Consumer Research - Publications - Faculty & Research

December 1998 (Revised April 1999)
Case

Mind of the Market: Introduction to Neuroscience, Primer One

By: Gerald Zaltman and Kathryn A. Braun

Keywords: Markets; Research; Consumer Behavior

30 Sep 2013
Research & Ideas

Do Mergers Hurt Product Quality?

of the rankings in a year before its parent company was acquired but ranked toward the bottom post-merger, the merger would seem to have a negative effect on quality. To that end, Sheen enlisted a team of research assistants to chart... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Consumer Products

22 Jan 2007
Research & Ideas

The Immigrant Technologist: Studying Technology Transfer with China

Assistant Professor William R. Kerr teaches the required first-year MBA course, The Entrepreneurial Manager, in addition to Executive Education courses at Harvard Business School. One of his core research areas is the role of immigrant... View Details

Keywords: Re: William R. Kerr; Technology; Computer

09 Dec 2015
Research Event

How Do You Predict Demand and Set Prices For Products Never Sold Before?

in a digitally-transformed economy. “All of these decisions would be easy to make if I knew what consumer demand will be. The problem is that I have a lot of uncertainty in demand” All retailers face tricky tactical decisions related to... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail; Apparel & Accessories

27 Jul 2009
Research & Ideas

Social Network Marketing: What Works?

When marketers want to reach users of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, or Cyworld, they have two choices: buy advertising or start a viral campaign. New research by Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta suggests that... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Advertising; Publishing; Retail

16 Sep 2014
Research & Ideas

Has Apple Reinvented the Watch?

technologies, industries, and organizations. He has also conducted extensive research on the watch industry. Raffaelli weighs in below on everything from battery life to the Apple Watch's implications for the health care industry. Read an... View Details

Keywords: Re: Ryan L. Raffaelli; Electronics; Retail; Health

28 Sep 2020
Working Paper Summaries

What Can Economics Say About Alzheimer's Disease?

Keywords: by Amitabh Chandra, Courtney Coile, and Corina Mommaerts; Health; Pharmaceutical

16 Jun 2003
Research & Ideas

Peeling Back the Global Brand

Hans-Willi Schroiff, vice president of market research and business intelligence for the German company Henkel, described why detergent has made a valuable case study for new and edgy marketing. (They cautioned that they are not ready to... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

Other Unpublished Work

A Technique to Estimate Retail Demand and Lost Sales

By: A. Raman and Giulio Zotteri

Keywords: Mathematical Methods; Demand and Consumers; Sales; Retail Industry

Citation

18 Apr 2005
Research & Ideas

Selling Luxury to Everyone

Luxury is the new essential. Consumers know it and retailers are reaping the bounty. At a "Growth Strategies in the Luxury Goods Industry" panel on April 3 at the HBS Retail and Luxury Goods Conference, moderator Nancy F. Koehn... View Details

Keywords: by Julie Jette; Consumer Products

01 Dec 2015
News

Faculty Q&A: The Price Is Right

What intrigued you about the pay-what-you-want (PWYW) model? It’s very unusual for a firm or a seller to completely relinquish pricing power to their customers. Typically consumers encounter a price, and then they decide whether or not... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna

2023
Working Paper

Design-Based Confidence Sequences: A General Approach to Risk Mitigation in Online Experimentation

By: Dae Woong Ham, Michael Lindon, Martin Tingley and Iavor Bojinov

Randomized experiments have become the standard method for companies to evaluate the performance of new products or services. In addition to augmenting managers’ decision-making, experimentation mitigates risk by limiting the proportion of customers exposed to... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Research and Development; Analytics and Data Science; Consumer Behavior

Citation

SSRN

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05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

How Bank of America Turned Branches into Service-Development Laboratories

Companies often use rigorous R&D processes to guide new product development, but are much less scientific when it comes to creating services. Not Bank of America, which has turned Atlanta-area branches into consumer laboratories.... View Details

Keywords: by Stefan Thomke; Banking; Financial Services

15 May 2013
Research & Ideas

From McRibs to Maseratis: The Power of Scarcity Marketing

quantitative and qualitative research to explain how we can turn cash into contentment. The key lies in changing our spending habits and adhering to five key principles: Buy Experiences (research shows that material purchases are less... View Details

Keywords: Re: Michael I. Norton

26 May 2003
Research & Ideas

What Your Competition is Telling You

Competition keeps you hungry. It forces you to continually find new and more cost-effective solutions to business problems. Although there's nothing new in this insight, recent research suggests some often-overlooked ways in which... View Details

Keywords: by David Stauffer

23 Jul 2014
Lessons from the Classroom

Innovation Is Magic. Really

When business executives create innovative products or services, they often look to impress their customers by delivering an experience more meaningful, more delightful, than possibly expected. A true "wow!" moment. And Harvard Business School Professor Stefan Thomke... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Consumer Products

19 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

Ground-Floor Opportunities for Retail in India

you to evolve with the customer.— Kishore Biyani, Pantaloon Retail What is the mall's role in the panelists' businesses? "It's probably not the right strategy for Intergold," said Jain. Consumer View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

17 Jun 2013
Research & Ideas

Advertising Symbiosis: The Key to Viral Videos

YouTube views. By contrast, Nestlé's self-explanatory "From Maine Water Springs to You: The Journey of Poland Springs Water" has barely cracked 500 views. So why did one water commercial sparkle on YouTube, while the other fizzled? The answer may lie at the heart of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Advertising

31 May 2023
Research & Ideas

With Predictive Analytics, Companies Can Tap the Ultimate Opportunity: Customers’ Routines

haven’t made a service part of their routines, the authors find. These findings come as companies such as Procter & Gamble, Adidas, and McDonald’s are trying to collect more consumer data to hone their marketing messages. With... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Transportation

01 Oct 2008
Research & Ideas

How Much Time Should CEOs Devote to Customers?

versus the inside. Marketing expertise depends on customer insights. These insights cannot be gleaned from looking at market research data on a computer screen. Just like politics, all marketing is retail. The customer votes every day at... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

Publications