Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(6,742)
- Faculty Publications (2,089)
Page 1 of 2,089
Results →
- 2025
- Working Paper
Emotional Manipulation by AI Companions
By: Julian De Freitas, Zeliha Oğuz-Uğuralp and Ahmet Kaan-Uğuralp
AI-companion apps such as Replika, Chai, and Character.ai promise relational benefits—yet many boast session lengths that rival gaming platforms while suffering high long-run churn. What conversational design features increase consumer engagement, and what trade-offs... View Details
- August 2025
- Article
Revenue Collapses and the Consumption of Small Business Owners in the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Olivia S. Kim, Jonathan A. Parker and Antoinette Schoar
Using financial account data linking small businesses to their owner households, we examine how business owners’ consumption responded to changes in business revenues during the COVID-19 crisis. In the first two months following the National Emergency, business... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
Toilets for the Underserved: The SURT Commercialization Challenge
By: Maria P. Roche, Anne Marie Knott and Alexander Oettl
In 2021, a breakthrough in sanitation technology developed under the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet” initiative stood ready for commercialization. The Single User Reinvented Toilet (SURT), engineered by Dr. Shannon Yee, offered an off-grid, self-contained... View Details
Keywords: Technological Innovation; Commercialization; Social Issues; Social Enterprise; Public Sector; Private Sector; Market Entry and Exit; Strategic Planning; Engineering; Infrastructure; Innovation Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States; South Africa; India; France
- Article
Using Gen AI for Early-Stage Market Research
By: James Brand, Ayelet Israeli and Donald Ngwe
Generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), offers a promising new tool for early-stage market research by simulating customer responses to product concepts. This can allow companies to draw conclusions similar to those they’d obtain by surveying... View Details
- July 2025
- Teaching Note
Designed for Purpose: “Never a Failure. Always a Lesson”
By: James Riley and Andrea Dorbu
In 2017, Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty under LVMH, disrupting the cosmetics industry with an inclusive 'Beauty for All' strategy that emphasized accessibility across skin tones. The brand’s success was followed by the launch of Savage X Fenty, a lingerie line upholding... View Details
- July 2025
- Case
Designed for Purpose: “Never a Failure. Always a Lesson”
By: James Riley and Andrea Dorbu
In 2017, Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty under LVMH, disrupting the cosmetics industry with an inclusive 'Beauty for All' strategy that emphasized accessibility across skin tones. The brand’s success was followed by the launch of Savage X Fenty, a lingerie line upholding... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
In Privacy We Trust: The Effect of Privacy Regulations on Data Sharing Behavior
By: Ozge Demirci, Ayelet Israeli and Eva Ascarza
This paper studies the impact of privacy policies on consumer data-sharing behavior, focusing on policy changes in California and Virginia that took effect in 2023. Using data from a leading customer engagement app in the United States, where users upload shopping... View Details
Keywords: Privacy; Privacy Regulation; Data Sharing; Digital Platforms; Policy; Surveys; Behavior; Public Opinion; California; Virginia
- July 2025
- Supplement
Meghna Modi at Revlon India: Leading with a Bold Purpose (B)
By: Aiyesha Dey and Sarah Sasso
This follow-up case is about Meghna Modi, the CEO of struggling cosmetics company Revlon India, and the actions she takes as she tries to both turn the company around and integrate her personal purpose into her work. Influenced by her own life struggles, Modi feels... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Designing Consent: Choice Architecture and Consumer Welfare in Data Sharing
By: Chiara Farronato, Audrey Fradkin and Tesary Lin
We study the welfare consequences of choice architecture for online privacy using a field experiment that randomizes cookie consent banners. We study three ways in which firms or policymakers can influence choices: (1) nudging users through banner design to encourage... View Details
- July–August 2025
- Article
Don’t Let an AI Failure Harm Your Brand
How companies market their AI systems affects the repercussions they face when their products fail. Marketers must promote their AI products with potential failure in mind. To do that, they must first understand consumers’ unique attitudes toward AI. Marketers who... View Details
- July 2025
- Article
Economic Integration and the Transmission of Democracy
By: Marco Tabellini and Giacomo Magistretti
In this paper, we study the effects of economic integration with democratic partners on democracy. We assemble a large country-level panel dataset from 1960 to 2015, and exploit improvements in air, relative to sea, transportation to derive a time-varying instrument... View Details
- July 2025
- Module Note
Supply and Demand for Strategists
By: Quan Le
This module note introduces students to the foundational microeconomic principles of supply and demand. It uses the example of an aluminum plant (specifically, production quantity and shutdown decisions) to discuss short-run vs. long-run decisions, marginal costs, sunk... View Details
Keywords: Business Exit or Shutdown; Business or Company Management; Business Strategy; Competition; Competitive Advantage; Cost of Capital; Cost vs Benefits; Decision Making; Decisions; Demand and Consumers; Economics; Economic Systems; For-Profit Firms; Market Entry and Exit; Market Participation; Markets; Metals and Minerals; Microeconomics; Price; Revenue; Strategy; Supply and Industry; Manufacturing Industry
- June 2025
- Case
Parque del Sendero: Repositioning in the Death Care Industry in Chile
By: Jill Avery, Andres Cuneo and Marco Bertini
Facing changing consumer behavior and shifting industry conditions, Parque del Sendero, one of largest networks of cemeteries in Chile, considers repositioning its products to appeal to a broader swath of Chilean customers to fuel growth and a more profitable business... View Details
- June 2025
- Supplement
Full-Funnel Advertising on TikTok: An Experiment
By: Jeremy Yang and Ayelet Israeli
TikTok’s Marketing Science team developed a new type of advertising strategy beyond branding and performance advertising, called full-funnel advertising. Branding ads focused on brand building at the top of the funnel by generating consumer awareness, while performance... View Details
- June 2025
- Exercise
Full-Funnel Advertising on TikTok: An Experiment
By: Jeremy Yang and Ayelet Israeli
TikTok’s Marketing Science team developed a new type of advertising strategy beyond branding and performance advertising, called full-funnel advertising. Branding ads focused on brand building at the top of the funnel by generating consumer awareness, while performance... View Details
- June 2025
- Exercise
Full-Funnel Advertising on TikTok: An Experiment (Solution)
By: Jeremy Yang and Ayelet Israeli
TikTok’s Marketing Science team developed a new type of advertising strategy beyond branding and performance advertising, called full-funnel advertising. Branding ads focused on brand building at the top of the funnel by generating consumer awareness, while performance... View Details
- May–June 2025
- Article
Algorithmic Assortment Curation: An Empirical Study of Buybox in Online Marketplaces
By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
Most online sales worldwide take place in marketplaces that connect sellers and buyers. The presence of numerous third-party sellers leads to a proliferation of listings for each product, making it difficult for customers to choose between the available options. Online... View Details
- 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
- Summer 2025
- Article
Dynamic Competition for Customer Memberships
By: Cristian Chica, Julian Jimenez-Cardenas and Jorge Tamayo
A competitive two-period membership (subscription) market is analyzed. Two symmetric firms charge a “membership” fee that allows consumers to buy products or services at a given unit price for both periods. Firms can choose between long- or short-term memberships. When... View Details
- June 2025
- Article
Ideation with Generative AI—In Consumer Research and Beyond
By: Julian De Freitas, G. Nave and Stefano Puntoni
The use of large language models (LLMs) in consumer research is rapidly evolving, with applications including synthetic data generation, data analysis, and more. However, their role in creative ideation—a cornerstone of consumer research—remains underexplored. Drawing... View Details