards feature all manner of wonderful objectives relating to the customer value... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

July 2005 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Understanding Customer Profitability at Charles Schwab

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez

Charles Schwab is transforming into a customer-centric organization. Central to this cultural and organizational change is the utilization of customer profitability at different decision-making levels. Examines several technical aspects of the ABC cost system, as well... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Motivation and Incentives; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Activity Based Costing and Management; Decision Making; Organizational Culture; Profit; Performance Evaluation; Budgets and Budgeting

07 Mar 2007
Research & Ideas

How Do You Value a “Free” Customer?

Businesspeople understand that not all customers are created equal—the 80-20 rule suggests that over time a small percentage of a company's customer base can generate a high percentage of its sales and... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Web Services

05 Aug 2010
What Do You Think?

What Is Customer Opinion Good For?

Summing Up Customer inputs to the product development process count, but in different ways and at different times, according to many responding to this month's column. As Alexander Gat put it, competing and pioneering products "should... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett; Technology

November 2011 (Revised August 2012)
Background Note

Customer Discovery and Validation for Entrepreneurs

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Thomas Eisenmann and Steven G. Blank

Provides practical guidelines for conducting market research to explore and validate demand for entrepreneurial offering. Explains how the research objectives of entrepreneurs might differ from those relevant to managers evaluating product or service offerings to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Entrepreneurship

July 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Allianz Customer Centricity: Is Simplicity the Way Forward?

By: Eva Ascarza and Emilie Billaud

This case explores the tradeoffs between product personalization and simplicity as companies grow. The case presents an opportunity to understand whether and how each of these approaches enables and/or limits companies’ abilities to provide customer satisfaction while... View Details

Keywords: Simplicity; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customization and Personalization; Customer Satisfaction; Performance Efficiency; Strategy; Insurance Industry; Europe; Germany

June 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Signet Jewelers: Assessing Customer Financing Risk

By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos, Suraj Srinivasan and Monica Baraldi

Marc Cohodes, a renowned short seller, has identified weaknesses in Signet's business strategy, which he argues is heavily reliant on providing loans to customers with subprime credit scores. He believes that the company accounts for its receivables portfolio using... View Details

Keywords: Short Selling; Bad Debt Expense; Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Finance; Financing and Loans; Valuation; Retail Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

June 2013
Case

Olympic Rent-A-Car U.S.: Customer Loyalty Battles

By: John Deighton and James T. Kindley

The marketing and operations managers for Olympic Rent-A-Car meet to decide how to respond to changes in the loyalty rewards program at the market-leading competitor. The competitor's program gives awards based on dollars spent instead of days rented and eliminates... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Strategy; Marketing; Operations; Auto Industry; Service Industry