Publications

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

09 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation

voracious consumers of theory. Every plan a manager makes, every action a manager takes, is based on some implicit understanding of what causes what and why. The problem is, managers all too frequently use a one-size-fits-all theory. But... View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor & Scott D. Anthony

17 Apr 2022
Book

How to Avoid the 'Ethical Slide' That Leads Companies Astray

while the book was in process. Today, strong ethics are a central issue for business leaders, knowing consumers are drawn to companies that do the right thing while steering clear of businesses that break ethical boundaries, Nelson says.... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

W. Earl Sasser

Earl Sasser is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and has been a member of the faculty there since 1969. He received a B.A. in Mathematics from Duke University in 1965, an MBA from the University of North Carolina in 1967, and a Ph.D. in... View Details

November 2019 (Revised April 2020)
Case

Away: Scaling a DTC Travel Brand

By: Jill Avery and Joseph B. Fuller

Away, a direct-to-consumer, digital native e-commerce seller of travel luggage, is debating how to invest its latest round of venture funding. How quickly could and should Away scale and what were the most promising growth trajectories to maximize its potential? Three... View Details

20 Aug 2014
Research & Ideas

Why the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a Social Media Blockbuster

In 2009, technology researchers at Forrester published a report entitled We Are All Media Companies Now, that looked at how publishing firms were dealing with the shift from a distribution paradigm to one based on consumption. By 2014, the paradigm is being experienced... View Details

Keywords: by John Deighton

26 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

How Paid Promos Take the Shine Off YouTube Stars (and Tips for Better Influencer Marketing)

suggests that the effect translates to an average of $10,000 over an average six-year-career influencer. “If consumers aren’t perceiving social influencers as trustworthy and authentic, much of their marketing effort might not lead to a... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin; Technology; Media & Broadcasting

February 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Technical Note

The Art and Science of Brand Valuation

By: Jill Avery

Brand valuation, the art and science of calculating the economic value accruing to a firm from its use of an intangible brand asset, yields frustratingly inconsistent, discrepant, and, therefore, controversial results. While it is widely accepted that brands are... View Details

September 2022 (Revised January 2025)
Case

The Pokémon Company: Evolving into an Everlasting Brand

By: Tomomichi Amano and Masaki Nomura

Super Bowl 50, the fiftieth annual championship game of the American National Football League played in February 2016, featured 52 commercials, and brands spent more than six million dollars each for a 30-second commercial slot. Surprisingly, the commercial that... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Growth and Development Strategy; Video Game Industry; Japan

08 Mar 2016
First Look

March 8, 2016

Consumer Neuroscience: Advances in Understanding Consumer Psychology By: Karmarkar, Uma R., and Carolyn Yoon Abstract—While the study of consumer View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

2025
Working Paper

Enhancing Treatment Effect Prediction on Privacy-Protected Data: An Honest Post-Processing Approach

By: Ta-Wei Huang and Eva Ascarza

As firms increasingly rely on customer data for personalization, concerns over privacy and regulatory compliance have grown. Local Differential Privacy (LDP) offers strong individual-level protection by injecting noise into data before collection. While... View Details

Keywords: Targeted Intervention; Conditional Average Treatment Effect Estimation; Differential Privacy; Honest Estimation; Post-processing; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior; Marketing

SSRN

Read Now

20 Nov 2019
Research & Ideas

It's No Joke: AI Beats Humans at Making You Laugh

each other for decades. I was really rooting for spouses to have an edge!” Computers make good recommendations, but do people want to listen? Businesses are investing heavily in sophisticated computer algorithms that rely on past consumer... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

February 2022
Supplement

SpartanNash Company: The Amazon Warrants (A)

By: Benjamin C. Esty, E. Scott Mayfield and Daniel Fisher

As of 12/31/21, Amazon held $22 billion of equity and warrants in related companies. In fact, it often requests a free grant of warrants when it enters into a new commercial agreement with a supplier. Over the past 20 years, Amazon has gotten warrants almost 20... View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Value Creation; Consumer Behavior; Negotiation; Distribution; Ownership; Partners and Partnerships; Business Strategy; Equity; Distribution Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States