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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2015 (Revised May 2019)

  Managing Consumer Touchpoints at Nissan Japan

  Thales Teixeira, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno

  In 2015, Nissan was third place in the Japanese auto market, behind Toyota and Honda. The challenge of increasing market share was that 80% of car shoppers who were non-Nissan owners did not consider Nissan during their purchase process. This process involved three main consumer touchpoints: mass media advertising, internet auto websites and the physical dealerships. In the last 5 years, the importance of the dealers in influencing car sales had greatly diminished as consumers researched and chose which make and brand of car to buy online, going to the dealer only to negotiate price, purchase and receive the car. Given this trend, how should Nissan's top marketer make changes in how Nissan manages these three key consumer touchpoints? And how to better integrate them to maximize sales.

  Keywords: Nissan; Japan; Automobiles; cars; touch points; digital marketing; Internet; Web Sites; Marketing Channels; Advertising; Auto Industry; Japan;

  Citation:

  Teixeira, Thales, Nobuo Sato, and Akiko Kanno. "Managing Consumer Touchpoints at Nissan Japan." Harvard Business School Case 516-035, September 2015. (Revised May 2019.)  View Details

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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

  The Impact of Increasing Search Frictions on Online Shopping Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment

  Donald Ngwe, Kris J. Ferreira and Thales Teixeira

  Many online stores are designed such that shoppers can easily access any available discounted products. We propose that deliberately increasing search frictions by placing small obstacles to locating discounted items can improve online retailers’ margins and even increase conversion. We demonstrate using a simple theoretical framework that inducing consumers to inspect higher-priced items first may simultaneously increase the average price of items sold and the overall expected purchase probability by inducing consumers to search more products. We test and confirm these predictions in a series of field experiments conducted with a dominant online fashion and apparel retailer. Furthermore, using information in historical transaction data about each consumer, we demonstrate that price-sensitive shoppers are more likely to incur search costs to locate discounted items. Our results show that increasing search frictions can be used as a self-selecting price discrimination tool to match high discounts with price-sensitive consumers and full-priced offerings with price-insensitive consumers.

  Keywords: e-commerce; online retailing; friction; effor; search costs; price discrimination; Consumer Behavior; Price; Search Technology;

  Citation:

  Ngwe, Donald, Kris J. Ferreira, and Thales Teixeira. "The Impact of Increasing Search Frictions on Online Shopping Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-080, January 2019.  View Details

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• Supplement | HBS Case Collection | November 2018

  The Global Challenge to Become Profitable in E-Commerce

  Thales S. Teixeira, Donald Ngwe, Leandro A Guissoni and Samy Dana

  Citation:

  Teixeira, Thales S., Donald Ngwe, Leandro A Guissoni, and Samy Dana. "The Global Challenge to Become Profitable in E-Commerce." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Supplement 519-702, November 2018.  View Details

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