Publications
Publications
Show Results For
-
All HBS Web
(1,679)
- Faculty Publications (474)
Page 1 of
474
Results
→
- October 2023
- Article
Speedy Activists: Firm Response Time to Sociopolitical Events Influences Consumer Behavior
Organizations face growing pressure from their consumers and stakeholders to take public stances on sociopolitical issues. However, many are hesitant to do so lest they make missteps, promises they cannot keep, appear inauthentic, or alienate consumers, employees, or...
View Details
- September 2023
- Article
Consuming Contests: The Effect of Outcome Uncertainty on Spectator Attendance in the Australian Football League
By: Patrick Ferguson and Karim R. Lakhani
Contests that non-contestants consume for entertainment are a fixture of economic, cultural and political life. We exploit injury-induced changes to teams' line-ups in a professional sports setting to examine whether individuals prefer to consume contests that have...
View Details
- August 2023
- Case
Reimagining Hindustan Unilever (A)
By: Sunil Gupta and Rachna Tahilyani
In the fall of 2019, the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever (HUL), India’s largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firm, is wondering what to do about their experiments to digitize distribution. Despite three years of intense efforts, their apps to empower retailers...
View Details
- August 2023
- Supplement
Reimagining Hindustan Unilever (B)
By: Sunil Gupta and Rachna Tahilyani
In April 2023, as the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever (HUL), India’s largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firm, prepared to hand over the firm’s reins to his successor, he proudly reflected on the last decade. His quest to digitally transform HUL into an...
View Details
- July 2023
- Article
Deep Responsibility and Irresponsibility in the Beauty Industry
By: Geoffrey Jones
This article employs the concept of deep responsibility to assess the social responsibility of the beauty industry over time. It shows that many of today’s problems with the industry have deep historical roots. Products have too many ingredients that are potential...
View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Design-Based Confidence Sequences: A General Approach to Risk Mitigation in Online Experimentation
By: Dae Woong Ham, Michael Lindon, Martin Tingley and Iavor Bojinov
Randomized experiments have become the standard method for companies to evaluate the performance of new products or services. In addition to augmenting managers’ decision-making, experimentation mitigates risk by limiting the proportion of customers exposed to...
View Details
- June 2020
- Article
Real-time Data from Mobile Platforms to Evaluate Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure
By: Omar Isaac Asensio, Kevin Alvarez, Arielle Dror, Emerson Wenzel, Catharina Hollauer and Sooji Ha
By displacing gasoline and diesel fuels, electric cars and fleets reduce emissions from the transportation sector, thus offering important public health benefits. However, public confidence in the reliability of charging infrastructure remains a fundamental barrier to...
View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Cryptocurrency Investing: Stimulus Checks and Inflation Expectations
By: Darren Aiello, Scott R. Baker, Tetyana Balyuk, Marco Di Maggio, Mark J. Johnson and Jason Kotter
We provide a first look into the factors that affect retail investing in cryptocurrencies. We use consumer transaction data to examine how borrower characteristics, liquidity shocks, and hedging requirements shape crypto investment decisions of millions of U.S....
View Details
- May–June 2023
- Article
Need for Speed: The Impact of In-Process Delays on Customer Behavior in Online Retail
By: Santiago Gallino, Nil Karacaoglu and Antonio Moreno
The impact of delays has been widely studied in various offline services. The focus of this study is online services, and we explore the impact of in-process delays—measured by website speed—on customer behavior. We leverage novel retail and website speed data to...
View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Operational Consequences of Customer Interaction Design: Evidence From Last-Mile Delivery Services
By: Natalie Epstein, Santiago Gallino and Antonio Moreno
Problem definition: Communication and customer interaction design have been used as elements to improve customer satisfaction and future purchasing behavior, but little is known about how they can be used as levers to improve operational...
View Details
- May 2023
- Article
Self-Preferencing at Amazon: Evidence from Search Rankings
By: Chiara Farronato, Andrey Fradkin and Alexander MacKay
We study whether Amazon engages in self-preferencing on its marketplace by favoring its own brands (e.g., Amazon Basics) in search. To address this question, we collect new micro-level consumer search data using a custom browser extension installed by a panel of study...
View Details
- April 12, 2023
- Article
Using AI to Adjust Your Marketing and Sales in a Volatile World
By: Das Narayandas and Arijit Sengupta
Why are some firms better and faster than others at adapting their use of customer data to respond to changing or uncertain marketing conditions? A common thread across faster-acting firms is the use of AI models to predict outcomes at various stages of the customer...
View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Using GPT for Market Research
By: James Brand, Ayelet Israeli and Donald Ngwe
Large language models (LLMs) have quickly become popular as labor-augmenting tools
for programming, writing, and many other processes that benefit from quick text generation.
In this paper we explore the uses and benefits of LLMs for researchers and...
View Details
- April 3, 2023
- Article
Getting a Clearer View of Your Company’s Carbon Footprint
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Karthik Ramanna and Stefan Reichelstein
E-liability accounting is a new technique that will help customers factor in a product’s environmental footprint into their purchasing decisions and will help create a competition dynamic that leads to reduced carbon outputs. This article describes two pilot studies—by...
View Details
- March 31, 2023
- Article
What Is the Optimal Pattern of a Customer Journey?
Even though customer experience (CX) leaders are becoming increasingly focused on optimizing their firms’ customer journeys, they face a clear challenge: Which touchpoints along the journey should they invest in? That is, which moments when the customer interacts with...
View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Deep Responsibility and Irresponsibility in the Beauty Industry
By: Geoffrey Jones
This working paper employs the concept of deep responsibility to assess the social responsibility of the beauty industry over time. It shows that many of today’s problems with the industry have deep historical roots. Products have carried too many health hazards....
View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Differentiating on Diversity: How Disclosing Workforce Diversity Improves Brand Attitudes
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
- March 2023
- Teaching Note
Ransomware Attack at Colonial Pipeline Company
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 123-069. On the morning of May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline Company became aware that the company had been the victim of a malicious ransomware attack that had stolen and locked up company data. The extortionists demanded 75 bitcoins (worth...
View Details
Keywords:
Disruption;
Communication;
Communication Strategy;
Decision Making;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Judgments;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Controls;
Policy;
Employees;
News;
Cybersecurity;
Digital Strategy;
Information Infrastructure;
Information Management;
Internet and the Web;
Crisis Management;
Business or Company Management;
Resource Allocation;
Risk Management;
Negotiation Tactics;
Failure;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Attitudes;
Behavior;
Perception;
Reputation;
Trust;
Public Opinion;
Social Issues;
Infrastructure;
Distribution Industry;
United States;
Alabama
- March 2023
- Case
Ransomware Attack at Colonial Pipeline Company
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Li-Kuan Ni
On the morning of May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline Company became aware that the company had been the victim of a malicious ransomware attack that had stolen and locked up company data. The extortionists demanded 75 bitcoins (worth about $4.4 million at the time) in...
View Details
Keywords:
Disruption;
Communication;
Communication Strategy;
Decision Making;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Judgments;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Governance;
Governance Controls;
Policy;
Employees;
News;
Cybersecurity;
Digital Strategy;
Information Infrastructure;
Information Management;
Internet and the Web;
Crisis Management;
Business or Company Management;
Resource Allocation;
Risk Management;
Negotiation Tactics;
Failure;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Attitudes;
Behavior;
Perception;
Reputation;
Trust;
Public Opinion;
Social Issues;
Infrastructure;
Distribution Industry;
United States;
Alabama