Direct To Consumer Marketing - Publications - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School

Filter Results: (1,423)

Filter Results: (1,423)

Show Results For

Page 1 of 1,423 Results →

Are you looking for?

→Search All HBS Web

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

Keywords: Revenue; Small Business; Health Pandemics; Spending; Consumer Behavior

July–August 2025
Article

Don’t Let an AI Failure Harm Your Brand

By: Julian De Freitas

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

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Consumer Behavior; Attitudes

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

June 2025
Case

TagHive: Edtech Pricing and Distributor Decisions

By: Isamar Troncoso, Frank V. Cespedes and Stacy Straaberg

Education technology (edtech) company TagHive, founded in 2017, used a direct sales team and third-party distributors to sell its Class Saathi hardware and software solution to 300 clients, mainly primary and secondary schools in India. The product aimed to improve... 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

Keywords: Algorithms; Marketplaces; Marketplace Matching; E-commerce; Demand and Consumers; Customer Focus and Relationships; Market Participation; Technology Adoption

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

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

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

Keywords: Competitive Price Discrimination; Membership; Dynamic Competition; Competition; Price; Consumer Behavior; Business Model

2025
Working Paper

An Empirical Examination of Business Climate Alliances: Effective and/or Harmful?

By: Matteo Gasparini and Peter Tufano

This research studies business alliances that seek to address climate change, offering empirical evidence to address claims advanced by alliance supporters and critics. We study eleven major alliances mostly focused on financial services firms and 424 major... View Details

Keywords: Antitrust; Climate Change; Financial Institutions; Competition; Network Effects; Alliances

May 2025
Case

Initial Financial Statements at Blank Corporation: Bridging Content and Commerce

By: Jung Koo Kang, Panje Jayden Kim and David Allen

This accounting case is intended to teach students how to compile an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement. It focuses on Blank Corporation, an innovative South Korean company that bridged content and commerce by selling products directly through... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Financial Statements; Business Startups; Social Media; Advertising; Digital Marketing; Consumer Products Industry; South Korea

May 2025
Supplement

On (B): The Cyclon Spins On

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Karolin Frankenberger, Sascha Mader and Karen Elterman

A follow-up to the On case (723-430), this short case explores how the performance athletic shoe company On expanded its Cyclon subscription and recycling program through 2024, adding two new shoe models to the subscription and a one-time-purchase recyclable T-shirt. View Details

2025
Working Paper

The Limits of Insurance Demand and the Growing Protection Gap

By: Parinitha Sastry, Tess Scharlemann, Ishita Sen and Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva

In a world with rising risk, how much are U.S. households willing to pay for homeowners insurance, and what does their demand imply for the future of insurance markets? We provide the first estimates of household willingness to pay for homeowners insurance and the... View Details

Keywords: Climate Change; Risk and Uncertainty; Insurance; Personal Finance; Consumer Behavior; Mortgages

2025
Working Paper

Balancing Engagement and Polarization: Multi-Objective Alignment of News Content Using LLMs

By: Mengjie Cheng, Elie Ofek and Hema Yoganarasimhan

We study how media firms can use LLMs to generate news content that aligns with multiple objectives—making content more engaging while maintaining a preferred level of polarization/slant consistent with the firm’s editorial policy. Using news articles from The New York... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Models; Content Creation; Media; Polarization; Generative Ai; Direct Preference Optimization; AI and Machine Learning; News; Perspective; Digital Marketing; Policy; Media and Broadcasting Industry

April 2025
Teaching Note

Tabby: Winning Customers' Digital Wallets

By: Eva Ascarza

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 524-056. Tabby, a Saudi-based fintech founded in 2019, rapidly became one of the MENA region’s first unicorns by offering buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services with a unique twist: instead of charging end consumers, it partnered with... View Details

Keywords: Fintech; Business Startups; Marketing; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Strategy; Business Model; Competitive Strategy; Financial Services Industry; Middle East; Saudi Arabia; United Arab Emirates

April 2025
Case

Breezm: Innovative 3D-Printed Eyewear (A)

By: Juan Alcácer, Brian Mao Fu and Adina Wong

In 2023, Breezm, a South Korean startup, faced a strategic decision about how to grow its innovative 3D-printed, custom-fit eyewear business. Co-founded in 2017 by Zenma Park and Wooseok Sung, Breezm combined facial scanning, AI, and in-house production to solve the... View Details

Keywords: 3D Printing; Eyeyewear; Growth; Business Startups; AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Growth and Development Strategy; Risk and Uncertainty; Expansion; South Korea

April 2025
Article

Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Elizabeth Friedman, Kannan Srinivasan, Ravi Dhar and Xupin Zhang

Non-informational cues, such as facial expressions, can significantly influence judgments and interpersonal impressions. While past research has explored how smiling affects business outcomes in offline or in-store contexts, relatively less is known about how smiling... View Details

Keywords: Sharing Economy; Airbnb; Image Feature Extraction; Machine Learning; Facial Expressions; Prejudice and Bias; Nonverbal Communication; E-commerce; Consumer Behavior; Perception

2025
Working Paper

Tracking the Short-Run Price Impact of U.S. Tariffs

By: Alberto Cavallo, Paola Llamas and Franco Vazquez

This paper examines the short-run impact of the 2025 U.S. tariffs on consumer prices using a unique integration of high-frequency retail pricing data, product-level country-of-origin information, and detailed tariff classifications. By linking daily prices from major... View Details

Keywords: Tariffs; Trade; Price; Inflation and Deflation

March 2025 (Revised April 2025)
Case

Perplexity: Redefining Search

By: Suraj Srinivasan, Michelle Hu, Sriraghav Srinivasan and Radhika Kak

By early 2025, Perplexity had rapidly evolved from a modest startup into a popular "answer engine" valued at $9 billion. The company had boldly positioned itself as the disruptor to Google aiming to redefine search for the AI age. Through novel AI... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Venture Capital; Innovation Leadership; Technological Innovation; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Competitive Strategy; Business Model; Technology Industry; United States

March 2025
Case

Stagwell: AI and the Future of Marketing

By: Suraj Srinivasan and Radhika Kak

In early 2025, Mark Penn, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Stagwell, a global marketing company with a network of over 70+ agencies that served over 4000 blue-chip customers across 40 countries, was looking at ways that marketers should navigate the disruption emanating... View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Innovation Strategy; Change Management; AI and Machine Learning; Digital Transformation; Technology Adoption; Marketing Strategy; Service Delivery; Creativity; Business Model; Advertising Industry; Technology Industry

March 2025
Teaching Plan

Wasabi Technologies (A) and (B)

By: N. Louis Shipley and Stacy Straaberg

Teaching Plan for HBS Case Nos. 823-021 and 825-035. Set in 2019, the “Wasabi Technologies (A)” case centers on Wasabi Technologies (Wasabi), a successful hot cloud storage company based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founder and CEO David Friend is ready to scale the... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Product Development; Growth and Development Strategy; Business Divisions; Business Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Distribution Channels; Information Technology Industry; United States; Massachusetts; Boston

March 2025
Article

Differentiating on Diversity: How Disclosing Workforce Diversity Influences Consumer Choice

By: Maya Balakrishnan, Jimin Nam and Ryan W. Buell

Companies are facing increased pressure to “walk the talk” on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their operations. One specific call-to-action from stakeholders is the public disclosure of EEO-1s. Companies with 100+ employees are federally mandated to annually... View Details

Keywords: Consumer Behavior; Corporate Disclosure; Diversity; Employees; Perception

2025
Working Paper

New Product Diffusion Within Retailers: The Effect of Managerial Quality on Rollout

By: Tomomichi Amano and Jorge Tamayo

Retailers are key intermediaries through which consumers encounter innovation in the form of new products. How are these products rolled out within retailers? We observe significant variation in the availability of new products across stores in a large retail chain in... View Details

Keywords: Managerial Quality; Firm Performance; Diffusion Of Innovation; New Product Rollout; Retailing; Distribution Channels; Product Launch; Management Skills; Retail Industry; Colombia

1
2
…
71
72
→