Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(1,264)
- Faculty Publications (160)
- June 2011
- Case
Reed Supermarkets: A New Wave of Competitors
By: John A. Quelch and Carole Carlson
Reed Supermarkets is a high-end supermarket chain with operations in several Midwestern states. Meredith Collins, vice president of marketing, visits stores located in Columbus, Ohio, an important region with the largest market and the greatest impact on revenue... View Details
- May 2011 (Revised March 2012)
- Case
InterfaceRAISE: Sustainability Consulting
By: Michael W. Toffel, Robert G. Eccles and Casey Taylor
InterfaceRAISE is a sustainability management consulting firm created to leverage the capabilities of its parent company Interface Inc., a carpet manufacturer recognized as a global leader in corporate environmental sustainability. This case illustrates the challenges... View Details
Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Entrepreneurship; Performance; Environmental Accounting; Profit; Marketing Strategy; Human Resources; Business Model; Leveraged Buyouts; Salesforce Management; Consulting Industry; Manufacturing Industry
- 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
- November 2010 (Revised December 2010)
- Case
Mid-Missouri Energy: Ethanol from Corn
By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Noel Michele Holbrook, James Weber and Karla Sartor
Mid-Missouri Energy (MME) is a farmer-owned cooperative that produces ethanol from corn. The cooperative has performed well in comparison to other producers, but margins in the industry had declined as industry production levels neared market demand limits. MME farmers... View Details
- September 2010 (Revised April 2012)
- Case
Better World Books
By: Michael I. Norton, Fiona Wilson, Jill Avery and Thomas J. Steenburgh
Better World Books, a young start-up, provides a socially conscious alternative to Amazon, collecting and selling used books to keep them out of the waste stream, while donating a portion of their profits to support global literacy efforts. The case presents an... View Details
- July 2010
- Supplement
Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Pricing and Profitability Analysis (CW)
By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Pricing is one of the most difficult decisions marketers make and the one with the most direct and immediate impact on the firm's financial position. This toolkit will introduce the fundamental terminology and calculations associated with pricing and profitability... View Details
- July 2010 (Revised December 2011)
- Background Note
Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Pricing and Profitability Analysis
By: Thomas J. Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Pricing is one of the most difficult decisions marketers make and the one with the most direct and immediate impact on the firm's financial position. This toolkit will introduce the fundamental terminology and calculations associated with pricing and profitability... View Details
- April 2010
- Case
Metabical: Pricing, Packaging, and Demand Forecasting Recommendations for a New Weight Loss Drug
By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham
Metabical is a new weight loss drug from Cambridge Sciences Pharmaceuticals intended for moderately overweight individuals. In anticipation of final FDA approval, the senior director of marketing, Barbara Printup, prepares for the product launch and must make several... View Details
- February 2010 (Revised June 2012)
- Case
"Plugging In" the Consumer: The Adoption of Electrically Powered Vehicles in the U.S.
By: Elie Ofek and Polly Ribatt
How will U.S. consumers respond to the proliferation of alternative-fuel vehicles, such as cars powered partially or completely by electricity, in the coming decade? After a century in which fossil fuel-powered vehicles dominated the market, it appeared consumers would... View Details
- 2009
- Other Paper
Trade Policy and Firm Boundaries
By: Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Andrew F. Newman and Harald Fadinger
We examine how trade policy affects firms' organizational choices. We embed a model of firms' vertical integration decisions into a standard perfectly-competitive international trade framework. In the model, integration decisions are driven by a trade-off... View Details
- September 2009
- Case
Culinarian Cookware: Pondering Price Promotion
By: John A. Quelch and Heather Beckham
In November of 2006, senior executives at Culinarian Cookware were debating the merits of price promotions for the company's premium cookware products. The VP of Marketing, Donald Janus, and Senior Sales Manager, Victoria Brown, had different views. Janus felt price... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Systemic Risk and the Refinancing Ratchet Effect
By: Amir E. Khandani, Andrew W. Lo and Robert C. Merton
The confluence of three trends in the U.S. residential housing market-rising home prices, declining interest rates, and near-frictionless refinancing opportunities-led to vastly increased systemic risk in the financial system. Individually, each of these trends is... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Anger and Regulation
By: Rafael Di Tella and Juan Dubra
We propose a model where voters experience an emotional cost when they observe a firm that has displayed insufficient concern for other people's welfare (altruism) in the process of making high profits. Even with few truly altruistic firms, an equilibrium may emerge... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
Supply Chain Partners: Virginia Mason and Owens & Minor (A)
By: V.G. Narayanan and Lisa Brem
Virginia Mason Medical Center (VM) hired Owens & Minor (O&M) as its alpha vendor for medical/surgical supplies in 2004. By 2005, O&M was performing Just-in-Time and Low Unit of Measure services for VM, but they believed the pricing model in the industry was outdated.... View Details
- March 2009
- Background Note
Evaluating M&A Deals: Floors, Caps, and Collars
As equity consideration has become more popular in acquisitions, so has the use of the "pricing-protection" mechanisms, such as floors, caps, and collars. These contractual devices provide insurance to the shareholders of the target and may protect the buyer as well.... View Details
- March 2009
- Article
Trading Restrictions and Stock Prices
By: Robin Greenwood
Firms can manipulate their stock price by limiting the ability of their investors to sell. I examine a series of corporate events in Japan in which firms actively reduced their float—the fraction of shares available to trade—for periods of one to three months, locking... View Details
- January – February 2009
- Article
Content vs. Advertising: The Impact of Competition on Media Firm Strategy
By: David Godes, Elie Ofek and Miklos Sarvary
Media firms compete in two connected markets. They face rivalry for the sale of content to consumers, and at the same time, they compete for advertisers seeking access to the attention of these consumers. We explore the implications of such two-sided competition on the... View Details
- 2008
- Chapter
Corporate Honesty and Business Education: A Behavioral Model
By: Rakesh Khurana and Herbert Gintis
Since the mid-1970s neoclassical economic theory has dominated business school thinking and teaching in dealing with the nature of human motivation. However valuable in understanding competitive product and financial markets, neoclassical economic theory employs an... View Details
- December 2008
- Article
Style Investing and Institutional Investors
By: Kenneth A. Froot and Melvyn Teo
This paper explores institutional investors' trades in stocks grouped by style and the relationship of these trades with equity market returns. It aggregates transactions drawn from a large universe of approximately $6 trillion of institutional funds. To analyze style... View Details
- March 2008
- Article
Market Reactions to Export Subsidies
By: M. A. Desai and James R. Hines Jr.
This paper analyzes the economic impact of export subsidies by investigating stock price reactions to a critical event in 1997. On November 18, 1997, the European Union announced its intention to file a complaint before the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that... View Details