Publications

October 2008 (Revised September 2009)
Case

Consumer Lending in Japan: Citi CFJ (A)

By: J. Gunnar Trumbull and Akiko Kanno

Despite a tradition of high household savings, Japan has supported a dynamic and technically sophisticated consumer-lending sector. The high profitability of the sector has periodically attracted interest from domestic banks as well as international investors. Most... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Financing and Loans; Foreign Direct Investment; Personal Finance; Courts and Trials; Business and Government Relations; Banking Industry; Japan

March 2006
Course Overview Note

Consumer Marketing: Rethinking the Core

By: Youngme E. Moon

Outlines the structure and content of an advanced MBA course entitled Consumer Marketing: Rethinking the Core. The course, which is part of the second-year curriculum at the Harvard Business School, focuses on a reexamination of several fundamental marketing paradigms... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Consumer Behavior

2010
Working Paper

Manipulability in Matching Markets: Conflict and Coincidence of Interests

We study comparative statics of manipulations by women in the men-proposing deferred acceptance mechanism in the two-sided one-to-one marriage market. We prove that if a group of women employs truncation strategies or weakly successfully manipulates, then all other... View Details

Keywords: Conflict of Interests; Marketplace Matching; Two-Sided Platforms

Read Now

13 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer (And How To Reach It)

Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman's latest book, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, delves into the subconscious mind of the consumer—the place where most... View Details

Keywords: by Manda Mahoney

April 2024
Case

Managing AI Risks in Consumer Banking

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Satish Tadikonda, Paul Dongha, Manoj Saxena and Radhika Kak

In early 2024, Ruth Jones, head of digital banking at Signa Bank, a (fictitious) European consumer bank, was thinking about how to best incorporate GenAI capabilities to improve efficiencies and create new ways to improve the customer experience. Where were the biggest... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; AI and Machine Learning; Risk Management; Opportunities; Customization and Personalization; Banking Industry; Europe

December 2022
Article

Conflicting Interests and the Effect of Fiduciary Duty: Evidence from Variable Annuities

By: Mark Egan, Shan Ge and Johnny Tang

We examine the variable annuity market to study conflicts of interest and the effect of fiduciary duty in brokerage markets. Insurers typically pay brokers higher commissions for selling more expensive annuities. Our results indicate that sales are four times as... View Details

Keywords: Variable Annuity; Brokers; Fiduciary Duty; Finance; Investment; Insurance; Conflict of Interests; Financial Services Industry; Insurance Industry; United States

SSRN

November 2017
Teaching Note

Predicting Consumer Tastes with Big Data at Gap

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery

CEO Art Peck was eliminating his creative directors for The Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic brands and promoting a collective creative ecosystem fueled by the input of big data. Rather than relying on artistic vision, Peck wanted the company to use the mining of big... View Details

Research Summary

Relative Thinking and Consumer Choice

By: Joshua R. Schwartzstein

Fixed differences appear smaller when compared to large differences. Professor Schwartzstein has proposed a model of relative thinking, in which a person weighs a given change by less when he compares it to a larger range. Relative thinking implies that a person is... View Details

August 1995 (Revised January 1997)
Exercise

Consumer Behavior Exercise (E)

By: John A. Deighton and Susan M. Fournier

Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a high-involvement product or service in depth about his/her ownership and usage experiences. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumption domain (e.g.,... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior

February 1987 (Revised January 1989)
Case

SmithKline Consumer Products: The Contac Relaunch

In March 1986, a tamperer contaminated CONTAC Cold Capsules, SmithKline Consumer Product's most popular product. To relaunch CONTAC after withdrawing it from the market, the management team had to present a plan of action to the corporation board. They knew CONTAC's 25... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Crisis Management; Product Launch; Pharmaceutical Industry

1984
Chapter

Consumer Promotions and the Acceleration of Product Purchases

By: Scott A. Neslin, Caroline Henderson and John A. Quelch

1998
Article

Consumer Acceptance of Interactive News in the Netherlands

By: Anita Elberse

Keywords: News; Customers; Netherlands

July 2002
Article

Let's Put Consumers in Charge of Health Care

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Article

Media versus Special Interests

By: Alexander Dyck, David Moss and Luigi Zingales

We argue that profit-maximizing media help to overcome the rational ignorance problem highlighted by Anthony Downs. By collecting news and combining it with entertainment, media are able to inform passive voters about regulation and other public policy issues, acting... View Details

Keywords: Media; Profit; Government and Politics

October 1988 (Revised May 1989)
Case

General Electric: Consumer Electronics Group

By: David J. Collis and Nancy Donohue

Highlights the General Electric takeover of RCA and the consolidation of the two companies' consumer electronic groups. Starting first with a history of the television industry in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and then a brief discussion of the main competitors... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Markets; Business Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

January 2020 (Revised May 2020)
Case

Direct to Consumer Brands

By: Sunil Gupta

Recent years have seen the dramatic rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands by several startups. Many of these brands, such as Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s, Glossier, and Allbirds, entered mature markets dominated by established companies, and yet they grew rapidly to... View Details

Keywords: Direct-to-consumer; Digital Marketing; Industry Evolution; Business Startups; Internet and the Web; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Change

Article

Consumer Promotions and the Acceleration of Product Purchases

By: Scott A. Neslin, Caroline Henderson and John A. Quelch

April 1999 (Revised September 1999)
Case

Compaq Computer: Consumer Notebook Group

By: David E. Bell and Ann Leamon

Presents the background for a video of a focus group on Compaq Computer's new consumer notebook. Engineers, manufacturers, and retailers had collaborated on the product design, which has been approved by the executive committee. A launch is scheduled for nine months... View Details

Keywords: Human Resources; Product Launch; Product Design; Outcome or Result; Social and Collaborative Networks; Corporate Strategy; Computer Industry

1981
Article

A Consumer Based Approach for Establishing Priorities in Consumer Information Programs: Implications for Public Policy

By: Rohit Deshpandé and S. Krishnan

Although there exists substantial research on the style and format of consumer information programs, little attention has been devoted to the critical issue of whether consumers need new information at all. A conceptual approach to systematically assess this... View Details

Keywords: Information; Consumer Behavior; Research