Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(457)
- Faculty Publications (196)
- January 2010 (Revised April 2010)
- Case
Credit Suisse Group: Managing Equity Research as a Business
By: Boris Groysberg, Paul M. Healy and Sarah Abbott
In 2003, in the midst of industry turmoil and company-specific challenges, Stefano Natella was named Global Head of Equity Research at Credit Suisse. Over a six-year period, Natella implemented and refined a new methodology for valuing equity research analysts, both... View Details
- January 2010 (Revised August 2011)
- Case
United Breaks Guitars
By: John A. Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
When social media propagate a complaint about poor customer service, an international media event ensues. How do viral videos spread and what can firms do about them? This case dissects an incident in which a disgruntled customer used YouTube and Twitter to spread a... View Details
- Article
Are Self-service Customers Satisfied or Stuck?
This paper investigates the impact of self-service technology (SST) usage on customer satisfaction and retention. Specifically, we disentangle the distinct effects of satisfaction and switching costs as drivers of retention among self-service customers. Our empirical... View Details
- December 2009 (Revised September 2014)
- Case
TD Canada Trust
By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan
The case illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers and... View Details
- December 2009
- Article
Closing the Customer Feedback Loop
By: Rob Markey, Fred Reichheld and Andreas Dullweber
Realizing that customer retention is more critical than ever, companies have ramped up their efforts to listen to customers. But many struggle to convert their findings into practical prescriptions for customer-facing employees. Some companies are addressing that... View Details
- November 2009
- Supplement
Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (B)
By: Tsedal Neeley
This case updates students on the steps Greg James took to solve the problems that instigated the crisis documented in “Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A).” We find out how James solves the process problems involved in his team's breakdown... View Details
- September 2009
- Teaching Note
HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0 (TN)
By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Teaching Note for 509-049. View Details
- September 2009 (Revised May 2019)
- Case
The London 2012 Olympic Games
By: John T. Gourville and Marco Bertini
It's 2009 and Paul Williamson, Head of Ticketing, must finalize ticket prices for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Yet, there are many criteria to consider. First, given the importance of ticketing to the Games' bottom line, he has a strong incentive to maximize... View Details
Keywords: Pricing; Customer Satisfaction; Price; Strategy; Profit; Revenue; Sales; Sports Industry; London
- 2009
- Chapter
Creating Superior Customer Value in a Connected World
By: Ranjay Gulati
"In the early twenty-first century, customers are more demanding than ever, and difficult economic times make them all the more so. As customers tighten their wallets and increase their demands, firms face greater pressure to provide superior customer value. Reducing... View Details
- February 5, 2009
- Comment
In Praise of Marketing
By: John A. Quelch
Many dismiss marketing as manipulative, deceptive, and intrusive. Marketing, they argue, focuses too much of our attention on material consumption. More recently, Benjamin Barber, in his 2007 book Consumed, claims that marketing is "sucking up the air from every other... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Consumer Loyalty; Local Vs. Global Branding; Multi-national Brands; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Satisfaction; Globalized Economies and Regions; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Multinational Firms and Management; Globalized Markets and Industries; Brands and Branding; Marketing Communications; Marketing Strategy; Product Positioning
- January 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Cisco Systems (2001): Building and Sustaining a Customer-Centric Culture
By: Ranjay Gulati
Customer centricity has been an important part of the culture at Cisco Systems since its inception. While part of this is attributable to values put in place by the founders and retained by subsequent management, it is also closely interwoven with its organizational... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage
By: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Joe Wheeler
Hundreds of large organizations worldwide have used the groundbreaking Service Profit Chain to improve business performance. Now The Ownership Quotient reveals the next generation of the chain: customer and employee "owners" of your business. Employee-owners exhibit... View Details
- Article
Strong Leadership and Teamwork Drive Culture and Performance Change: Ohio State University Medical Center 2000–2006
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger, Fred Sanfilippo, Neeli Bendapudi and Anthony Rucci
Several characteristics of academic health centers have the potential to create high levels of internal conflict and misalignment that can pose significant leadership challenges.
In September 2000, the positions of Ohio State University (OSU) senior vice... View Details
- July 2008 (Revised July 2020)
- Case
Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A)
By: Tsedal Neeley and Thomas J. DeLong
Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc., sets out to meet with his entire 43-member customer implementation team spread across India, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America to resolve a dire customer system outage as required... View Details
- 2008
- Book
Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers
By: Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman
Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don't understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don't think deeply about consumers' innermost thoughts and feelings. Marketing Metaphoria is a... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised October 2008)
- Case
TD Canada Trust (A): The Green and the Red
By: Dennis Campbell and Brent Kazan
The case series illustrates the role of performance measurement and analytics in translating TD-Canada Trust's service model of "comfortable banking" into operational terms. In 2000, in a banking market where consumers and regulators were typically hostile to mergers... View Details
- April 2008 (Revised March 2015)
- Case
TheLadders (A)
By: Peter A. Coles, Benjamin Edelman, Brian J. Hall and Nicole Bennett
Despite strong appeal among job seekers and outside recruiters, TheLadders' corporate job listings seem to lag. Could raising prices help solve the problem? TheLadders considers this strategic paradox. View Details
- April 2008
- Exercise
Exercise: Customer-Operator Letter Writing
By: Frances X. Frei
The exercise involves having students write letters to an organization of their choice describing their operating experience at a detailed level. The companies' responses are paired with the students' letters and the entire collection is made available to the class.... View Details
- April 2008
- Module Note
Service Design in the Context of Customer-Operators
By: Frances X. Frei
Taught as the second module in a Harvard Business School course on Managing Service Operations: Understanding the Customer Operating Role (606-092). Addresses the design and management of service operations with significant customer operating roles. The focus is on... View Details
- February 2008
- Case
Cincom Systems, Inc.
By: Tom Nicholas and David Chen
Tom Nies, charismatic CEO of Cincom Systems, is considering a public offering of his software enterprise, but the 1987 stock market crash checks his plans. Nies reflects that capital for expansion will keep Cincom at the frontier of technological development in a... View Details