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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(12,701)
- People (50)
- News (3,150)
- Research (7,037)
- Events (30)
- Multimedia (175)
- Faculty Publications (4,885)
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- June 2018
- Article
Personal and Social Usage: The Origins of Active Customers and Ways to Keep Them Engaged
By: Clarence Lee, Elie Ofek and Thomas Steenburgh
We study how digital service firms can develop an active customer base, focusing on two questions. First, how does the way that customers use the service postadoption to meet their own needs (personal usage) and to interact with one another (social usage) vary across... View Details
Keywords: Customer Engagement; Adoption Routes; Word-of-Mouth; Digital Marketing; Bayesian Estimation; Customers; Communication; Consumer Behavior; Marketing; Internet and the Web; Analytics and Data Science
Lee, Clarence, Elie Ofek, and Thomas Steenburgh. "Personal and Social Usage: The Origins of Active Customers and Ways to Keep Them Engaged." Management Science 64, no. 6 (June 2018): 2473–2495. (Lead Article.)
- Research Summary
Personal Development and Interpersonal Feedback
Enabling individual development and learning are key to enabling organizational success as well as employee satisfaction and engagement. Many organizational approaches to employee development visualize feedback processes as mechanisms for illuminating individual... View Details
- September 2023
- Article
Customer Churn and Intangible Capital
By: Scott R. Baker, Brian Baugh and Marco Sammon
Intangible capital is a crucial and growing piece of firms’ capital structure, but many of its distinct components are difficult to measure. We develop and make available several new firm-level metrics regarding a key component of intangible capital – firms’ customer... View Details
Keywords: Customer Base; Transaction Data; Customer Churn; Intangible Capital; Capital Structure; Measurement and Metrics; Customers
Baker, Scott R., Brian Baugh, and Marco Sammon. "Customer Churn and Intangible Capital." Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics 1, no. 3 (September 2023): 447–505.
- February 2024
- Case
SundaySky: Changing Customer Experiences through Personalized Video
By: David C. Edelman and James Barnett
In June 2023, SundaySky CEO Jim Dicso considers growth strategies. The software-as-a-service company provided software to create advertising videos, customer service videos, and other videos, like employee training modules, and had begun to pilot a new generative... View Details
Keywords: Advertising; Strategy; Technology Adoption; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software; Growth and Development Strategy; Advertising Industry; Technology Industry; United States
Edelman, David C., and James Barnett. "SundaySky: Changing Customer Experiences through Personalized Video." Harvard Business School Case 524-013, February 2024.
- 2019
- Working Paper
The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance
This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility – the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them – on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the... View Details
Keywords: Customer Compatibility; Satisfaction; Profitability; Customer Relationship Management; Service Operations; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Retail Industry
Buell, Ryan W., Dennis Campbell, and Frances X. Frei. "The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-091, February 2016. (Revised December 2019.)
- March 2021
- Article
The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance
This paper investigates the impact of customer compatibility – the degree of fit between the needs of customers and the capabilities of the operations serving them – on customer experiences and firm performance. We use a variance decomposition analysis to quantify the... View Details
Keywords: Customer Compatibility; Satisfaction; Profitability; Service Operations; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Satisfaction; Performance
Buell, Ryan W., Dennis Campbell, and Frances X. Frei. "The Customer May Not Always Be Right: Customer Compatibility and Service Performance." Management Science 67, no. 3 (March 2021): 1468–1488.
- 2002
- Article
Personalization and Personality: Some Effects of Customizing Message Style Based on Consumer Personality
By: Youngme Moon
Moon, Youngme. "Personalization and Personality: Some Effects of Customizing Message Style Based on Consumer Personality." Journal of Consumer Psychology 12, no. 4 (2002): 313–326.
- August 2021
- Technical Note
Brand You: Crafting Your Personal Brand
By: Jill Avery and Rachel Greenwald
Selling oneself is something that we have to do every day in both professional and personal settings. We face it when we apply for a job, advocate for a promotion or a raise, vie for a leadership position, attempt to land a new client, write a dating profile, or meet a... View Details
Keywords: Personal Brand; Brand Management; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Identity; Opportunities; Talent and Talent Management; Jobs and Positions; Strength and Weakness; Communication
Avery, Jill, and Rachel Greenwald. "Brand You: Crafting Your Personal Brand." Harvard Business School Technical Note 522-031, August 2021.
- March–April 2019
- Article
Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees
By: Ryan W. Buell
Conventional wisdom holds that the more contact an operation has with its customers, the less efficiently it will run. But when customers are partitioned away from the operation, they are less likely to fully understand and appreciate the work going on behind the... View Details
Keywords: Operational Transparency; Customers; Services; Operations; Customer Focus and Relationships; Employees; Customer Satisfaction; Behavior; Service Industry
Buell, Ryan W. "Operational Transparency: Make Your Processes Visible to Customers and Your Customers Visible to Employees." R1902H. Harvard Business Review 97, no. 4 (March–April 2019): 102–113.
- 2014
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Marketing Reading: Customer Management
By: Sunil Gupta
This Reading on customer management sheds light on how companies should evaluate and manage their customers in order to grow profitably. Customer management allows marketing managers to inform investment decisions by drilling down into each customer's profitability or... View Details
Keywords: Customer Acquisition; Customer Churn; Customer Profitability Analysis; Customer Retention; Firm Value; Organizational Structure
Gupta, Sunil. "Marketing Reading: Customer Management." Core Curriculum Readings Series. Boston: Harvard Business Publishing 8162, 2014.
- May 2021
- Simulation
Customer Compatibility Exercise Application
By: Ryan W. Buell
Customers impose considerable variability on the operating systems of service organizations. They show up when they wish (arrival variability), they ask for different things (request variability), they vary in their willingness and ability to help themselves (effort... View Details
- January 2015 (Revised April 2015)
- Case
Zeal: Launching Personalized and Social Learning
By: John J-H Kim and Christine S. An
Set in 2014, this case follows John Danner and his team at Zeal as they consider their product development strategy. In February 2013, serial entrepreneurs John Danner and Sanjay Noronha co-found Zeal, an education technology start up providing a web-based, mobile... View Details
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Education Technology; MVP; Product Development; Product Market Fit; Monetization Strategy; SaaS Business Models; Education; Personalized Learning
Kim, John J-H, and Christine S. An. "Zeal: Launching Personalized and Social Learning." Harvard Business School Case 315-052, January 2015. (Revised April 2015.)
- January 2018 (Revised January 2021)
- Background Note
Customer Lifetime Social Value (CLSV)
By: Elie Ofek, Barak Libai and Eitan Muller
One of the hallmarks of the digital revolution is the rise of the socially connected consumer. Concomitantly, the ability of companies to affect and measure the social interactions among customers has grown tremendously. Consequently, in assessing the full value of... View Details
Keywords: Customer Lifetime Value; Customer Management; Social Contagion; Word Of Mouth; Customer Engagement; Customer Value and Value Chain; Measurement and Metrics; Customer Relationship Management
Ofek, Elie, Barak Libai, and Eitan Muller. "Customer Lifetime Social Value (CLSV)." Harvard Business School Background Note 518-077, January 2018. (Revised January 2021.)
- Article
The Big Five Personality Traits, Material Values, and Financial Well-being of Self-described Money Managers
By: Grant Edward Donnelly, Ravi Iyer and Ryan Howell
Previous research has linked personality traits, material values, and money management to savings, debt, and compulsive buying. To extend previous research, four online surveys examined the Big Five personality traits and material values of those who manage their money... View Details
Keywords: Values; Personality; Well-being; Personal Characteristics; Values and Beliefs; Personal Finance; Money
Donnelly, Grant Edward, Ravi Iyer, and Ryan Howell. "The Big Five Personality Traits, Material Values, and Financial Well-being of Self-described Money Managers." Journal of Economic Psychology 33, no. 6 (December 2012): 1129–1144.
- Research Summary
Personal Data in Marketing
By: John A. Deighton
Between 10% and 20% of all marketing activity in the United States, and a smaller proportion internationally, relies on data about individuals, whether personally identifying or pseudonomized. These data flow across a system of established and emerging firms operating... View Details
- March 2003
- Background Note
Customer Migration and Customer Types
By: Das Narayandas
Describes the evolution of customer relationships using the price vs. cost-to-serve matrix. View Details
- February 2025
- Article
Improving Customer Compatibility with Tradeoff Transparency
By: Ryan W. Buell and MoonSoo Choi
Through a large-scale field experiment with 393,036 customers considering opening a credit card account with a nationwide retail bank, we investigate how providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs affects subsequent rates of customer acquisition and long-run... View Details
Keywords: Transparency; Customer Selection; Customer Compatibility; Retention; Service Operations; Service Delivery; Marketing Strategy; Marketing Communications; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Satisfaction; Banking Industry; Australia
Buell, Ryan W., and MoonSoo Choi. "Improving Customer Compatibility with Tradeoff Transparency." Management Science 71, no. 2 (February 2025): 1335–1355.
- December 2009
- Article
Closing the Customer Feedback Loop
By: Rob Markey, Fred Reichheld and Andreas Dullweber
Realizing that customer retention is more critical than ever, companies have ramped up their efforts to listen to customers. But many struggle to convert their findings into practical prescriptions for customer-facing employees. Some companies are addressing that... View Details
Keywords: Customer Centric Initiative; Customer Satisfaction; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain
Markey, Rob, Fred Reichheld, and Andreas Dullweber. "Closing the Customer Feedback Loop." Harvard Business Review 87, no. 12 (December 2009): 43–47.
- July 2010 (Revised January 2017)
- Background Note
Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Customer Lifetime Value Analysis (2024)
By: Thomas Steenburgh and Jill Avery
Customers are increasingly being viewed as assets that bring value to the firm. Customer lifetime value is a metric that allows managers to understand the overall value of their customer base and relate it to three customer strategies firms employ: asset... View Details
Keywords: Customer Lifetime Value; Return On Investment; Customer Acquisition; Customer Retention; Customer Churn; ＂Marketing Analytics＂; Marketing; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Focus and Relationships; Customer Value and Value Chain; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Marketing Strategy; Measurement and Metrics; Strategic Planning; Value
Steenburgh, Thomas, and Jill Avery. "Marketing Analysis Toolkit: Customer Lifetime Value Analysis (2024)." Harvard Business School Background Note 525-017, July 2010. (Revised January 2017.)
- 2025
- Working Paper
Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) offers potential for optimizing sequences of customer interactions by modeling the relationships
between customer states, company actions, and long-term value. However, its practical implementation often faces significant
challenges.... View Details
Keywords: Dynamic Policy; Deep Reinforcement Learning; Representation Learning; Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment; Latent Variable Models; Customer Relationship Management; Customer Value and Value Chain; Foreign Direct Investment; Analytics and Data Science
Ma, Liangzong, Ta-Wei Huang, Eva Ascarza, and Ayelet Israeli. "Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 25-037, February 2025.