Publications

February 2018
Article

Retention Futility: Targeting High-Risk Customers Might Be Ineffective.

By: Eva Ascarza

Companies in a variety of sectors are increasingly managing customer churn proactively, generally by detecting customers at the highest risk of churning and targeting retention efforts towards them. While there is a vast literature on developing churn prediction models... View Details

Keywords: Retention/churn; Proactive Churn Management; Field Experiments; Heterogeneous Treatment Effect; Machine Learning; Customer Relationship Management; Risk Management

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16 May 2011
Research & Ideas

What Loyalty? High-End Customers are First to Flee

Businesses that offer their customers the highest levels of service might like to believe that all their efforts to pamper and please will pay off with an extremely loyal following. “Customers you might expect to be the most 'stuck' are... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

June 2023
Article

National Customer Orientation: An Empirical Test across 112 Countries

By: Ofer Mintz, Imran S. Currim and Rohit Deshpandé

Customer orientation is a central tenet of marketing. However, less is known about how customer orientation varies across countries and time. Mintz, Currim, and Deshpandé (Eur. J. Mark., 56: 1014–1041, 2022) propose a country-level construct, national customer... View Details

Keywords: Global Range; Customer Focus and Relationships

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28 Feb 2022
Research & Ideas

How Racial Bias Taints Customer Service: Evidence from 6,000 Hotels

Hotels, restaurants, and other businesses in the service industry often thrive or die depending on whether they provide exemplary customer service, but new research shows that the color of a customer’s skin... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

March 2000 (Revised January 2001)
Background Note

Customers in Health Care, The

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer

Reviews the current literature on the consumers of health care, primarily patients. Discusses their stated preferences, the sources of information they use in making their selections of plan and provider, and their behavior. View Details

Keywords: Customers; Health Care and Treatment; Information; Planning; Behavior; Health Industry

2002
Article

Personalization and Personality: Some Effects of Customizing Message Style Based on Consumer Personality

By: Youngme Moon

Keywords: Identity; Customers; Customer Focus and Relationships

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21 Mar 2016
HBS Case

Can Customer Reviews Be 'Managed?'

Brian Kenny: What motivated you to write the case? Why were you interested in it? Thales Teixeira: Some of my research is on the economics of attention and online reviews have amassed a vast amount of attention nowadays. People have... View Details

Keywords: by Brian Kenny; Advertising; Travel

09 Apr 2001
Research & Ideas

The Manager’s Guide to Communicating with Customers Collection

Are you reaching your customers? The key is knowing who they are and what they want To appeal to retail customers you need to understand what makes them tick. What better way to do that than by studying actual consumer behavior? A great... View Details

Keywords: by Richard Bierck; Retail

09 Jan 2013
Sharpening Your Skills

Sharpening Your Skills: Understanding Customers

Customer Feedback Not on elBulli's Menu At its height, Chef Ferran Adrià's elBulli restaurant may have been the most popular in the world, but why? In professor Michael Norton's course, students learn about... View Details

Keywords: Re: Multiple Faculty

17 Sep 2001
Research & Ideas

Let Customers Call the Shots

know and control what is done with their information. Q: Do these services do better by focusing on the higher-end market, or is the resistance you describe pretty universal for all users? A: The... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

February 2001 (Revised June 2002)
Case

Customer Value Measurement at Nortel Networks--Optical Networks Division

By: Das Narayandas

Since 1995, Nortel Networks' Optical Networks (ON) division has been incorporating customer satisfaction and loyalty measures into its business practices to increase customer value. Over the years, key process owners in various parts of the organization have become... View Details

Keywords: Business Divisions; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Management Teams; Marketing Strategy; Value Creation; Telecommunications Industry

June 2013
Case

Olympic Rent-A-Car U.S.: Customer Loyalty Battles

By: John Deighton and James T. Kindley

The marketing and operations managers for Olympic Rent-A-Car meet to decide how to respond to changes in the loyalty rewards program at the market-leading competitor. The competitor's program gives awards based on dollars spent instead of days rented and eliminates... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Competitive Strategy; Marketing; Operations; Auto Industry; Service Industry

24 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Busting Six Myths About Customer Loyalty Programs

the privilege of collecting loyalty card customer data. As former Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy put it in his recent book referring to the 1 percent loyalty discount: "It was a thank you, pure and simple." Can such small rewards... View Details

Keywords: by Marcel Corstjens & Rajiv Lal; Retail; Consumer Products

06 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

The Right Way to Manage Customer Churn for Maximum Profit

Focusing on retaining higher-spending customers, even if they aren’t as likely to leave, can increase the total profit a company can reap. As their research evolved, Gupta and Lemmens expanded this idea with... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Retail; Service; Financial Services

January 1997
Background Note

Buy Low, Sell High: Creating and Extracting Customer Value by Enhancing Organizational Performance

By: Benson P. Shapiro

Provides an integrated framework for creating customer value and managing the firm profitably. Focuses on the use of product/service line management and effective customer service to achieve customer satisfaction and high profitability. View Details

Keywords: Customer Value and Value Chain; Framework; Performance Efficiency; Sales; Business Strategy; Customer Satisfaction; Profit; Product Marketing; Business or Company Management

13 Mar 2017
Research & Ideas

Hiding Products From Customers May Ultimately Boost Sales

Most of the previous research on assortment rotation has focused on retail categories in which consumers would rarely buy more than one type of... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Retail; Fashion

January 2013
Case

Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and Company Culture (MM)

By: Frances X. Frei and Robin J. Ely

On July 17, 2009, Zappos.com, a privately-held online retailer of shoes, clothing, and other soft-line retail categories, learned that Amazon.com, a $19 billion multinational online retailer, had won its Board of Directors' approval to offer to merge the two companies.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Internet and the Web; Mergers and Acquisitions; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Retail Industry

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

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction; Customer Value and Value Chain; Consumer Behavior; Product Design; Social and Collaborative Networks; Value Creation