Publications

30 May 2018
Research & Ideas

Should Retailers Match Their Own Prices Online and in Stores?

brick-and-mortars, including Best Buy, Target, Staples, and Sears, will gladly match their online prices in-store if a customer asks for them. However, others, like Home Depot, Bloomingdale’s, and Macy’s,... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail

16 May 2011
Research & Ideas

What Loyalty? High-End Customers are First to Flee

threat of increased service competition," says Campbell. Differences Across Markets Customers and companies trade off between price and service. "Every customer has... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

13 Mar 2017
Research & Ideas

Hiding Products From Customers May Ultimately Boost Sales

sushi restaurant where customers order from a fixed menu.” Next steps The mathematical model in the paper assumes a situation in which a retailer would sell all styles of a product at the same price (e.g.,... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail; Fashion

December 2007
Article

Consumers' Price Sensitivities Across Complementary Categories

By: Sri Devi Duvvuri, Asim Ansari and Sunil Gupta

Keywords: Price; Customers

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21 May 2018
HBS Case

How Would You Price One of the World's Great Watches?

Underprice an innovation, and you leave profit on the table. Overprice an innovation, and you may not be able to sell it. Price discipline is another critical issue. “It’s very difficult to start with a high View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Fashion

09 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

Warring Algorithms Could Be Driving Up Consumer Prices

to all personal care products sold online by the five firms implies that customers spent an additional $300 million annually as a result of pricing algorithms, out of a total of about $6 billion in... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Retail

August 2016 (Revised August 2017)
Case

AnswerDash (Abridged)

By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman

It is 2014 and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry

June 2016 (Revised August 2017)
Case

AnswerDash

By: Elie Ofek and Jeffrey D. Shulman

It is 2014, and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Economic Value Estimation; Price Metrics; Organizational Selling; Innovation Adoption; Business To Business; Marketing; Customer Lifetime Value; Venture Capital; Customer Relationship Management; Price; Marketing Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Technology Adoption; Business Startups; Sales; Innovation and Invention; Product Marketing; Financial Services Industry

17 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Let Customers Call the Shots

"name your own price" devices, permission marketing, group buying, price comparison engines, car purchase Web sites, mass customization, etc. It is still largely a new way of thinking whose domain and modalities remain to be... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

April 2022
Article

National Customer Orientation: A Framework, Propositions and Agenda for Future Research

By: Ofer Mintz, Imran S. Currim and Rohit Deshpandé

Purpose: This paper aims to propose a new country-level construct, national customer orientation, to provide a benchmark for global headquartered managers’ decisions and scholars investigating cross-national research.
Design/methodology/approach: A conceptual... View Details

Keywords: International Marketing; Macro-marketing; Marketing; Financial Crisis; Customer Focus and Relationships; Economic Growth; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation

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17 Jun 2016
Op-Ed

Companies Need to Start Marketing Security to Customers

regular inspections can help. Third party testing companies can insure that industry standards are met. Safety innovation needed But most companies do not innovate around safety or push for tougher safety standards; they merely comply with existing requirements.... View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Entertainment & Recreation

2018
Working Paper

Opportunistic Returns and Dynamic Pricing: Empirical Evidence from Online Retailing in Emerging Markets

By: Chaithanya Bandi, Antonio Moreno, Donald Ngwe and Zhiji Xu

We investigate how dynamic pricing can lead to more product returns in the online retail industry. Using detailed sales data of more than two million transactions from the Indian online retail market, where price promotions are very common, we document two types of... View Details

Keywords: Cash On Delivery; Dynamic Pricing; Online Retail; Payment Methods; Strategic Customer Behavior; Opportunistic Returns; Price; Policy; Consumer Behavior; Emerging Markets; Retail Industry

SSRN

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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

17 Dec 2014
Research & Ideas

How Our Brain Determines if the Product is Worth the Price

neon sign advertising $5 off a $20,000 car? That's going to turn customers away. "If it's an insignificant discount, then you're actually putting yourself at a disadvantage by highlighting the price... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail

30 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

How Your Employees and Customers Drive a New Value Profit Chain

loaded cost basis. If these customers are not contributing to covering the overhead, let them go quietly. The best approach is to raise prices slightly to these customers. Most are "mercenaries"... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

02 Apr 2019
Research Event

Women Pay a Higher Career Price in Today's Always-On Work Culture

existential questions for companies that pride themselves in serving clients at any hour. This is especially true for professional services firms in management consulting, law, and finance, the research says. At these companies, top partners might try to retain a... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Consulting; Service

24 Apr 2019
Research & Ideas

The 'Amazon Effect' Is Changing Online Price Competition—and the Fed Needs to Pay Attention

prices across channels or locations,” Cavallo says. “So, while retailers currently have the technology to customize prices based on demographics, fairness concerns are limiting... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Retail

05 Jun 2019
Research & Ideas

If Your Customers Don't Care What You Charge, What Should You Charge?

motorists represent the prevalence of “consumer inertia” in the retail gas market. Consumer inertia is the tendency of some customers to buy or continue buying a product, even when superior options exist. Companies that can accurately... View Details

Keywords: by Kristen Senz; Energy

May 2023
Technical Note

Dynamic Pricing: Timing is Everything

By: Elie Ofek

This note provides a comprehensive exposition to the topic of dynamic pricing (whereby the fee customers are charged is time-dependent). It covers the motivation for firms to engage in dynamic pricing, provides a typology of the main formats dynamic pricing can take,... View Details

Keywords: Dynamic Pricing; Price