Consumer Demand - Publications - Faculty & Research

December 2015 (Revised September 2016)
Supplement

ANA (B)

By: Doug J. Chung and Mayuka Yamazaki

All Nippon Airways (ANA) became the largest airline in Japan in 2013. Having been designated as a domestic carrier by the Japanese government till the mid-1980s and Japan being the sixth largest domestic airline market, two-thirds of ANA’s passenger revenue came from... View Details

Keywords: Demand and Consumers; Analysis; Economics; Price; Marketing Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Product; Policy; Air Transportation Industry; Japan

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28 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

Keep or Cut Workers? How Companies Reacted to the COVID-19 Crisis

companies that endured layoffs will need more time to rebuild their workforces—a problem many retailers and restaurants now face as they struggle to meet increased consumer demand with fewer employees.... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

September 2012 (Revised January 2013)
Case

J.C. Penney's 'Fair and Square' Pricing Strategy

By: Elie Ofek and Jill Avery

As a he gets ready to release 2nd quarter 2012 results, Ron Johnson, the new CEO of department store J.C. Penney, is reconsidering the dramatic changes he initiated for the business model and brand image of his company. A new pricing scheme he put in place in February,... View Details

Keywords: Change Management; Consumer Behavior; Management Teams; Business Model; Marketing Strategy; Price; Brands and Branding; Decision Making; Retail Industry; United States

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21 Jul 2010
Research & Ideas

HBS Faculty Debate Financial Reform Legislation

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act slated to be signed this week by U.S. President Barack Obama has been called the most sweeping set of rules for banks and Wall Street since the Great Depression. But what do... View Details

Keywords: by Staff

02 May 2005
Research & Ideas

Four VCs on Evaluating Opportunities

that provides new functionality previously unseen, we call the brave new world model. Here, the market size and demand are really unknown. These often are in the consumer sector. Netscape, Yahoo!, and the... View Details

Keywords: by Lauren Barley

March–April 2023
Article

Pricing for Heterogeneous Products: Analytics for Ticket Reselling

By: Michael Alley, Max Biggs, Rim Hariss, Charles Herrmann, Michael Lingzhi Li and Georgia Perakis

Problem definition: We present a data-driven study of the secondary ticket market. In particular, we are primarily concerned with accurately estimating price sensitivity for listed tickets. In this setting, there are many issues including endogeneity, heterogeneity in... View Details

Keywords: Price; Demand and Consumers; AI and Machine Learning; Investment Return; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Sports Industry

24 Jul 2017
Research & Ideas

People Have an Irrational Need to Complete 'Sets' of Things

Credit: Martin Barraud Here’s a tip for persuading people to finish more tasks, buy more products, or donate more money: Simply present assignments, requests, or items as arbitrary sets, rather than as individual units. New research reveals that people are... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

19 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Birth of the American Salesman

some cases, and even thousands in others, to create demand for their products. These goods, all pushed by aggressive salesmanship, distinguished the American economy by their early appearance and widespread purchase. British industry,... View Details

Keywords: by Laura Linard

August 2013 (Revised July 2025)
Case

Amazon in 2025

By: Sunil Gupta and Margaret L. Rodriguez

Amazon launched its website in July 1995 to sell books online and by 2020 it has grown to become a digital giant with over $280 billion in annual sales. A large part of its growth came from expanding into a variety of businesses that some see as unrelated. Has it... View Details

Keywords: Platforms; Complements; Showrooming; Ecosystem; Growth Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Network Effects; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Competitive Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Digital Platforms; Retail Industry; Publishing Industry

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01 Jun 2023
News

Pet Project

beginning was that the only way DTC physical goods make sense, as a venture-fundable, multiple-X return on your investment business, is if you can achieve the strong lifetime value (LTV) to customer-acquisition-cost (CAC) ratio that View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade; Sporting Goods, Hobby, Musical Instrument, and Book Stores; Retail Trade

18 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 18, 2009

must choose to improve an old technology (steel) or to develop a new material (carbon fiber). The decision must take into account a complicated context: increased demand for the "old" steel products made in Italy, increasing... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

01 Dec 2023
News

Rounding the Bend

increasingly demanding more accountability and transparency. “I’m actually quite proud of how the industry is coming together.” McClay has filled myriad roles within the fashion sector: first on the European View Details

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade; Apparel Manufacturing; Manufacturing

Web

Health Care - Faculty & Research

focuses on how management principles and best practices from other industries can be applied; how the process of innovation can be improved; how principles of strategy and consumer choice can be utilized; how information technology can... View Details

07 May 2020
Research & Ideas

The One Good Thing Caused by COVID-19: Innovation

pandemic. An increase in risk perception makes consumers more willing to pay for safety features, which, in turn, provides producers greater incentives to develop and commercialize technologies that address consumers' View Details

Keywords: by Hong Luo and Alberto Galasso

January–February 2019
Article

Why Some Platforms Thrive and Others Don't

By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti

In the digital economy, scale is no guarantee of continued success. After all, the same factors that help an online platform expand quickly—such as the low cost of adding new customers—work for challengers too. What, then, allows platforms to fight off rivals and grow... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Competition; Network Effects; Competitive Strategy

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July 2013
Case

Montreaux Chocolate USA: Are Americans Ready for Healthy Dark Chocolate?

By: John A. Quelch and Diane Badame

Andrea Torres, director of new product development at a high-end chocolate confectionery company, leads her team through a carefully sequenced program of market research to support the development and launch of a new product, healthy dark chocolate with fruit. This is... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Food; Consumer Behavior; Nutrition; Product Launch; Product Development; Food and Beverage Industry; Switzerland; United States

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21 Nov 2015
HBS Case

HBS Cases: Stella McCartney Combines High Fashion with Environmental Values

the context of luxury is just fascinating because on the one hand they seem very contradictory, luxury and sustainability. Luxury for many people is all about excessiveness and waste. “Such products do not feel luxurious to more ethically and environmentally concerned... View Details

Keywords: by Brian Kenny; Fashion

16 Mar 2009
Research & Ideas

When the Internet Runs Out of IP Addresses

just numbers, and that it's odd to have to pay for a number. With prices stuck very close to zero, and demand steady and growing, economic incentives invite exhaustion. Q: What happens if nothing is done and we run out of addresses? Does... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Telecommunications

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

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April 2014 (Revised June 2015)
Case

Making stickK Stick: The Business of Behavioral Economics

By: Leslie John, Michael Norton and Michael Norris

Email mking@hbs.edu for a courtesy copy.

stickK.com, a website that uses behavioral economics to help users achieve their goals, must choose between a direct-to-consumer or business-to-business model. The case... View Details