Marketing is critical for organic growth of a business and its central role is in creating, communicating, capturing and sustaining value for an organization. Marketing helps a firm in creating value by better understanding the needs of its customers and providing them with innovative products and services. This value is communicated through a variety of channels as well as through the firm's branding strategy. Effective management of customers and pricing allows the firm to capture part of the value it has created. Finally, by building an effective customer-centric organization a firm attempts to sustain value over time.

Our faculty addresses a broad array of topics in all of these areas. Our work attempts to get a better understanding of how consumers use information and make choices and how these choices affect the firm's strategy for new product development, customer relationship management, branding and other marketing efforts. We examine issues related to branding, business marketing, global marketing, distribution channels, pricing, direct and interactive marketing, sales management and return on marketing investment. Some of our faculty specializes in specific industries such as retailing, agribusiness, social enterprise, media, arts and entertainment.

There are several new developments in marketing that offer opportunities for us to make important contributions in the future. The current economic crisis is changing consumers' current and future purchase and consumption patterns. Search engines have changed the way consumers obtain information and make decisions and they are also dramatically changing the advertising industry. Social networks and user generated content have opened a new way for consumers to engage with each other as well as with brands and companies. There are significant changes in the attitudes of consumers and companies about social issues. Consumer preferences and choice of products are increasingly influenced by social factors. Companies are recognizing that there is a large market at the "bottom of the pyramid" and marketing to these consumers may require a new framework. These and related developments provide great opportunities for the marketing faculty to make a significant impact in the future.

In The News

Recent Publications

  • RECENT PUBLICATION: Working Paper

    Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

    Soul and Machine (Learning)

    Davide Proserpio, John R. Hauser, Xiao Liu, , Alex Burnap, Tong Guo, Dokyun Lee, Randall Lewis, Kanishka Misra, Eric Schwarz, Artem Timoshenko, Lilei Xu and Hema Yoganarasimhan

    Machine learning is bringing us self-driving cars, improved medical diagnostics and machine translation, but can it improve marketing decisions? It can. Machine learning models predict extremely well, are scalable to “big data,” and are a natural fit to rich media such as text, images, audio, and video. Examples include identification of customer needs from online data, accurate prediction of consumer response to advertising, personalized pricing, and product recommendations. But without a soul, the applications of machine learning are limited. Consumer behavior and competitive strategies are nuanced and richly described by formal theory. To learn across applications, to be accurate for “what-if” and “but-for” applications, and to advance knowledge, machine learning needs theory and a soul. The brightest future is based on the synergy of what the machine can do well and what humans do well. We provide examples and predictions for the future.

    Citation:

    Proserpio, Davide, John R. Hauser, Xiao Liu, Tomomichi Amano, Alex Burnap, Tong Guo, Dokyun Lee, Randall Lewis, Kanishka Misra, Eric Schwarz, Artem Timoshenko, Lilei Xu, and Hema Yoganarasimhan. "Soul and Machine (Learning)." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-036, September 2019.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsSSRN Read Now Related
  • RECENT PUBLICATION: Case

    Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2019

    Huawei and the U.S.-China Trade War

    and John Masko

    In 2019, Chinese smartphone maker and telecommunications empire Huawei was preparing to launch its new flagship smartphone series, the Mate 30. After years of explosive growth, the previous 18 months had been a challenge for the company. In early 2018, Huawei’s planned smartphone launch in the U.S. had failed due to pressure from regulators who cited concerns about the company facilitating Chinese spying. Over the following months, a trade war between the U.S. and China had broken out, with Huawei at its epicenter. By mid-2019, after months of U.S. pressure and restrictions, Huawei found its supply chain for computer parts and software under siege and several governments around the world threatened to ban its 5G network equipment from their countries. In this unpredictable climate, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and his management team had to figure out not only how to successfully launch Mate 30 phones in the upcoming fall, but how to ensure the company’s long term viability.

    Keywords: Trade; Global Strategy; International Relations; National Security; Mobile Technology; Hardware; Volatility; Adaptation; Telecommunications Industry; China; United States; European Union;

    Citation:

    Ofek, E., and John Masko. "Huawei and the U.S.-China Trade War." Harvard Business School Case 520-017, August 2019.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsRelated

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Doctoral Students

Ximena Garcia-Rada Benavides

Michael Els

Dafna Goor

Serena Hagerty

Byungyeon Kim

Emily Prinsloo

Lucy Shen

Anne Wilson

Faculty Positions

Harvard Business School seeks candidates in all fields for full time positions. Candidates with outstanding records in PhD or DBA programs are encouraged to apply.

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Contact Information

Marketing Unit
Harvard Business School
Morgan Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Marketing@hbs.edu

HBS Working Knowledge

Pic
re Kate Barasz
We often make knee-jerk assumptions about what motivates other people’s choices, a bad habit both in the political and business worlds. Kate Barasz explains what we can do about it.
Pic
re Shelle M. Santana
Super Bowl advertising is increasingly about using storytelling to sell corporate brands rather than products. Shelle Santana discusses why stories win (or fumble) on game day.
Pic
re Rajiv Lal
Companies have struggled to find the right opportunities for selling the Internet of Things. Rajiv Lal says that’s all about to change.

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Harvard Business Publishing

Article
by Anita Elberse and Sir Alex Ferguson
Case
by Elie Ofek and Danielle Golan
Press Book
by Sunil Gupta

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