Publications

November–December 2020
Article

Lifting the Veil: The Benefits of Cost Transparency

By: Bhavya Mohan, Ryan W. Buell and Leslie K. John

Firms do not typically disclose information on their costs to produce a good to consumers. However, we provide evidence of when and why doing so can increase consumers’ purchase interest. Specifically, building on the psychology of disclosure and trust, we posit that... View Details

Keywords: Cost Transparency; Disclosure; Field Experiment; Cost; Trust; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

17 Jun 2016
Op-Ed

Companies Need to Start Marketing Security to Customers

good enough. The range of safety risks has expanded and consumers everywhere are trying new products and experiences they aren't familiar with. Marketers must do more to educate consumers about safe View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Entertainment & Recreation

20 Nov 2012
First Look

First Look: November 20

rational for a platform to limit the number of applications available on it. Our model is based on the observation that even if users prefer application variety, applications often also exhibit direct network effects. When there are direct network effects, users prefer... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

February 2024 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

Travelogo: Understanding Customer Journeys

By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei Huang

Teaching Note for HBS Exercise 524-044. The exercise aims to teach students about 1) Customer Segmentation; and 2) constructing buying personas, 3) Get actionable insights from clickstream data. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Analysis; Analytics and Data Science; Marketing Strategy; Segmentation; Consumer Behavior; Travel Industry; United States

October 2005 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Museum of Fine Arts Boston

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Marie Bell

One of Boston's main cultural attractions, the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), has experienced a steady decline of its core audience over the last decade. The museum's executive director attempted to bridge the shortfall by staging new, innovative, special exhibitions,... View Details

Keywords: Product Marketing; Growth Management; Innovation Leadership; Capital; Financing and Loans; Service Operations; Consumer Behavior

Educators

July 2004 (Revised December 2004)
Case

RelayHealth

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III and Elizabeth Kind

RelayHealth provides secure, online communications for doctors, patients, and health plans. The company's services include online consultations, prescription renewals, and appointment scheduling. RelayHealth's business model derives subscription revenue from doctors... View Details

Keywords: Communication Technology; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Growth and Development Strategy; Health Industry; Telecommunications Industry

Educators

2024
Working Paper

Navigating Software Vulnerabilities: Eighteen Years of Evidence from Medium and Large U.S. Organizations

By: Raviv Murciano-Goroff, Ran Zhuo and Shane Greenstein

How prevalent are severe software vulnerabilities, how fast do software users respond to the availability of secure versions, and what determines the variance in the installation distribution? Using the largest dataset ever assembled on user updates, tracking server... View Details

Keywords: Cybersecurity; Applications and Software; Technology Adoption; Consumer Behavior

April 1999 (Revised August 2004)
Case

Tarnished Rings? Olympic Games Sponsorship Issues

By: John A. Clendenin and Stephen A. Greyser

Focuses on the impacts for Olympic sponsor companies of the bribery allegations related to the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee's successful bid for the 2002 Winter Games. The spread of the scandal to the International Olympic Committee board members and the recent... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; Crisis Management; Marketing Channels; Consumer Behavior; Value Creation; Sports Industry

12 Oct 2006
First Look

First Look: October 12, 2006

worldwide for exquisite design of consumer electronics products, strives to better integrate software design into its traditional physical product design processes to meet the demands of a post-iPod world. Details the Bang & Olufsen... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

November 2005 (Revised August 2006)
Background Note

When Investing and Social Objectives Meet

By: Gregory S. Miller, Vincent Marie Dessain and Anders Sjoman

Introduces students to a group of investors and stakeholders who evaluate firms at least partially on factors other than eventual investment payoff. Focuses on investors who evaluate and attempt to impact firms' ethical, corporate governance, or other "societal"... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Investment; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Business and Shareholder Relations

Educators

21 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Don’t Get Buried in Customer Data—Use It

probe beneath customer preferences and behaviors to uncover the attitudes that provide a more solid understanding of customer loyalty. Why You Need Both Individual And Aggregated Data One-to-one marketing, a term coined by Don Peppers and... View Details

Keywords: by Jean Ayers

Article

De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Heterogeneity in Preferences and Optimal Redistribution

By: Benjamin B Lockwood and Matthew Weinzierl

The prominent but unproven intuition that preference heterogeneity reduces redistribution in a standard optimal tax model is shown to hold under the plausible condition that the distribution of preferences for consumption relative to leisure rises, in terms of... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Income; Decision Choices and Conditions; Consumer Behavior; Taxation; Microeconomics; Macroeconomics

13 Jun 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Learning to Become a Taste Expert

Keywords: by Kathryn A. Latour and John A. Deighton; Food & Beverage

19 Oct 2017
Research & Ideas

How Charitable Organizations Can Thwart Excuses for Not Giving

describes in a new working paper, The Better Is the Enemy of the Good. In fact, Exley argues that based on her research, people look for any excuse to avoid giving a donation and then rationalize their skinflint behavior to avoid feeling... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

April 8, 2024
Article

Loyalty Programs May Limit Competition, and They Could Be Pushing Prices up for Everyone

By: Alexandru Nichifor and Scott Duke Kominers

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Competitive Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Brands and Branding

Read Now

March 2022
Article

Learning to Rank an Assortment of Products

By: Kris Ferreira, Sunanda Parthasarathy and Shreyas Sekar

We consider the product ranking challenge that online retailers face when their customers typically behave as “window shoppers”: they form an impression of the assortment after browsing products ranked in the initial positions and then decide whether to continue... View Details

Keywords: Online Learning; Product Ranking; Assortment Optimization; Learning; Internet and the Web; Product Marketing; Consumer Behavior; E-commerce

2014
Article

Drivers and Dynamics of Online Word of Mouth

By: Frank Nagle and Christoph Riedl

Keywords: Online Word Of Mouth; Online Communities; Online Product Reviews; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Marketing Reference Programs; Digital Marketing