Purchase Decisions - Publications - Faculty & Research

30 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

Entering the Age of Alliances

in K-12 education, has brought to a collaboration with Hewlett Packard (HP) high credibility and access to key curriculum decision makers in the public education system. A leading designer, manufacturer, and service provider of products... View Details

Keywords: by James Austin

11 Dec 2006
Research & Ideas

Fixing Price Tag Confusion

rental charge and a charge for the remote. Do partitioned prices help the consumer make an informed decision or just add to his or her confusion? Do partitioned prices increase demand? Is an online grocer better off presenting a customer... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Retail

18 Mar 2008
First Look

First Look: March 18, 2008

Working PapersWhere Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained Authors:Shawn A. Cole, John Thompson, and Peter Tufano Abstract In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

10 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Cable TV: From Community Antennas to Wired Cities

sets. To demonstrate the sets, he secured informal permission from his employer to string an electrical wire from a local hilltop to serve as an antenna for the reception of signals from Philadelphia stations. When customers who purchased... View Details

Keywords: by Thomas R. Eisenmann; Media & Broadcasting; Consumer Products; Entertainment & Recreation

09 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

Warring Algorithms Could Be Driving Up Consumer Prices

antitrust authorities, who fear they could ultimately harm consumers by raising prices above typical competitive levels. It doesn’t seem too long ago when a price change was a major strategic decision for companies, requiring extensive... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail

26 Aug 2014
First Look

First Look: August 26

that this deterrence effect is stronger for smaller companies and in institutional contexts featuring stronger activist pressures and stronger norms of corporate transparency. Examining the decisions of 2,043 firms headquartered in 42... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

21 May 2007
Research & Ideas

Fixing the Marketing-CEO Disconnect

collaboration with Harvard Business School's Educational Technology Group. McGovern will be using the product in the Advanced Management Program "Managing for Senior Executives" program in June. The program has been made available for View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

16 Apr 2007
Research & Ideas

Delivering the Digital Goods: iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer

Apple boasts that more than one billion songs have been purchased from its iTunes music service. That sounds like a great number—until you consider that an estimated ten million users of Internet-based peer-to-peer (p2p) networks are... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

12 Sep 2017
First Look

First Look at New Research and Ideas, September 12, 2017

2017 Harvard Business Review The Real Reason Uber Is Giving Up in China By: Kirby, William C. Abstract—The article examines the role of the Chinese government in transport firm Uber's decision to sell its China operation to a rival... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

09 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

A Diagnostic for Disruptive Innovation

why people aren't consuming. Sometimes they just don't have a job they are seeking to get done. For example, many people can afford to purchase personal computers but choose not to because there are no jobs that are important enough to... View Details

Keywords: by Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson & Matt Eyring

21 Dec 2009
Research & Ideas

Good Banks, Bad Banks, and Government’s Role as Fixer

the failure of many other large institutions. Most of the 600 institutions recapitalized by the federal government over the last year do not satisfy either criterion. A lot of bailout decisions were made ad hoc without a clear rationale.... View Details

Keywords: by Roger Thompson; Banking; Financial Services

05 Feb 2001
Research & Ideas

The Ten Deadly Mistakes of Wanna-Dots

policies, purchasing procedures. Allocate just enough resources to keep it alive but not enough to risk its becoming an innovator — because that would require more investment. Under the banner of decentralization and business unit... View Details

Keywords: by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

29 Feb 2016
HBS Case

Bigbelly's Big Bet on the Digital Trash Can

applications from standalone software products purchased at the store to something companies or individuals license annually over the Internet. More recently, companies have started selling “anything as a service” (XaaS, pronounced... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Energy

02 Jun 2014
Research & Ideas

Excerpt: ‘A Social Strategy’

numbers, many of those responsible for social engagement online reached out to key decision makers in the company to try to obtain an ever-larger budget for such efforts. Invariably, however, they are met with the same question: "How much... View Details

19 May 2014
Research & Ideas

Why Companies Should Compete for Your Privacy

Special Offers program. Why are these types of programs important? A: Amazon's Special Offers program is significant because it explicitly acknowledges that certain forms of information exploitation are disliked by consumers. The program subsidizes the View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Consumer Products

19 Dec 2006
First Look

First Look: December 19, 2006

fully extended attraction models (Cooper and Nakanishi 1988). Utilizing a database of store-level scanner data for 25 categories and 127 brands of frequently purchased branded consumer goods, we find that about 18 percent of a total of... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

25 Jun 2014
Lessons from the Classroom

FIELD Trip: Conquering the Gap Between Knowing and Doing

of 1949 Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. "The team discovered that having access to laptops and finding uses for them wasn't the main problem. A greater problem was financing the purchase and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Education

23 Aug 2010
Research & Ideas

The Drive to Acquire’s Impact on Globalization

reward their own drives." Inspired by the writings and insights of Charles Darwin, specifically his 1871 masterwork The Descent of Man, Lawrence's new book, Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership, offers managers an integrated understanding of the... View Details

Keywords: by Paul R. Lawrence

12 Apr 2010
Research & Ideas

One Report: Better Strategy through Integrated Reporting

a moment in time of its financial position. In buying a share on any stock exchange, the purchaser makes an assessment of the economic value of a company. The assessment considers the value of matters not accounted for, such as future... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

22 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

The Most Important Management Trends of the (Still Young) Twenty-First Century

we could only dream of just a few years ago, ranging from unobtrusive physiological and neurological measures to massive databases on billions of individuals' decisions about consuming, saving, investing, and living their lives. As... View Details