Publications

November 2024
Article

Price Discounts and Cheapflation During the Post-Pandemic Inflation Surge

By: Alberto Cavallo and Oleksiy Kryvtsov

We study how within-store price variation changes with inflation, and whether households exploit it to attenuate the inflation burden. We use micro price data for food products sold by 91 large multi-channel retailers in ten countries between 2018 and 2024. Measuring... View Details

Keywords: Macroeconomics; Inflation and Deflation; Price; Consumer Behavior; Personal Finance; Product Positioning

June 2010
Article

The Pathologies of Online Display Advertising Marketplaces

By: Benjamin Edelman

Display advertising marketplaces place "banner" ads on all manner of popular sites. While these services are widely used, they suffer significant challenges, including weak user response and low accountability for both advertisers and web site publishers. I survey a... View Details

Keywords: Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Online Advertising; Cost; Corporate Accountability; Information Publishing; Consumer Behavior; Relationships; Web Sites

Find at Harvard

September 2008 (Revised June 2011)
Case

Examining the Adoption of Drug-Eluting Stents

By: Elie Ofek

Marketers are often tasked with exploring the factors that impact the long-run adoption of a new product or technology. The new product under consideration here is the drug-eluting stent: a device which props open a clogged artery to the heart and then releases... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning; Consumer Behavior; Adoption; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

Educators

21 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Are We Thinking Too Little, or Too Much?

The most captivating item in Michael Norton's office is a Star Wars The Force Trainer, a toy that allows would-be Jedi warriors to levitate a Ping-Pong ball within a tube using only the power of focused thinking. Norton, a marketing professor at Harvard Business... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

03 Feb 2009
First Look

First Look: February 3, 2009

studies conducted in numerous countries and contexts have consistently demonstrated that setting specific, challenging goals can powerfully drive behavior and boost performance. Advocates of goal setting have had a substantial impact on... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

Profile

Eryn Schultz

months into my new job, and I’ve been able to apply so much of what I learned in school in both my internship and my current job – things ranging from how incentives influence behavior to how to manage a P&L. In addition, the friends... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Products; Consumer Products

Fast Answer

Music & Activism: Market Research Resources

Demographics & Consumer Behavior Research Guide (Baker Library) Entertainment & Media Research Guide (Baker Library) FAQs Music Industry Statistics Need additional help and... View Details

May 2021 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

THE YES: Reimagining the Future of E-Commerce with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

THE YES, a multi-brand shopping app launched in May 2020 offered a new type of buying experience for women’s fashion, driven by a sophisticated algorithm that used data science and machine learning to create and deliver a personalized store for every shopper, based on... View Details

Keywords: Data; Data Analytics; Artificial Intelligence; AI; AI Algorithms; AI Creativity; Fashion; Retail; Retail Analytics; E-Commerce Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Big Data; Preference Elicitation; Predictive Analytics; App Development; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Advertising; Mobile App; Mobile Marketing; Apparel; Online Advertising; Referral Rewards; Referrals; Female Ceo; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Analytics and Data Science; Analysis; Creativity; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing; Internet and the Web; Mobile and Wireless Technology; AI and Machine Learning; E-commerce; Digital Platforms; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States

01 Jun 2014
News

Screen Saver

would be stadium seating, but that's about it. It's remarkable. And not in a good way." Lopez, it seems, is just getting warmed up. "Can you imagine driving the same car in 2010 that you drove in 1977, with the same features? There's almost nothing in the 2010 View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Arts, Entertainment

2020
Working Paper

Mortgage Prepayment, Race, and Monetary Policy

By: Kristopher Gerardi, Paul Willen and David Hao Zhang

Over the period 2005 to 2015, Black borrowers paid more than 40 basis points higher mortgage interest rates than Non-Hispanic white borrowers. We show that the main reason is that Non-Hispanic white borrowers are much more likely to exploit periods of falling interest... View Details

Keywords: Mortgages; Consumer Behavior; Race; Ethnicity; Equality and Inequality; Policy; United States

01 Sep 2017
News

3-Minute Briefing: Jeetendr Sehdev (MBA 2004)

selfies incredibly meaningful and empowering. We need that compassion and emotional understanding to create brands that connect. Brands today are looking to develop fanatics. Being careful or silent as a means of capturing the largest market share possible doesn’t work... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information

01 Mar 2015
News

Providing an Environment for Ideas to Grow

brand shouldn’t be about erecting barriers to keep consumers out; indeed, growth requires the welcoming of new faces,” concludes HBS marketing professor Anat Keinan in a July 2014 Harvard Business Review article, “How ‘Brand Tourists’ Can... View Details

Keywords: Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

August 2002 (Revised February 2003)
Case

Siebel Systems: Anatomy of a Sale, Part 2

By: John A. Deighton and Das Narayandas

How does a $2 million software sale happen? This case traces efforts by Siebel Systems to sell lead management software to discount broker Quick & Reilly. The buying process is mapped out over four years. Covers in detail the last six months--from Siebel's initial... View Details

Keywords: Business Cycles; Leadership; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Organizational Structure; Behavior; Competition; Applications and Software; Technology Industry

Educators

March–April 2023
Article

Market Segmentation Trees

By: Ali Aouad, Adam Elmachtoub, Kris J. Ferreira and Ryan McNellis

Problem definition: We seek to provide an interpretable framework for segmenting users in a population for personalized decision making. Methodology/results: We propose a general methodology, market segmentation trees (MSTs), for learning market... View Details

Keywords: Decision Trees; Computational Advertising; Market Segmentation; Analytics and Data Science; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Marketplace Matching; Marketing Channels; Digital Marketing

2008
Working Paper

Where Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained

By: Shawn A. Cole, John Thompson and Peter Tufano

In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their degree of revealed credit constraints. Specifically, we analyze how these Americans spend their income tax refunds, using transaction-level data from a stored-value card... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Credit; Personal Finance; Spending; Taxation; Consumer Behavior; United States