Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(1,225)
- Faculty Publications (111)
- June 2009
- Article
Highbrow Films Gather Dust: Time-inconsistent Preferences and Online DVD Rentals
By: Katherine L. Milkman, Todd Rogers and Max H. Bazerman
We report on a field study demonstrating systematic differences between the preferences people anticipate they will have over a series of options in the future and their subsequent revealed preferences over those options. Using a novel panel data set, we analyze the... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage
By: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Joe Wheeler
Hundreds of large organizations worldwide have used the groundbreaking Service Profit Chain to improve business performance. Now The Ownership Quotient reveals the next generation of the chain: customer and employee "owners" of your business. Employee-owners exhibit... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
A Darker Side to Decentralized Banks: Market Power and Credit Rationing in SME Lending
By: Rodrigo Canales and Ramana Nanda
We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks—where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions—give larger loans to small firms and those with "soft... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers
By: Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman
Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don't understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don't think deeply about consumers' innermost thoughts and feelings. Marketing Metaphoria is a... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised May 2008)
- Case
Comcast New England: A Journey of Organizational Transformation
By: Michael Beer and Anita Arun
This case describes how Kevin Casey, Comcast's New England Region general manager, transformed a low commitment and performance organization. When he took charge of this Comcast region he inherited an organization that was bureaucratic, had low customer satisfaction,... View Details
- January 2008
- Article
The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. In 1979, a young associate professor at Harvard Business School published his first... View Details
- July 2007 (Revised February 2010)
- Case
Launching Telmore (A)
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Celso Fernandez and Moritz Jobke
When the Danish mobile phone service provider Telmore entered the market in October 2000, few people took notice. Its business model was not perceived as particularly aggressive or threatening to the industry. Less than three years later, Telmore's creative adaptation... View Details
- April 2006
- Background Note
Designing Sustainable Service Models
By: Frances X. Frei
Taught as the second module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations. Addresses the challenge of designing service models that effectively incorporate a customer operating role, as well as how to align operations to deliver value to both the... View Details
- March 2006
- Background Note
Influencing Customer Behavior in Service Operations
By: Frances X. Frei and Amy C. Edmondson
Explores ways in which service firms can influence the behavior of their customers. Drawing from research on employee motivation and applying it to customer motivation, the note describes two levels of managerial control: instrumental control, which shapes behavior... View Details
- November 2005 (Revised September 2007)
- Case
Beijing Hualian
By: David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman
China's fifth largest domestic retailer faced intensifying competition from Wal-Mart and Carrefour with the opening of China's fast-growing retail market in January 2005. In response, Beijing Hualian developed a new "Family Store" format targeted at the nation's... View Details
- February 2005 (Revised April 2006)
- Case
Rx Depot: Importing Drugs from Canada
By: Debora L. Spar
In 2002, a handful of entrepreneurs began to ship drugs from Canada into the United States, taking advantage of regulatory and price differentials across the neighboring countries. Using the Internet and a low-cost network of Canadian pharmacies, firms like Rx Depot... View Details
- December 2004 (Revised December 2005)
- Case
Nectar: Making Loyalty Pay
By: John A. Deighton
Loyalty Management UK (LMUK) manages British supermarket chain Sainsbury's frequent-shopper card program, called Nectar. LMUK uses Sainsbury's sponsorship as the magnet to attract other retailers into a profitable, multisponsor loyalty network. Examines the economics... View Details
- October 2003
- Case
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company: Building a Platform for Distributed Innovation
By: Marco Iansiti and Marcin Strojwas
Surging costs of building a state-of-the-art fabrication facility were pushing firms to outsource manufacturing while advanced technologies were requiring a tighter coupling between design and manufacturing. Explores the development of strategy in this environment.... View Details
- July 2003 (Revised April 2005)
- Case
Branding Citigroup's Consumer Business
By: Rohit Deshpande and Carin-Isabel Knoop
In Spring 1998, Citicorp and Travelers merged to create a financial powerhouse that united the bank with Travelers' consumer finance and brokerage businesses, including Salomon Smith Barney and Primerica. It was the first U.S. financial services company to combine... View Details
- March 2001
- Article
Strategy and the Internet
By: M. E. Porter
Many of the pioneers of Internet business, both dot-coms and established companies, have competed in ways that violate nearly every precept of good strategy. Rather than focus on profits, they have chased customers indiscriminately through discounting, channel... View Details
- February 2001
- Case
PlanetFeedback: The Voice of One ... The Power of Many (A)
By: James L. Heskett
The management of PlanetFeedback in proposes a merger with Intelliseek. Their goal is to create a comprehensive C2B and B2B business focused on the generation and analysis for business clients of consumer feedback data via the Internet, Planet Feedback's board of... View Details
- April 2000 (Revised June 2001)
- Case
DoubleClick Buys Abacus (A)
By: John A. Deighton
By acquiring Abacus, DoubleClick won the power to serve ads with unprecedented precision, because it brought together Web surfers' online and offline identities. Several competitors had developed advanced systems for serving ads on the web, but DoubleClick had the... View Details