Publications

January 1974 (Revised January 1987)
Case

Gillette Safety Razor Division: Blank Cassette Project

Gillette is trying to decide whether to enter the fast-growing blank recording cassette business. The vice president of new business development is charged with developing a marketing plan to be used as the basis for a go/no go decision. In part, the issue is whether... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Change and Adaptation; Marketing Strategy; Market Entry and Exit; Consumer Products Industry

2015
Book

Strong Brands, Strong Relationships

By: Susan Fournier, Michael Breazeale and Jill Avery

From the editorial team of the ground-breaking Consumer-Brand Relationships: Theory and Practice comes this new volume. Strong Brands, Strong Relationships is a collection of innovative research and management insights that build upon the foundations of... View Details

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

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December 2002 (Revised May 2003)
Case

Fonterra: Taking on the Dairy World

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Jose M. M. Porraz

Fonterra was a cooperatively owned dairy company--New Zealand's largest company and the world's largest exporter of dairy products. To maintain its leadership, Fonterra had to respond to increased competition, new consumer tastes, consolidation of its customers, and... View Details

Keywords: Cooperative Ownership; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Trade; Global Strategy; Food; Business Model; Developing Countries and Economies; Competitive Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; New Zealand

Teaching Interest

Overview

By: Jeffrey F. Rayport

Technology Entrepreneurship, Marketing Strategy, Service Management View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Strategy Formulation; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Advertising Technology; Media Content; Media And Broadcasting Industry; Media Businesses; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry

December 2008
Case

Taylor Fresh Foods

By: David E. Bell, Natalie Kindred and Mary Louise Shelman

In 13 years, Bruce Taylor had built Taylor Fresh Foods into a $1 billion company and the top supplier of salads to the U.S. food service industry and to supermarket deli departments. In 2008, he was convinced that the time was right to make a big push in the fresh food... View Details

Keywords: Food; Brands and Branding; Demand and Consumers; Supply Chain Management; Competition; Expansion; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States

August 2002 (Revised June 2006)
Case

Great Dakota Bank: Online Banking

By: Frances X. Frei, Youngme E. Moon and Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar

In 2002, Great Dakota Bank's retail division is considering how heavily it should be promoting the company's online banking service. A recent promotional campaign appears to have significantly increased enrollments in online banking, but it is unclear whether the bank... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Internet and the Web; Customer Relationship Management; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Technological Innovation; Customer Value and Value Chain; Customer Satisfaction; Management; Service Operations; Banking Industry

June 2003 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Modi-Revlon

By: Rohit Deshpande and Seth Schulman

The head of the Indian subsidiary of cosmetics firm Revlon faces a crucial turnaround situation for the company. After a high-profile product launch, sales were very disappointing and Revlon was trying to decide whether it should pull out of India. The Indian majority... View Details

Keywords: Business Subsidiaries; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Product Design; Value Creation; India

June 2021
Case

Reversing Course on a Reverse E-Auction (A)

By: Kym Lew Nelson, James K. Sebenius and Alex Green

Global consumer products powerhouse LSP has found enormous savings in a trial run of a new competitive bidding tool for their procurement organization known as a reverse e-auction. But when Jen Baldwin is asked to achieve the same savings from her suppliers for a... View Details

Keywords: Reverse E-auctions; Bids and Bidding; Auctions; Complexity; Cost vs Benefits

14 Sep 2007
Research & Ideas

How to Profit from Scarcity

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge.Marketers are trained to... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch; Consumer Products; Consumer Products

02 Feb 2004
Research & Ideas

Where Does Apple Go From Here?

focused in his first couple of years. He got rid of a huge number of product lines. He streamlined the operations and he bet on a very small number of products. The combination of the early success of the iMac, the booming marketing in... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

February 2009 (Revised May 2010)
Case

Orange: Read&Go

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Toby E. Stuart, Bhaskar Chakravorti, Vincent Marie Dessain, Simon Harrow and Elena Corsi

In late 2008, Orange (aka France Telecom) must decide if launching Read&Go, an electronic newsstand built around an e-paper reader, would be successful. The case describes (1) Orange's strategy; (2) the company's new product development process; (3) e-paper technology,... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Technological Innovation; Demand and Consumers; Product Development; Partners and Partnerships; Competition; Publishing Industry; France

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July 2021
Article

The Effect of Price on Firm Reputation

By: Michael Luca and Oren Reshef

While a business's reputation can affect its pricing, prices can also affect its reputation. To explore the effect of prices on reputation, we investigate daily data on menu prices and online ratings from a large rating and ordering platform. We find that a price... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Reputation Systems; IT Policy And Management; Economics Of Digital Platforms; Business Ventures; Reputation; Price; Consumer Behavior; Analysis

03 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

The Tricky Business of Managing Web Advertising Affiliates

When the FBI charged Shawn Hogan and two others with defrauding eBay of about $21 million in affiliate marketing sales, Benjamin G. Edelman was watching closely behind the scenes. Edelman's name rarely came up at the time of the 2010... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Advertising; Publishing

March 1979 (Revised July 1984)
Case

Amana Microwave Ovens

Describes Amana's position and strategies in the microwave oven market and evaluates its competitive thrust in this growth area. View Details

Keywords: Product Positioning; Competitive Strategy; Consumer Products Industry

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2016
Teaching Note

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Laurent Adamowicz and Bon'App

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Tessa Natanay Hamilton and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone

Teaching Note for Case 314-028. After a successful career as Chairman and CEO of Paris-based luxury food company, Fauchon, Laurent Adamowicz sought to provide a solution to a large scale complex problem. Ultimately, Adamowicz created a mobile application to provide... View Details

Keywords: Nutritional Information; Obesity; Weight Loss; App Development; Business Startups; Nutrition; Health; Information; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Entrepreneurship; Social Enterprise; Information Technology Industry; Health Industry

Article

People Make It So Hard to Ditch Plastic Straws

By: Scott Duke Kominers

Rarely has a minor consumer product received more vilification than the plastic straw. As a symbol of human wastefulness and our careless disregard for the environment, straws are the near-perfect villain. You use a plastic straw once and toss it, but it stays with us... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Consumer Behavior

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July 1991 (Revised June 1992)
Case

Retail Promotional Pricing: When Is a Sale Really a Sale? (A)

Addresses the controversy that surrounds highly promotional retail pricing referred to as "high-low pricing" by the trade. High-low pricing involves setting prices at an initially high level for a brief period of time, then discounting off the so-called "regular" or... View Details

Keywords: Courts and Trials; Price; Ethics; Consumer Behavior; Product Marketing; Retail Industry; Colorado