Publications

Educators

Purchase

19 Mar 2024

The Value of an MBA in Manufacturing, Consumer Products, and Retail

Discover how diverse experiences in these dynamic sectors enrich the HBS classroom, and explore the game-changing impact of an MBA on forging successful careers in... View Details

2020
Working Paper

Consumers Punish Firms That Cut Employee Pay in Response to COVID-19

By: Bhavya Mohan, Serena Hagerty and Michael Norton

Two experiments, including one incentive compatible study, examine the impact of cutting pay for executives versus employees in response to COVID-19 on consumer behavior. Study 1 explores the effect of announcing cuts or no cuts to CEO and employee pay, and shows that... View Details

Keywords: Employee Furloughs; CEO Pay Cuts; Pay Ratios; Purchase Intention; Health Pandemics; Employees; Wages; Executive Compensation; Consumer Behavior

2021
Working Paper

The Health Costs of Cost-Sharing

By: Amitabh Chandra, Evan Flack and Ziad Obermeyer

We use the design of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit program to demonstrate three facts about the health consequences of cost-sharing. First, we show that an as-if-random increase of 33.6% in out-of-pocket price (11.0 percentage points (p.p.) change in... View Details

Keywords: Cost-sharing; Impact; Health Care and Treatment; Insurance; Health; Consumer Behavior

20 Mar 2000
Research & Ideas

No Place Like Home: America’s Housing Crisis and Its Impact on Business

times and worst of times if you're a consumer in the current U.S. housing market. On the plus side, thanks to the 1990s' economic boom, some two-thirds View Details

Keywords: by Garry Emmons; Construction; Real Estate

2024
Working Paper

Consumers Hold Autonomous Vehicles Liable Even When Not at Fault

By: Julian De Freitas, Xilin Zhou, Margherita Atzei, Shoshana Boardman and Luigi Di Lillo

The deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the accompanying societal and economic benefits will greatly depend on how much liability AV firms will have to carry for accidents involving these vehicles, which in turn impacts their insurability and associated... View Details

Keywords: Autonomous Vehicles; Moral Judgment; Liabilities; Harm; Insurance; Moral Sensibility; Legal Liability; Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Public Opinion

2021
Working Paper

Friends and Family Money: P2P Transfers and Financially Fragile Consumers

By: Tetyana Balyuk and Emily Williams

We assess the impact that real time money transfer technology has on consumer outcomes, particularly during periods of financial fragility. We do this by developing a new data set that documents use of Zelle—the most widely used P2P money transfer technology in the... View Details

Keywords: P2P Money Transfers; Real Time Payments; Fintech; Finance; Information Technology; Personal Finance; Financial Condition

29 Oct 2019
Blog Post

Merging the Worlds of Finance, Investing, and Environmental Impact

life, but he wasn’t sure that passion could be part of his business career, too. Now a managing director for Closed Loop Partners, he reflects on finding his way to a career that merges the worlds View Details

September 2015 (Revised February 2023)
Case

Emdeon's Acquisition of Change Healthcare: Innovating Transparency Solutions for Health Care Consumers

By: Regina E. Herzlinger, Jeet Guram and Aanchal Raj

Case describes acquisition of Change Healthcare, which provides health care cost and quality information, by Emdeon, a health information exchange, and discusses health care transparency. Emdeon is a billion-dollar company that has grown through acquisitions; at its... View Details

Keywords: Healthcare; Healthcare Industry; Healthcare Innovation; Health Care and Treatment; Acquisition; Integration; Analytics and Data Science; Mergers and Acquisitions; Competitive Strategy; Health Industry; United States

Educators

Research Summary

The Asymmetric Effect of Discount Retraction on Subsequent Choice

This paper examines the subsequent impact of a temporary price discount on brand preference after the promotion is retracted. Theorizing that price salience has an impact on price sensitivity, we propose that the effects of retracting a discount depend on the promoted... View Details

22 Apr 2024
Research & Ideas

When Does Impact Investing Make the Biggest Impact?

in. One important question the HBS study tackles carefully is the question of "additionality"—would the portfolio companies of impact investors... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

02 May 2005
What Do You Think?

Where is Consumer Generated Marketing Taking Us?

Original Article About fifteen years ago, an academic friend from France noticed the impact of Minitel on French consumer behavior. He noted that... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2023
Working Paper

Operational Impact of Communication Channels: Evidence from Last-Mile Delivery Services

By: Natalie Epstein, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno

Communication channels are often used to improve customer satisfaction and behavior. This paper studies how they can be used to enhance operational performance.
We partner with a last-mile delivery company and, through natural and field experiments, explore... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Consumer Behavior; Logistics; Communication

24 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

The Yelp Factor: Are Consumer Reviews Good for Business?

In recent years, consumer review sites including Yelp, Citysearch, and TripAdvisor have become the first stop for recommendations on everything from dinner to dentists. Along the way, they've earned a loyal... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Food & Beverage

Web

Research Design - Impact Investments

Research Design Research Design The Project on Impact Investments uses multi-method research to build insight that is both expansive in its focus and detailed in its analysis. We combine the study View Details

Article

Inviting Consumers to Downsize Fast-Food Portions Significantly Reduces Calorie Consumption

By: Janet Schwartz, Jason Riis, Brian Elbel and Dan Ariely

Policies that mandate calorie labeling in fast-food and chain restaurants have had little or no observable impact on calorie consumption to date. In three field experiments, we tested an alternative approach: activating consumers' self-control by having servers ask... View Details

Keywords: Food; Labels; Consumer Behavior; Interpersonal Communication; Motivation and Incentives; Health Industry; Food and Beverage Industry

24 Jul 2000
Research & Ideas

Global Brands: Connecting With Consumers Across Boundaries

to do with those who are in charge of marketing communications. As a result, the various channels of communication are out of alignment, and the negative View Details

Keywords: by James E. Aisner

25 May 2016
Research & Ideas

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

conditions. In this case, Western consumers were taking responsibility not for their own health but for the health and safety of workers in a foreign land thousands of miles... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Health

01 Mar 2017
News

Students Forecast Climate Change’s Impact

should lead the charge on developing a non-beef burger.” —E. Jordan Taylor (MBA 2018) H&M Data point: “Last December, Forbes reported that the ‘apparel industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell

2015
Article

Percentage Cost Discounts Always Beat Percentage Benefit Bonuses: Helping Consumers Evaluate Nominally Equivalent Percentage Changes

By: Bhavya Mohan, Pierre Chandon and Jason Riis

Marketing offers that are framed as a "percentage change" in consumer cost vs. benefit can have highly non-linear impacts in terms of actual value for consumers. Even though two offers might appear identical, we show that consumers are better off choosing the offer... View Details