Publications

Purchase

December 2011
Article

Prices or Knowledge? What Drives Demand for Financial Services in Emerging Markets?

By: Shawn A. Cole, Thomas Sampson and Bilal Zia

Financial development is critical for growth, but its micro-determinants are not well understood. We test leading theories of low demand for financial services in emerging markets, combining novel survey evidence from Indonesia and India with a field experiment. We... View Details

Keywords: Price; Knowledge; Demand and Consumers; Emerging Markets; Banks and Banking; Education; Finance; Behavior; Service Operations; Financial Services Industry; India; Indonesia

July 2021
Article

Outsourcing Tasks Online: Matching Supply and Demand on Peer-to-Peer Internet Platforms

By: Zoë Cullen and Chiara Farronato

We study the growth of online peer-to-peer markets. Using data from TaskRabbit, an expanding marketplace for domestic tasks at the time of our study, we show that growth varies considerably across cities. To disentangle the potential drivers of growth, we look... View Details

Keywords: Two-sided Market; Two-sided Platforms; Peer-to-peer Markets; Platform Strategy; Sharing Economy; Platform Growth; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Market Design; Network Effects

17 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

Amazon, Whole Foods Deal a Big Win for Consumers

Source: 400tmax Editor's Note. Online retailing behemoth Amazon announced June 16 that it would acquire upscale grocery chain Whole Foods Market in a deal valued at more than $13 billion. Though the company has dabbled with the idea of a brick-and-mortar footprint in... View Details

Keywords: by Jose Alvarez and Len Schlesinger; Retail

2011
Working Paper

Observation Bias: The Impact of Demand Censoring on Newsvendor Level and Adjustment Behavior

By: David F. Drake

In an experimental newsvendor setting we investigate three phenomena: Level behavior — the decision-maker's average ordering tendency; adjustment behavior — the tendency to adjust period-to-period order quantities; and observation bias — the tendency to let the degree... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Consumer Behavior; Decision Making; Prejudice and Bias; Profit

05 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

Are Consumers the Cure for Broken Health Insurance?

Just as we saw with the securities industry, entrepreneurs will respond to the unleashing of consumer demands with clearly differentiated products featuring various combinations of benefits, levels of... View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger

18 Feb 2011
Working Paper Summaries

A Behavioral Model of Demandable Deposits and Its Implications for Financial Regulation

Keywords: by Julio J. Rotemberg; Financial Services

03 Mar 2003
Research & Ideas

The Basics of Consumer Marketing in Asia

Consumer product makers looking to sell in Asia cannot expect the relative homogeneity they find in the U.S. or European countries, according to the panelists at the "Consumer Marketing in Asia" panel at the HBS Asia Business... View Details

Keywords: by Julie Jette

2007
Working Paper

Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers

By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

The digital interactive transformation in marketing is not unfolding, as many thought it would, on the model of direct marketing. That model anticipated that digital media using rich profiling data would intrude marketing messaging more deeply and more precisely into... View Details

Keywords: Communication Intention and Meaning; Interactive Communication; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Social and Collaborative Networks; Internet and the Web

1982
Article

Correlates of Deficient Consumer Environments: The Case of the Elderly

By: Rohit Deshpandé and S. Krishnan

Although much research attention has been given to the format of consumer information environments, there has been little study of the effects of consumer environments lacking in information. This paper describes an empirical study of elderly consumers functioning in... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Age; Information

February 2009 (Revised September 2010)
Case

JWT China: Advertising for the New Chinese Consumer

By: Elisabeth Koll

This case analyzes the business strategy and expansion of JWT China from the late 1990s to 2008. As part of the world's fourth largest marketing communications network, JWT China grew into one of the largest integrated communications companies in China operating from... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Business and Government Relations; Business Strategy; Expansion; Advertising Industry; China

Educators

Purchase

November 2007
Article

A Model of Consumer Learning for Service Quality and Usage

By: Raghuram Iyengar, Asim Ansari and Sunil Gupta

In many services, e.g., the wireless service industry, consumers choose a service plan based on their expected consumption. In such situations, consumers experience two forms of uncertainty. First, consumers may be uncertain about the quality of their service provider... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Customer Value and Value Chain; Learning; Price; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Service Delivery; Quality; Risk and Uncertainty; Service Industry

July 2015
Article

A Behavioral Model of the Popularity and Regulation of Demandable Liabilities

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

Overoptimism regarding one's ability to arrive early in a queue is shown to rationalize deposit contracts in which people can withdraw their funds on demand even if consumption takes place later. Capitalized institutions serving overoptimistic depositors emerge in... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Banks and Banking

24 Nov 2020
Working Paper Summaries

Accounting for Product Impact in the Consumer Finance Industry

Keywords: by George Serafeim and Katie Trinh; Financial Services

02 May 2005
What Do You Think?

Where is Consumer Generated Marketing Taking Us?

foster disruptive innovation. I was under the impression that ... true disruption would be generated less by popular demand than by hard radical thinking." Flavius Chircu suggested that if we regard View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

24 Jun 2019
Blog Post

Chloe Ho, MBA 2019: Data-Driven and In Demand

on Netflix to personalized healthcare.” As for kicking off her new career post HBS, Ho is excited to be a part of the booming AI revolution that provides not only innumerable consumer benefits, competitive advantage, and efficiency gains... View Details

Keywords: Technology

2024
Working Paper

The Revised-Is-Quality Heuristic: Why Consumers Prefer Products Labeled as Revised

By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien and Michael I. Norton

From downloading never-ending updates to tracking ever-newer releases, consumers today are surrounded by revised products that purport to have improved upon their predecessors. Seven experiments examine when and why consumers rely on a “revised-is-quality”... View Details

Keywords: Product Change; Versioning; Expectancy Effects; Heuristics; Intuitive Processing; Product Marketing; Change; Perception; Consumer Behavior

SSRN

October 2009
Article

Shaping Online Consumer Choice by Partitioning the Web

By: Jolie M. Martin and Michael I. Norton

This research explores how partitioning attributes in online search interfaces changes the valuations of those attributes-and impacts subsequent choice-such that attributes that are displayed as separate categories tend to receive greater decision weight than... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Information Management; Demand and Consumers; Research; Internet and the Web; Valuation

Forthcoming
Article

Differentiating on Diversity: How Disclosing Workforce Diversity Influences Consumer Choice

By: Maya Balakrishnan, Jimin Nam and Ryan W. Buell

Companies are facing increased pressure to “walk the talk” on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their operations. One specific call-to-action from stakeholders is the public disclosure of EEO-1s. Companies with 100+ employees are federally mandated to annually... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Corporate Disclosure; Diversity; Employees; Perception