Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(574)
- Faculty Publications (115)
- February 2012 (Revised August 2013)
- Case
What's the Deal with LivingSocial?
By: Michael I. Norton, Luc Wathieu, Betsy Page Sigman and Marco Bertini
Tim O'Shaughnessy, the 29-year-old CEO of LivingSocial, is growing a revolutionary worldwide business of "daily deals"—in which retailers offer a heavily-discounted product or service available for purchase for brief (often 24-hour) windows. The case explores the... View Details
- September 2011 (Revised February 2013)
- Case
Trucost: Valuing Corporate Environmental Impacts
By: Michael W. Toffel and Stephanie van Sice
Trucost provided corporate environmental performance data and analysis to institutional investors and corporate managers, but after operating for a decade had yet to achieve profitability. Trucost was struggling to effectively differentiate its high quality products... View Details
- Article
Product Positioning in a Two-Dimensional Vertical Differentiation Model: The Role of Quality Costs
By: Dominique Lauga and Elie Ofek
We study a duopoly model where consumers are heterogeneous with respect to their willingness to pay for two product characteristics and marginal costs are increasing with the quality level chosen on each attribute. We show that while firms seek to manage competition... View Details
Keywords: Duopoly and Oligopoly; Customers; Quality; Product Positioning; Competition; Management; Cost; Product
- June 2011
- Case
CA Technologies: Bringing the Cloud to Earth
By: Marco Iansiti and Kerry Herman
Adam Famularo, general manager, Cloud Computing business, CA Technologies, and David Dobson, WVP and group executive, Customer Solutions Group, were preparing for a presentation on communicating and positioning CA Technologies' new strategy for cloud computing.... View Details
- January – February 2011
- Article
'Bricks and Clicks': The Impact of Product Returns on the Strategies of Multichannel Retailers
By: Elie Ofek, Zsolt Katona and Miklos Sarvary
The Internet has increased the flexibility of retailers, allowing them to operate an online arm in addition to their physical stores. The online channel offers potential benefits in selling to customer segments that value the convenience of online shopping, but it also... View Details
- October 2010
- Article
Organizational Designs and Innovation Streams
By: Michael Tushman, Wendy K. Smith, Robert Chapman Wood, George Westerman and Charles A. O'Reilly III
This article empirically explores the relations between alternative organizational designs and a firm's ability to explore as well as exploit. We operationalize exploitation and exploration in terms of innovation streams—incremental innovation in existing products as... View Details
- September 2010 (Revised April 2015)
- Case
Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces
By: Rohit Deshpande and Mona Sinha
The Taj Hotels, Palaces, and Resorts introduced a new brand architecture to counter lack of differentiation and confused positioning of its mixed bag of brands. After launching an economy and an upscale brand, it dithered over the launch of its upper upscale and luxury... View Details
- September 2010
- Case
Quanta Research Institute: Rainforest or Hothouse?
By: Willy C. Shih, Jyun-Cheng Wang and Ho Howard Yu
Barry Lam, the CEO and founder of Quanta Computer (the largest notebook computer manufacturer worldwide), has recognized for many years that he had to transform the company to decrease its dependence on producing commodity hardware for other global brands and move the... View Details
- September 2010
- Article
Strategies to Fight Ad-sponsored Rivals
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Feng Zhu
We analyze the optimal strategy of a high-quality incumbent that faces a low-quality ad-sponsored competitor. In addition to competing through adjustments of tactical variables such as price or the number of ads a product carries, we allow the incumbent to consider... View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Business Models; Tactics; Pricing; Business Model; Advertising; Competition; Quality; Price; Product Marketing
- 2010
- Working Paper
Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: Foreign Direct Investment and Establishment Performance
By: Laura Alfaro and Maggie Chen
We examine in this paper the differential response of establishments to the global financial crisis, with particular emphasis on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in determining micro economic performance. Using a new worldwide dataset that reports the... View Details
- 2010
- Book
Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd
By: Youngme Moon
Every few years a book-through a combination of the author's unique voice, storytelling ability, spirit, and insight-simply breaks the mold. Youngme Moon's DIFFERENT is that kind of book, a book for "people who don't read business books...," a book that feels like an... View Details
- 2001
- Working Paper
Strategies to Fight Ad-sponsored Rivals
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Feng Zhu
We analyze the optimal strategy of a high-quality incumbent that faces a low-quality ad-sponsored competitor. In addition to competing through adjustments of tactical variables such as price or the number of ads a product carries, we allow the incumbent to consider... View Details
- 2010
- Article
Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales: The Moderating Role of Product and Consumer Characteristics
By: Feng Zhu and Michael Zhang
This article examines how product and consumer characteristics moderate the influence of online consumer reviews on product sales using data from the video game industry. The findings indicate that online reviews are more influential for less popular games and games... View Details
- November 2009
- Case
METRO Cash & Carry in China, 2008
By: Tarun Khanna
In April 2008, the country head for METRO AG's Cash & Carry wholesaling operations is considering the most appropriate model for expansion in China, where METRO has operated stores for small business professionals for eight years. In addition, METRO is actively... View Details
- April 2009
- Journal Article
Perspectives on the Productivity Dilemma
By: Paul S. Adler, Mary Benner, David James Brunner, John Paul MacDuffie, Emi Osono, Bradley R. Staats, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Michael Tushman and Sidney G. Winter
For more than a century, operations researchers have recognized that organizations can increase efficiency by adhering strictly to proven process templates, thereby rendering operations more stable and predictable. For several decades, researchers have also recognized... View Details
- Article
Milestones in Marketing
By: John A. Quelch and Katherine Jocz
Marketing flourished in U.S. business schools in the prosperous years following World War II. Students preparing for assistant-product-manager positions at the likes of Procter & Gamble, Lever, and General Foods enrolled in courses in marketing management, management... View Details
- November 2008
- Journal Article
Financial Constraints and Growth: Multinational and Local Firm Responses to Currency Crises
By: Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley and Kristin Forbes
This paper examines how financial constraints and product market exposures determine the response of multinational and local firms to sharp depreciations. U.S. multinational affiliates increase sales, assets, and investment significantly more than local firms during,... View Details
- Article
Information or Opinion? Media Bias as Product Differentiation
By: Bharat Anand, Rafael Di Tella and Alexander Galetovic
- November 2006 (Revised May 2025)
- Case
Eli Lilly: Developing Cymbalta
By: Elie Ofek and Ron Laufer
Anticipating the expiration of its Prozac patent, Eli Lilly has to make tough decisions regarding the development of its next-generation antidepressant drug. In particular, the company needs to decide whether to first establish that once-a-day dosing for Cymbalta... View Details
- October 2005 (Revised February 2007)
- Case
Ripe 'n Ready
By: Ray A. Goldberg and Laura Winig
Stoned fruit has quality variations, reducing consumption. Five independent growers formed a cooperative to provide quality control and a brand name--Ripe 'N Ready--that enabled retailers to differentiate their stores and producers to differentiate the products they... View Details