Publications

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November 2004
Article

Linking Customer Management Effort to Customer Profitability in Industrial Markets

By: Douglas Bowman and Das Narayandas

Keywords: Customers; Management; Profit; Markets

Find at Harvard

March 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Module Note

Managing Customers in the Digital Era

By: Eva Ascarza

The last two decades have witnessed incredible technological advances that have transformed the ways customers connect with each other and enabled firms to track customers in multiple ways through various channels to personalize (and automize) their offerings at... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Technological Innovation

16 Nov 2016
Research & Ideas

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

soliciting feedback from its most loyal and vocal customers” As impressive as that accomplishment was, 1,000 customers is hardly enough to ensure long-run success. For that, these companies had to scale up dramatically, from 1,000 to over... View Details

Keywords: by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding; Retail; Transportation; Accommodations

Research Summary

Managing the Operating Role of Customers

By: Frances X. Frei

Customers in operating roles introduce considerable variability into the production environment including differences in the demands they impose on the environment and the unpredictability of those demands. When customers are the source of production variability, the... View Details

June 2020
Background Note

Customer Management Dynamics and Cohort Analysis

By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller

The digital revolution has allowed companies to amass considerable amounts of data on their customers. Using this information to generate actionable insights is fast becoming a critical skill that firms must master if they wish to effectively compete and win in today’s... View Details

Keywords: Cohort Analysis; Customers; Analytics and Data Science; Segmentation; Analysis; Customer Value and Value Chain

18 Nov 2009
HBS Case

Customer Feedback Not on elBulli’s Menu

He's been called "the Salvador Dalí of the kitchen" for creations ranging from beetroot and yogurt ice-cream lollipops to a deconstructed Spanish omelet served in a parfait glass. Each year, some 2 million hopeful diners vie to be one of the fifty View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Food & Beverage

November 2001 (Revised October 2017)
Case

GuestFirst Hotel (A): Customer Loyalty

By: Frances X. Frei and Dennis Campbell

Provides a hotel context in which to explore the link between customer loyalty and financial performance, using four years of hotel data. Challenges students to find the extent of the relationship between loyalty and performance. View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Mathematical Methods; Finance; Performance; Relationships; Customer Focus and Relationships; Data and Data Sets; Accommodations Industry

June 2017 (Revised January 2019)
Case

Signet Jewelers: Assessing Customer Financing Risk

By: Gerardo Pérez Cavazos, Suraj Srinivasan and Monica Baraldi

Marc Cohodes, a renowned short seller, has identified weaknesses in Signet's business strategy, which he argues is heavily reliant on providing loans to customers with subprime credit scores. He believes that the company accounts for its receivables portfolio using... View Details

Keywords: Short Selling; Bad Debt Expense; Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Finance; Financing and Loans; Valuation; Retail Industry; Financial Services Industry; United States

October 1990
Case

Manufacturers Hanover Corp.: Customer Profitability Report

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Banking company noting declining profitability from its traditional lending activities has started to measure the total profitability of its lending relationships. A loan pricing model estimates the profit and return-on-equity from commercial loans. Additional work was... View Details

Keywords: Investment Return; Revenue; Commercial Banking; Banks and Banking; Customer Value and Value Chain; Banking Industry

March 2003
Background Note

Linking Customer Management Effort to Profits

By: Das Narayandas

Describes the link between a vendor's customer management effort and customer profitability. View Details

Keywords: Profit; Customer Relationship Management

16 Nov 2016
News

Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

November 2011 (Revised August 2012)
Background Note

Customer Discovery and Validation for Entrepreneurs

By: Frank V. Cespedes, Thomas Eisenmann and Steven G. Blank

Provides practical guidelines for conducting market research to explore and validate demand for entrepreneurial offering. Explains how the research objectives of entrepreneurs might differ from those relevant to managers evaluating product or service offerings to... View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Entrepreneurship

July 2003 (Revised April 2011)
Case

Singapore Airlines: Customer Service Innovation

By: Rohit Deshpande and Hal Hogan

The members of Singapore Airlines' (SIA) management committee needs to decide whether to cancel the implementation of the new lie-flat seats in business class after the effects of the global recession on the travel industry in September 2001. SIA was considered the... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Management Teams; Brands and Branding; Air Transportation Industry; Travel Industry; Singapore

21 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

The New Math of Customer Relationships

It's the E=MC2 of customer loyalty. Deeply satisfied employee = deeply satisfied customer = lifelong profit. Harvard Business School professor emeritus Jim Heskett and professor Earl Sasser have pursued this... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

January 1991 (Revised January 1993)
Case

Xerox Corp.: The Customer Satisfaction Program

In August 1990 the president and executive vice president of Xerox are reviewing the progress made on its customer satisfaction program. The emphasis placed on the program, the success of the program to date, and the drive to achieve the corporate goals of customer... View Details

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry