Best Buy - Publications - Faculty & Research

06 Mar 2017
Research & Ideas

Why Comparing Apples to Apples Online Leads To More Fruitful Sales

Online, consumers are more likely to buy when a product grouping display contains like items. Source: Mik22 In online retail displays, items pictured next to your product may make or break a decision to buy... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Advertising

23 Sep 2013
Research & Ideas

Status: When and Why It Matters

Consumers pay handsomely for products that are considered the best of the best in their league, whether they are the fastest cars, the fanciest handbags, or the finest wines. But for what, exactly, are they... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

Blog Post

Health Care Transparency: The Fox Is Guarding the Chicken Coop in Washington Again

By: Regina E. Herzlinger

Now that more people can shop directly for their own health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, they have been transformed from potential patients to consumers, and like any other consumers of goods or services, they want to know if what they're buying is any... View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Health Care; Health Insurance; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry

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08 Apr 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

The Life of Luxury and How to Sell It

knowingly: Money can’t buy you a happy ride. But looking at the statistics more closely reveals a more nuanced reality. The vehicles traded in are often baseline models of those prestige brands, favored more by aspirational buyers than... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Auto; Retail; Fashion

16 May 2013
Working Paper Summaries

Marketplace or Reseller?

Keywords: by Andrei Hagiu & Julian Wright; Retail

06 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

The Right Way to Manage Customer Churn for Maximum Profit

the example of an online retailer who suddenly sees a monthly shopper stop buying for two months. “Customers just stop using the service but don’t have to tell the company.” In order to manage churn, companies typically use machine... View Details

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

Research Summary

Evaluating Transactions

I also study how people judge potential transactions. We often think of purchase decisions as straightforward: a consumer buys a product if he expects the benefits to outweigh the price, sometimes after shopping around for the best deal. In practice,... View Details

Regina E. Herzlinger

Regina E. Herzlinger is the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. She was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at Harvard Business School and serve on many established and start-up corporate health care/medical... View Details

Keywords: health care; insurance industry; medical devices; retailing; digital health

14 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

How to Profit from Scarcity

scarcity encourages us to buy sooner and perhaps to buy more than normal. We saw two excellent examples of this effect this summer with the launches of the iPhone and the seventh Harry Potter book. In both... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Consumer Products; Advertising

27 Jun 2024
Research & Ideas

Gen AI Marketing: How Some 'Gibberish' Code Can Give Products an Edge

humans but do influence the behavior of LLMs. Marketers could use such machine-learning techniques to determine the best strategic text strings to include in their product information pages for desired results in almost real time, the... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Technology

24 Nov 2015
Research & Ideas

Developing Your Next CEO for the Family Business

built a manufacturing company for Manitowoc Cranes as an Outsider CEO before buying that company and selling it, then being recruited by his family’s fifth generation hot sauce maker, McIlhenny Company. These family members have the right... View Details

Keywords: Retail; Auto

October 18, 2021
Article

How to Reframe What Work Means to You

By: Hubert Joly

Our society often conceives of work as something we must endure so we can afford to do something else. The former CEO of Best Buy explains why this view has led to a crisis of engagement among leaders and employees alike, and offers a different model that he introduced... View Details

Keywords: Work; Meaning In Life; Employment; Attitudes; Perspective; Mission and Purpose

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18 Oct 2021
News

How to Reframe What Work Means to You

16 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

Adam Smith, Behavioral Economist?

let them withdraw their own money until a certain amount or date has been reached. It gives their control over to the bank to help them overcome short-term impulses to spend. The product had a large and significant effect on clients' total savings, helping clients to... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen

2015
Book

What Great Service Leaders Know and Do: Creating Breakthroughs in Service Firms

By: James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser and Leonard A. Schlesinger

Based on decades of collective field experiences, the authors present anecdotal evidence in support of eight things that great service leaders know and do. Great service leaders know that (1) leading a breakthrough service is different, and they take steps to ensure... View Details

Keywords: Management; Leadership; Service Operations; Service Delivery

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30 Jan 2020
Research & Ideas

The Upside of Highlighting a Product's Downsides

further and highlighting their products’ shortcomings, companies might save consumers that step and help them buy with confidence. And, with time, hiding a product’s downsides might eventually become its own operating risk. “If... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

November 2019
Article

The Relevance of Broker Networks for Information Diffusion in the Stock Market

By: Marco Di Maggio, Francesco Franzoni, Amir Kermani and Carlo Sommavilla

This paper shows that the network of relationships between brokers and institutional investors shapes information diffusion in the stock market. We exploit trade-level data to show that central brokers gather information by executing informed trades, which is then... View Details

Keywords: Broker Networks; Institutional Investors; Asset Prices; Business and Shareholder Relations; Institutional Investing; Information; Knowledge Dissemination; Financial Markets; Asset Pricing

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April 2009 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Urbi and the City Licensee Managers

By: John D. Macomber and Regina Garcia-Cuellar

A leading low income housing builder in Mexico decides which prospective new local partner best extends its advantages in managing twin production lines of homes and clients. URBI has built substantial competitive advantage in the technology and culture that matches... View Details

Keywords: Mortgages; Government and Politics; Housing; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Market Entry and Exit; Production; Supply Chain; Organizational Culture; Franchise Ownership; Partners and Partnerships; Competitive Advantage; Real Estate Industry; China; India; Mexico; United States

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December 2016
Article

Health Care Needs Real Competition

By: Leemore S. Dafny and Thomas H. Lee

The U.S. health care system is inefficient, unreliable, and crushingly expensive. There is no shortage of proposed solutions, but central to the best of them is the idea that health care needs more competition. In other sectors, competition improves quality and... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; United States

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November 2004 (Revised September 2019)
Background Note

The U.S. Health Club Industry in 2004

By: John R. Wells, Gabriel Ellsworth and Benjamin Weinstock

In 2004, the $16.8 billion U.S. health club industry continued its strong record of growth. There were almost 27,000 health clubs in the United States, up from 6,700 two decades earlier, and these clubs claimed 41 million members, over 14% of the U.S. population.... View Details