Publications

27 Jul 2011
Research & Ideas

Customer Loyalty Programs That Work

The customer rewards cards that clutter wallets and clog key chains of many a shopper may soon be no more, as retailers move from physical to digital (read: mobile apps) forms of loyalty program member identification. It's a smart... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Retail

2006
Working Paper

The Value of a 'Free' Customer

By: Sunil Gupta, Carl F. Mela and Jose M. Vidal-Sanz

Central to a firm's growth and marketing policy is the revenus and profit potential of its customer assets. As a result, there has been a recent proliferation of work regarding customer lifetime value. However, extant research in this area is silent regarding how to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Auctions; Network Effects; Business Strategy

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Article

Focusing on Lone Trees in the Forest: Members' Experience of a Multiple Identity Organization

By: Michel Anteby and Amy Wrzesniewski

Keywords: Employees

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July 2021 (Revised October 2021)
Case

Allianz Customer Centricity: Is Simplicity the Way Forward?

By: Eva Ascarza and Emilie Billaud

This case explores the tradeoffs between product personalization and simplicity as companies grow. The case presents an opportunity to understand whether and how each of these approaches enables and/or limits companies’ abilities to provide customer satisfaction while... View Details

Keywords: Simplicity; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customization and Personalization; Customer Satisfaction; Performance Efficiency; Strategy; Insurance Industry; Europe; Germany

Research Summary

Managing the Operating Role of Customers

By: Frances X. Frei

Customers in operating roles introduce considerable variability into the production environment including differences in the demands they impose on the environment and the unpredictability of those demands. When customers are the source of production variability, the... View Details

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Keeping Your Balance With Customers

Internet and database software, the customer can now initiate the business transaction, not simply respond to the salesperson's overture. Instead of being on the end of the value chain ("product... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton

June 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Signet Jewelers: Assessing Customer Financing Risk

By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos, Suraj Srinivasan and Monica Baraldi

Marc Cohodes, a renowned short seller, has identified weaknesses in Signet's business strategy, which he argues is heavily reliant on providing loans to customers with subprime credit scores. He believes that the company accounts for its receivables portfolio using... View Details

Keywords: Short Selling; Bad Debt Expense; Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Finance; Financing and Loans; Valuation; Retail Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

16 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

School. A book excerpt follows. Sarah Jane Gilbert: Your book focuses on how companies can profit, regardless of market conditions, by immersing themselves in the lives of their customers. Please describe... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products

May–June 2023
Article

Need for Speed: The Impact of In-Process Delays on Customer Behavior in Online Retail

By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno

The impact of delays has been widely studied in various offline services. The focus of this study is online services, and we explore the impact of in-process delays—measured by website speed—on customer behavior. We leverage novel retail and website speed data to... View Details

Keywords: Online Retail; Quasi-experiments; Abandonment; Synthetic Control; E-commerce; Internet and the Web; Consumer Behavior; Policy; Retail Industry

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Research Summary

The Value Profit Chain: Treat Employees Like Customers and Customers Like Employees

By: W. Earl Sasser

W. Earl Sasser, Jr., Leonard A. Schlesinger, and James L. Heskett complted a multi-firm study that provides further empirical verification of relationships established in their earlier examinations of 'breakthrough' service and the service profit chain.... View Details

Research Summary

Customer Experience Design

By: Stefan H. Thomke

Please contact Professor Thomke for the most current description of his research on simulation and R&D performance and/or copies of research articles (published and working papers). View Details

March 2006 (Revised April 2008)
Module Note

Conceptualizing the Customer Operating Role

By: Frances X. Frei

The module introduces students to the concept and implications of a customer operating role. Building on the first year operations curriculum in which only employees' and machines' operating roles are considered, it provides the additional perspectives needed to bring... View Details

Keywords: Customers; Performance Efficiency; Perspective; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Service Operations

04 Mar 2002
Research & Ideas

Don’t Lose Money With Customers

relationships with the short- and long-run benefits that each generates will help companies make informed decisions about how to serve their customers more profitably in the future. Probing The Process Working with several other scholars,... View Details

Keywords: by Peter K. Jacobs

June 2020
Background Note

Customer Management Dynamics and Cohort Analysis

By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller

The digital revolution has allowed companies to amass considerable amounts of data on their customers. Using this information to generate actionable insights is fast becoming a critical skill that firms must master if they wish to effectively compete and win in today’s... View Details

Keywords: Cohort Analysis; Customers; Analytics and Data Science; Segmentation; Analysis; Customer Value and Value Chain

February 2003 (Revised March 2007)
Case

Internet Customer Acquisition Strategy at Bankinter

By: Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez, V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem

Bankinter, a relatively small Spanish bank, has a large presence as an Internet financial services provider. Leading the way to profitability through the Internet will give Bankinter a major competitive advantage over the larger, more established Spanish banks. Ann... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Internet and the Web; Activity Based Costing and Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Spain

March 2009
Article

Customer Experience Creation: Determinants, Dynamics and Management Strategies

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, Peter C. Verhoef, Katherine N. Lemon, A. Parasuraman, Anne Roggeveen and Michael Tsiros

Retailers, such as Starbucks and Victoria's Secret, aim to provide customers a great experience across channels. In this paper we provide an overview of the existing literature on customer experience and expand on it to examine the creation of a customer experience... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Business Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Retail Industry

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Research Summary

Entrepreneurial Management: Customer Discovery and Business Development

By: Frank V. Cespedes

This research focuses on: (a) market research methods and tactics suitable to startups seeking their initial customers and validation of their initial business model; (b) guidelines for conducting visits with potential customers as part of the startup ptrocess; and (c)... View Details

March 2011
Background Note

Customer Loyalty Schemes in the Retail Sector

By: Jose B. Alvarez and Aldo Sesia

Customer loyalty schemes (or programs) are explicit efforts by retailers to gain long-term patronage from customers. Loyalty schemes are developed for a variety of reasons: to reward loyal customers, to generate more robust information about customer behavior, to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Business Strategy; Retail Industry; United Kingdom; United States