Publications

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June 2012
Article

The Economic Value of Celebrity Endorsements

By: Anita Elberse and Jeroen Verleun

What is the payoff to enlisting celebrity endorsers? Although effects on stock returns are relatively well documented, little is known about any impact on sales—arguably a metric of more direct importance to advertising practitioners. In this study of athlete... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Value; Advertising; Sales; Brands and Branding; Decisions; Economics; Marketing Strategy; Investment Return

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2014
Working Paper

The Decoupling Effect of Digital Disruptors

By: Thales S. Teixeira and Peter Jamieson

While the Internet's first wave of disruption was marked by the unbundling of digital content, the second wave, decoupling, promises to generate more casualties in an even broader array of industries. Digital start-ups are disrupting traditional businesses by inserting... View Details

Keywords: Disruptive Innovation; Information Technology

30 Aug 2004
Research & Ideas

Mapping Your Board’s Effectiveness

communication to investors highlights key value and risk drivers, and one that holds senior executives accountable for successful strategy formulation and implementation will give investors more confidence that the company is well... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan

23 Aug 2006
Op-Ed

The Real Wal-Mart Effect

to the study, "By far the most important factor in that [growth] is Wal-Mart." There is hard evidence that Wal-Mart has grown the economic pie available to be divided among its various stakeholders. Second, most of the value... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat & Ken A. Mark; Retail

November 2002 (Revised February 2009)
Teaching Note

Value Retail (TN)

By: Arthur I Segel and Ani M Vartanian

Teaching Note for (9-803-008). View Details

Keywords: Investment; Risk and Uncertainty; Performance Effectiveness; Brands and Branding; Planning; Strategy; Luxury; Milan

Article

You Can't Always Get What You Want: The Real Exchange Rate and Manufacturing Performance in a World of Global Value Chains

By: Laura Alfaro, Alejandro Cuñat, Harald Fadinger and Yanping Liu

Real exchange rate devaluations are typically seen as a viable development strategy, but the effectiveness of the approach may vary over time and across countries. This column explores this issue by focusing on the microeconomics of firm-level responses to exchange... View Details

Keywords: Manufacturing Performance; Real Exchange Rate; Global Value Chains; Economics; Production; Performance

Web

Community Values | About

leadership in a changing global society. Leadership and Organizational Behavior focuses on how managers become effective leaders by addressing the human side of enterprise. Additionally, more than 500 cases developed by HBS faculty... View Details

January 2013 (Revised April 2017)
Supplement

Maxum Petroleum, Inc.

By: W. Carl Kester

Maxum seeks an oil-price hedging strategy that yields substantial cash during oil price spikes, is affordable under ordinary circumstances, and is easily managed. It is striving to avoid a repeat of the challenging situation encountered in 2008 when spiking oil prices... View Details

Keywords: Hedging; Options; Commodities; Credit Derivatives and Swaps; Risk Management; Futures and Commodity Futures; Financial Strategy; Volatility

October 2015
Article

The Value of Bosses

By: Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher Stanton

How and by how much do supervisors enhance worker productivity? Using a company-based data set on the productivity of technology-based services workers, supervisor effects are estimated and found to be large. Replacing a boss who is in the lower 10% of boss quality... View Details

Keywords: Supervisors; Management Skills; Employees; Performance Productivity

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2011
Working Paper

Quantity vs. Quality: Exclusion by Platforms with Network Effects

By: Andrei Hagiu

This paper provides a simple model of platforms with direct network effects, in which users value not just the quantity (i.e., number) of other users who join, but also their average quality in some dimension. A monopoly platform is more likely to exclude low-quality... View Details

Keywords: Multi-sided Platforms; Exclusion; Quality And Quantity; Cost; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Network Effects; Market Participation; Digital Platforms; Monopoly; Quality; Motivation and Incentives; Strategy

10 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

Counting Up the Effects of Sarbanes-Oxley

companies, although it was ultimately deferred for companies with market caps of less than $75 million and made permanent in the Dodd-Frank Act. Audit standards also were modified in 2007, a change that reportedly reduced costs for many firms by 25 percent or more per... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Accounting; Banking

May 2024
Background Note

Pricing Strategy and Channels of Distribution: Where Value Delivery and Value Capture Intersect

By: Elie Ofek

Channels of distribution are a critical component of a firm’s go-to-market strategy. A company may elect to sell its products directly to customers (DTC) without the assistance of any intermediaries or, alternatively, it may seek several channel partners to help it... View Details

Keywords: Price; Distribution Channels; Business Strategy; Markets

Educators

22 Feb 2012
Working Paper Summaries

The Dynamic Effects of Bundling as a Product Strategy

Keywords: by Timothy Derdenger & Vineet Kumar; Video Game

08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

2013
Working Paper

Competing by Restricting Choice: The Case of Search Platforms

By: Hanna Halaburda and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski

Seminal papers recommend that platforms in two-sided markets increase the number of complements available. We show that a two-sided platform can successfully compete by limiting the choice of potential matches it offers to its customers while charging higher prices... View Details

Keywords: Matching Platform; Indirect Network Effects; Limits To Network Effects; Decision Choices and Conditions; Network Effects; Two-Sided Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Competitive Strategy

SSRN

September 2010 (Revised August 2011)
Background Note

Pricing, Profits, and Customer Value

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Benson P. Shapiro and Elliot B. Ross

This note discusses how some firms (start-ups and established companies) maximize customer value and profits via their pricing processes. It is aimed at companies that compete on the basis of performance initiatives rather than absolute cost advantages and low price.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Cost; Price; Profit; Performance Effectiveness; Sales; Competitive Strategy

Educators