Publications

May 16, 2016
Article

Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer

By: Dina Gerdeman and John A. Quelch

Chipotle Mexican Grill’s ongoing struggle to win customers back months after a contaminated food crisis highlights the challenges companies face with keeping food safe.

Chipotle has seen its shares tumble and recently reported its first-ever quarterly loss... View Details

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February 2021
Case

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (A)

By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh, Sarah McAra and Christian Godwin

In 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook debuted the iPhone 6S with enhanced security measures that enflamed a debate on privacy and public safety around the world. The iPhone 6S, amid a heightened concern for privacy following the 2013 revelation of clandestine U.S. surveillance... View Details

June 2, 2020
Article

How to 'Re-engineer' Your Business for Safety

By: Hubert Joly

Process reengineering was a massive trend in the 1990s. By focusing on improving either cost, quality, or service, a company could gain benefits in all three categories. Today, the principles that underpin process reengineering can be applied anew, with safety as a... View Details

Keywords: Re-engineering; COVID; Safety; Performance Improvement; Organizational Change and Adaptation

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June 17, 2016
Comment

Companies Need to Start Marketing Security to Customers

By: John A. Quelch

Recent events in Orlando underscore an important marketing truth: consumer safety and security are mission critical. A popular nightclub, Pulse, known as a safe place for the LGBT community, is put out of business at least temporarily by a terrorist act. Not far away... View Details

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May–June 2025
Article

Balancing Digital Safety and Innovation

By: Tomomichi Amano and Tomomi Tanaka

Designers of consumer-facing digital products have tended to focus on novelty and speed (“move fast and break things”). They’ve spent more effort on innovating than on anticipating how customers—and bad actors—might engage with products. But as digital products become... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Cybersecurity; Demand and Consumers; Safety

January 2023
Supplement

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)

By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s... View Details

09 May 2018
Research & Ideas

A Simple Way for Restaurant Inspectors to Improve Food Safety

found an average 2.4 violations per inspection. Thus, citing just one fewer or one more violation can lead to a 42 percent decrease or increase from the average—and great potential for unfair assessments across the food industry, where establishments are judged on... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Food & Beverage; Service

05 May 2008
Research & Ideas

Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors

authors of Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal about the Minds of Consumers (HBS Press, 2008). Transformation is just one metaphor that finds expression in products that satisfy deeply held View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Consumer Products

July 2024
Article

Chatbots and Mental Health: Insights into the Safety of Generative AI

By: Julian De Freitas, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp and Stefano Puntoni

Chatbots are now able to engage in sophisticated conversations with consumers. Due to the ‘black box’ nature of the algorithms, it is impossible to predict in advance how these conversations will unfold. Behavioral research provides little insight into potential safety... View Details

Keywords: Autonomy; Chatbots; New Technology; Brand Crises; Mental Health; Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Behavior; Well-being; Technological Innovation; Ethics

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

November 1999 (Revised December 1999)
Case

Safe Food Act, The: A Consumer Group's Perspective

By: Ray A. Goldberg, Carin-Isabel Knoop and Hal Hogan

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is taking a position on creating a new safety leadership vehicle in the U.S. government. How should it plead its cause? What are the position merits and faults? View Details

Keywords: Food; System; Consumer Behavior; Government and Politics; Safety; Leadership; United States

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

14 Mar 2011
Research & Ideas

Keeping Credit Flowing to Consumers in Need

strengthen consumer protections. The risk they run is that too stringent regulation could make it harder for borrowers in need to get money. In today's challenging economic climate and with high unemployment, "many Americans borrow... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Financial Services; Construction; Real Estate

16 May 2016
HBS Case

Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer

prompted a greater demand for food testing in order to verify the authenticity of the claims. Increasing consumer consciousness about food safety and healthfulness: Consumers... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

October 14, 2023
Article

Will Consumers Buy Selfish Self-Driving Cars?

By: Julian De Freitas

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Ethics; Technological Innovation; Safety; Auto Industry

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25 May 2016
Research & Ideas

How Consumers and Businesses are Reshaping Public Health

conditions. In this case, Western consumers were taking responsibility not for their own health but for the health and safety of workers in a foreign land thousands of miles away. View Details

Keywords: by John A. Quelch; Health

04 Dec 2007
Working Paper Summaries

Dynamics of Platform Competition: Exploring the Role of Installed Base, Platform Quality and Consumer Expectations

Keywords: by Feng Zhu & Marco Iansiti; Entertainment & Recreation

06 May 2019
Research & Ideas

Consumers Blame Business for Global Health Problems. Can Business Become the Solution?

to appeal to young would-be smokers. But corporate distrust runs so deep for some consumers that constructive dialogue is virtually impossible; consider vaccination skeptics who criticize Big Pharma’s influence, despite considerable... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost; Health

January 2017
Case

The Six CEOs of Tyco International Ltd.

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

In September 2016, Johnson Controls, Inc. completed the acquisition of Tyco International PLC, a $9.9 billion business with operating profits of $884 million. The purchase consideration was $14.4 billion. Although the deal was billed as a merger, Ireland-based Tyco... View Details