Publications

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October 2000 (Revised December 2002)
Background Note

Note on Customer Management

By: Das Narayandas

Describes a process for managing customers for profit. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Value

07 Sep 2010
News

Customers always know best

1980
Chapter

Consumer Satisfaction with Appliances and Personal Care Equipment

By: S. Ash, M. Grant and J. Quelch

June 2002
Background Note

Note on Customer Management

By: Das Narayandas

Lays out a framework for the management of customers using examples of forms in a variety of industries. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Framework

15 Aug 2024
Blog Post

Learning from Mistakes and Leveraging Personal Experiences: Tiffany Kent (MBA 2001)

strategic choice that clashed with the industry norms of prioritizing rapid asset accumulation, requiring me instead to focus on relationship building. Most importantly, it aligned with my strengths and added a new level of purpose to my... View Details

Keywords: All Industries

2001
Article

Customizing Careers

By: James Waldroop and Timothy Butler

Keywords: Personal Development and Career

March 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Module Note

Managing Customers in the Digital Era

By: Eva Ascarza

The last two decades have witnessed incredible technological advances that have transformed the ways customers connect with each other and enabled firms to track customers in multiple ways through various channels to personalize (and automize) their offerings at... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Technological Innovation

14 Jul 2003
Research & Ideas

Keeping Your Balance With Customers

From product push to customer pull, technology has vastly reshaped the business transaction—and in turn, the customer's place in the value chain. Today, managing the customer relationship has become the... View Details

Keywords: by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton

February 2024 (Revised February 2024)
Teaching Note

Travelogo: Understanding Customer Journeys

By: Eva Ascarza and Ta-Wei Huang

Teaching Note for HBS Exercise 524-044. The exercise aims to teach students about 1) Customer Segmentation; and 2) constructing buying personas, 3) Get actionable insights from clickstream data. View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management; Analysis; Analytics and Data Science; Marketing Strategy; Segmentation; Consumer Behavior; Travel Industry; United States

January 1995 (Revised October 1995)
Case

Citibank: Global Customer Management

By: Michael Y. Yoshino and Thomas W. Malnight

Describes Citibank's worldwide operations, which include activities in developing and developed markets. The bank's structure also varies across markets and regions, varying from autonomous national affiliates to an industry/product-based structure in its domestic U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Customer Focus and Relationships; Global Range; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Multinational Firms and Management; SWOT Analysis; Emerging Markets; Banking Industry; United States

16 Jan 2006
Research & Ideas

What Customers Want from Your Products

effort to improve sales of its milk shakes. (In this example, both the company and the product have been disguised.) Its marketers first defined the market segment by product—milk shakes—and then segmented it further by profiling the... View Details

Keywords: by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook & Taddy Hall; Consumer Products

23 Apr 2012
News

The Paradox of Personal Branding

December 1992 (Revised June 1993)
Case

ACTC Customer Service Department

Focuses on the young general manager of a new cable TV system and on its customer service department. Jeanne LaFrance, the general manager, has an uneasy feeling about the way in which the department is being managed. She sees symptoms of what she suspects are serious... View Details

Keywords: Management; Problems and Challenges; Planning; Customer Focus and Relationships; Performance Evaluation; Telecommunications Industry

2015
Working Paper

Customers and Investors: A Framework for Understanding Financial Institutions

By: Robert C. Merton and Robert T. Thakor

Financial institutions have both investors and customers. Investors, such as those who invest in stocks and bonds or private/public-sector guarantors of institutions, expect an appropriate risk-adjusted return in exchange for the financing and risk-bearing that they... View Details

Keywords: Financial Institutions

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04 Jan 2021
Working Paper Summaries

The Twofold Effect of Customer Retention in Freemium Settings

Keywords: by Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer, and Julian Runge; Video Game; Entertainment & Recreation

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; Apparel and Accessories Industry

Fall 2020
Article

Competing on Customer Outcomes

By: Marco Bertini and Oded Koenigsberg

Customers ultimately want to pay for meaningful outcomes, not the products and services that presumably deliver them. Today, companies can be increasingly accountable for those outcomes with three kinds of technologically-enhanced revenue models. Adopt one to better... View Details

Keywords: Market Positioning; Revenue Strategy; Customer Satisfaction; Marketing Strategy; Business Model; Value Creation

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2023
Working Paper

Personalized Game Design for Improved User Retention and Monetization in Freemium Games

By: Eva Ascarza, Oded Netzer and Julian Runge

One of the most crucial aspects and significant levers that gaming companies possess in designing digital games is setting the level of difficulty, which essentially regulates the user’s ability to progress within the game. This aspect is particularly significant in... View Details

Keywords: Freemium; Retention/churn; Field Experiment; Field Experiments; Gaming; Gaming Industry; Mobile App; Mobile App Industry; Monetization; Monetization Strategy; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Customers; Retention; Product Design; Strategy