Unethical Marketing Practices - Publications - Faculty & Research

September 10, 2022
Article

NFT Sales: Clearing the Market, Avoiding Gas Wars

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Tim Roughgarden

Instead of letting the market decide the price for their primary sale offerings, many NFT projects choose to initially sell their NFTs at prices below the market-clearing level. But what happens when market designers trade off efficiency for equity; or when demand far... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Crypto Economy; Cryptocurrency; NFTs; Auctions; Market Design; Price

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May 2015
Case

Pricing in a Digital World (2015)

By: John Gourville

Dynamic pricing, especially as practiced by Uber and Lift, seems to be all the rage. In this case, we look at five interesting applications of dynamic price and price customization, each made possible by advances in digital technology. These range from the online... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Marketing; Dynamic Pricing; Price Customization; Information Technology; Price; Entrepreneurship; Customization and Personalization; Product Marketing

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Article

Putting the 'Relationship' Back into CRM

By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery

Many managers think that the way to capture value through relationship marketing is to focus on the 'good' customers and get rid of the 'bad' ones. But there is a lot more to best practice relationship management than maximizing revenues on individual customers and... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; CRM; Customer Relationship Management; Brand Building; Brand Management; Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Products Industry

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2021
Working Paper

Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details

Keywords: Pay Transparency; Online Labor Market; Privacy; Wage Gap; Negotiation; Corporate Disclosure; Compensation and Benefits; Gender

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February 2018 (Revised October 2019)
Case

HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

By: Jill Avery and Thomas Steenburgh

HubSpot, an inbound marketing, sales, and customer relationship management (CRM) software provider, announced that it had acquired Motion AI, a software platform that enabled companies to easily build and deploy chatbots, fueled by artificial intelligence, to interact... View Details

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January 2017
Case

Expanding Ecommerce at Technos

By: Thales Teixeira, Rohit Deshpandé, Ruth Costas and Priscilla Zogbi

Technos was the market leader in the Brazilian watch market. Its CEO had made a firm commitment to evolve the company’s marketing and commercial practices by focusing less on pushing product to retail clients and more on branding to end consumers to pull watches from... View Details

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06 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 6

practice in the India market. The mission calls for continued financial performance and market leadership, as well as greater emphasis on healthy products, natural resource management, and employee... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

30 Apr 2024
Book

When Managers Set Unrealistic Expectations, Employees Cut Ethical Corners

In the 1990s, when Harvard Business School Professor Lynn S. Paine was researching and writing about examples of corporate misconduct, she hoped more businesses would take decisive action to root out fraud and other unethical behavior.... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

05 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

How Hormones Foretell Whether People Will Cheat

wondered if there were biological or physiological factors that could help to explain the misconduct that we see so frequently in the real world” A new study reveals two key discoveries about the link between the endocrine system and View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

15 Nov 2022
Book

Stop Ignoring Bad Behavior: 6 Tips for Better Ethics at Work

In 1995, Purdue Pharma began selling a powerful and addictive opioid drug called OxyContin. The company was aware that the drug, which was marketed to doctors as a safe way to manage chronic pain, was a potent narcotic that could quickly... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

October 2017 (Revised September 2022)
Teaching Note

Fuyao Glass America: Sourcing Decision

By: Willy Shih

This case is about globalization: a Chinese company has decided to locate a production facility close to its customers in the U.S., but a recent contract bid means it will lose money, at least initially, by supplying product from that factory. The purpose of this case... View Details

Keywords: Supply Chains; Labor Market; Labor Supply; Arbitrage; Tradable Sector; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Labor; Globalization; Globalized Markets and Industries; Geographic Location; Auto Industry; United States; China

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May 2023
Article

Equilibrium Effects of Pay Transparency

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

The public discourse around pay transparency has focused on the direct effect: how workers seek to rectify newly-disclosed pay inequities through renegotiations. The question of how wage-setting and hiring practices of the firm respond in equilibrium has received... View Details

Keywords: Pay Transparency; Online Labor Market; Privacy; Wage Gap; Corporate Disclosure; Wages; Negotiation

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17 Sep 2021
Research & Ideas

The Trial of Elizabeth Holmes: Visionary, Criminal, or Both?

difference between what is often called fraud versus “puffery” —general statements of opinion that people are supposed to reasonably interpret as not being factually true. It’s all the marketing ads we read on a day-to-day basis. Silicon... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Biotechnology; Technology; Medical Devices & Supplies

20 Apr 2011
Research & Ideas

Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think

Think back to recent events when people making unethical decisions grabbed the headlines. How did auditors approve the books of Enron and Lehman Brothers? How did feeder funds sell Bernard Madoff's invesments? We would never act as they... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2012
Article

Conflict Policy and Advertising Agency-Client Relations: The Problem of Competing Clients Sharing a Common Agency

By: Alvin J. Silk

What restrictions should be placed on advertising agencies with respect to serving accounts or clients that are competitors of one another in order to avoid conflicts of interest? In recent decades, the advertising and marketing services industry has undergone a number... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Agency; Competitors; Marketing Services Industry; Structural Changes; Agency-client Relationships; Hybrid Conflict Policies; Safeguards; Advertising; Advertising Industry; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America

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2011
Chapter

Consumers' Relationships with Brands

By: Susan Fournier and Jill Avery

This chapter presents a brand management paradigm based on the foundational principles of relationships. (1) Brand relationships are a means to an end: brand relationship managers must consider the whole person and understand how the brand adds meaning into people's... View Details

Keywords: Marketing; Brands; Brand Building; Brand Equity; Brand Management; Customer Relationship Management; CRM; Customer Focus and Relationships; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

Citation

May 2018 (Revised July 2018)
Supplement

EY China (B): An Emerging Giant

By: Ashish Nanda, Das Narayandas and Lisa Rohrer

The case outlines how regional managing partner (RMP) Albert Ng steered Ernst & Young (EY) China through a period of significant growth from 2009, when it was the smallest of the Big Four firms in China, to 2017, by when it had become the second largest firm. Partners... View Details

Keywords: Professional Services; International Management; Big Four; Strategy And Execution; Emerging Market; Strategy; Growth Management; Leadership; Global Range; Emerging Markets; Competitive Strategy; Accounting Industry; China

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Teaching Interest

Overview

Chu's teaching focuses on businesses providing goods and services to the emerging middle class and low-income sectors that constitute the market below the well-served top of the socio-economic pyramid. In developed countries such as the USA, this may be 40-50% of the... View Details

Keywords: Business At The Base Of The Pyramid; Emerging Markets; Low-income; Social Impact; Microfinance; Inclusive Finance; Impact Investing

August 2023
Case

Kariyer.net: Recruiting AI

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Fares Khrais and Namrata Arora

In 2017, Fatih Uysal (AMP 2021) became CEO of Kariyer.net. By then, the business was already the industry leading online job board in Turkey. However, faced with stalling growth, a turbulent macroenvironment, and growing competition from international players, Uysal... View Details