Direct To Consumer Marketing - Publications - Faculty & Research

January 2019 (Revised February 2019)
Supplement

The a2 Milk Company

By: Benjamin C. Esty, Daniel Fisher and Greg Saldutte

The a2 Milk Company (a2MC) became the most valuable company listed on the New Zealand stock exchange in 2018 by capitalizing on a biochemical discovery related to the protein composition of cow's milk. Because many people find the A1 protein difficult to digest, and... View Details

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20 Jan 2016
Research & Ideas

Maybe Uber isn't God's Gift to Mankind

up,” says Benjamin G. Edelman, an associate professor in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets unit at Harvard Business School whose research focuses on consumer protection related View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Transportation; Insurance

29 Feb 2024
Blog Post

IFC India: JSW Steel and Cement and the Quest to Capture Carbon in Hard to Abate Sectors

Utilization: there are two main challenges in how to utilize the captured carbon. The first is converting it into usable products at a competitive price. The second is finding a market View Details

November 2016 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Mark43

By: Thomas Eisenmann, Mitch Weiss and Halah AlQahtani

The founders of Mark43, an early-stage startup that provides software for law enforcement agencies, must decide whether to bid on a request for proposals (RFP) from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). On the one hand, LAPD would be a second large and influential... View Details

Keywords: Start-up; Software Applications; Government Markets; Rapid Growth Stage; Public Entrepreneurship; Entrepreneurship; Public Sector; Business Startups; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; United States; New York (city, NY)

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10 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

COVID-19 Lessons: Social Media Can Nudge More People to Get Vaccinated

co-leads the Platform Lab at Harvard Business School, is continuing his collaboration with Athey, who directs the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford, and Wernerfelt, who is leaving Meta to start a... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis; Health; Technology

March 2021
Article

Active Choice, Implicit Defaults, and the Incentive to Choose

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

Home-delivered prescriptions have no delivery charge and lower copayments than prescriptions picked up at a pharmacy. Nevertheless, when home delivery is offered on an opt-in basis, the take-up rate is only 6%. We study a program that makes active choice of either home... View Details

Keywords: Active Choice; Defaults; Implicit Defaults; Incentives; Consumer Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Motivation and Incentives

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23 Nov 2020
Research & Ideas

COVID Was Supposed to Increase Bankruptcies. Instead, They've Gone Down.

Bankruptcy filings in the United States were expected to soar during this year’s economic recession, induced by COVID-19. Instead, they dropped 27 percent year-over-year through August, driven by an unexpected drop in View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

30 Sep 2002
Research & Ideas

Use the Psychology of Pricing To Keep Customers Returning

difficult to compare, alternatives. A second project stems from my MBA course, "The Marketing of Innovations." It deals with the question of why consumers don't buy.... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

28 Jun 2021
Research & Ideas

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

accelerating a trend that began before the pandemic. For instance, the consumer electronics chain Best Buy struggled to attract sales, and the company ended up cutting costs through layoffs and furloughs.... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert

01 Aug 2012
What Do You Think?

Should CEOs Worry About ‘Too Big to Succeed?’

Summing Up Is There a "Right Size" for a Company? This month's question of whether "too big to succeed" should be a larger worry of CEOs than "too big to fail" as usual produced... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Manufacturing; Financial Services

June 28, 2011
Article

Using Implementation Intentions Prompts to Enhance Influenza Vaccination Rates

By: Katherine L Milkman, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian

We evaluate the results of a field experiment designed to measure the effect of prompts to form implementation intentions on realized behavioral outcomes. The outcome of interest is influenza vaccination receipt at free on-site clinics offered by a large firm to its... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Nudge; Libertarian Paternalism; Public Health; Flu Shot; Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Health Care and Treatment; Cognition and Thinking

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2013
Article

Optimizing the Amount of Entertainment in Advertising: What's So Funny about Tracking Reactions to Humor?

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Horst Stipp

Humor and other entertaining content, as opposed to demonstrations of product features and "selling," are increasingly used in advertising, such as TV commercials, to attract and keep consumers' attention. This study uses facial tracking to explore how marketers can... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Content; Entertainment; Face Perception; Advertising; Digital Marketing; Television Entertainment; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

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24 Feb 2022
Op-Ed

Want to Prevent the Next Hospital Bed Crisis? Enlist the SEC

billing rule that hospitals had ignored, it imposed a tangle of new requirements and directed the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to help prevent excess out-of-network charges. And consider... View Details

Keywords: by Regina Herzlinger and Richard Boxer; Health

06 Oct 2020
Sharpening Your Skills

18 Tips Managers Can Use to Lead Through COVID's Rising Waters

marketing communications should not ignore or turn a deaf ear to the crisis, but rather make sure to recognize it and acknowledge the impact it was having on people’s lives.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

16 Oct 2023
HBS Case

Advancing Black Talent: From the Flight Ramp to 'Family-Sustaining' Careers at Delta

2020, Delta’s plans looked promising. It was the first airline to headline the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, with Bastian as the headline speaker. He was joined on stage by Nicole Jones, the... View Details

Keywords: by Lane Lambert; Air Transportation

12 May 2011
Research & Ideas

The Difficult Transition from For-Profit to Nonprofit Boards

Editor's note: For those of who have attended meetings of both nonprofit and for-profit boards, the differences between the two organizations couldn't be clearer. Nonprofit boards meetings tend to be longer, less tightly organized, and... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

29 Apr 2020
Book

The Key to Powerful Social Change: Small Villages

Who will solve the great problems facing humanity, a list of critical issues that only begins with the current pandemic? In the interview below, Rosabeth Moss Kanter discusses her recent book, Think Outside the Building, and her view that solutions are most likely to... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

07 Dec 2016
HBS Case

Why Millennials Flock to Fintech for Personal Investing

Millennials are disruptive bunch. The first generation to grow up with the internet, consumers born after 1980 are used to relying on technology and engineering View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Financial Services

01 Jun 2023
News

In Full Flower

blossomed. Today, Bloom & Wild delivers flowers and small gifts (candles, chocolates) to eight countries across the United Kingdom and continental Europe. By purchasing flowers direct from the grower, Bloom... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; entrepreneurship; florist; marketing; supply chain management; Personal Services

July 2010
Case

Metabical: Positioning and Communications Strategy for a New Weight Loss Drug

By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham

Cambridge Sciences Pharmaceuticals (CSP) expects final approval for its revolutionary weight loss drug, Metabical. Metabical will be the only weight loss drug with FDA approval that is also clinically proven to be effective for moderately overweight people. Barbara... View Details

Keywords: Product Positioning; Marketing Communications; Product Launch; Consumer Behavior; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States

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