Marketing

Marketing

Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors Doctoral Students

About the Unit

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.

Honoring Professor Emeritus Al Silk, HBS and Family Virtual Gathering (December 10, 2021)

Recent Publications

Aleph Farms: A New Culture of Meat

By: Elie Ofek
  • January 2023 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Related

The END Fund (B)

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Courtney Han
  • January 2023 |
  • Supplement |
  • Faculty Research
Founded in 2012, the END fund focused on eliminating five Neglected Tropical Diseases that accounted for 80% of the tropical diseases affecting nearly 1.5 billion people worldwide. Its roughly $25 million/year annual budget was fully committed when it got news that the British Government would be cutting back its funding for the sector, putting at risk nearly 50,000 people for a tropical disease (visceral leishmaniasis-VL), which the End Fund was currently not addressing. The case question is whether the End Fund should redirect its resources to VL. The case highlights the difficult decisions that noprofits have to make balancing resource stretch and mission focus.
Keywords: Health Disorders; Investment Funds; Global Range; Nonprofit Organizations; Resource Allocation; Decisions; Health Care and Treatment; Mission and Purpose
Related

The END Fund: To Eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Courtney Han
  • January 2023 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Founded in 2012, the END fund focused on eliminating five Neglected Tropical Diseases that accounted for 80% of the tropical diseases affecting nearly 1.5 billion people worldwide. Its roughly $25 million/year annual budget was fully committed when it got news that the British Government would be cutting back its funding for the sector, putting at risk nearly 50,000 people for a tropical disease (visceral leishmaniasis-VL), which the End Fund was currently not addressing. The case question is whether the End Fund should redirect its resources to VL. The case highlights the difficult decisions that noprofits have to make balancing resource stretch and mission focus.
Keywords: Nonprofit Organizations; Health Disorders; Health Care and Treatment; Resource Allocation; Global Range; Decisions; Investment Funds
Related

Perfect Diary (完美日记)

By: Shunyuan Zhang and Sunil Gupta
  • January 2023 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 522-030.
Keywords: Digital Marketing; E-commerce; E-Commerce Strategy; Marketing; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; China
Related

Summarizing the Mental Customer Journey

By: Julian De Freitas, Ahmet Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp, Pechthida Kim and Tomer Ullman
  • 2023 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
How do consumers summarize and act on their experiences, as when deciding whether an interaction with a firm was satisfying and whether to buy from it? Previous work on the summary of continuous experiences has tended to focus on a handful of experience patterns and features of those patterns, such as the area under the curve, peak value, and end value. Here, we consider a wider array of possible experience patterns and features of those patterns (27 patterns and 21 features) and quantitatively assess which features are most tied to consumer satisfaction and choice. Contrasting with theories that say fluctuating journeys are most effective, we find that consumers are most satisfied by journeys that stay consistently positive or improve over time, especially toward the experience’s end. Furthermore, we find that several features of the experience predict these outcomes. These features include the end value, slope, integral, peak, and a sentiment score of the words people use to describe the experiences, although the consistently best predictor is the end value. The findings have theoretical implications for summarization, architecting customer journeys, and predicting the success of content, as well as practical implications for return on investment in customer experience optimization.
Keywords: Customer Experience; Customer Journey; Natural Language Processing; Summarization; Customer Satisfaction; Outcome or Result; Decision Choices and Conditions
Related

Israelis, Palestinians, and the Technology Bridge Between Them: A Work in Progress

By: Elie Ofek and Lia Weiner
  • January 2023 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 521-046.
Related

Public Perception and Autonomous Vehicle Liability

By: Julian De Freitas, Xilin Zhou, Margherita Atzei, Shoshana Boardman and Luigi Di Lillo
  • 2023 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
The deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the accompanying societal and economic benefits will greatly depend on how much liability AV firms will have to carry for accidents involving these vehicles, which in turn impacts their insurability and associated insurance premiums. We investigate whether accidents where the AV was not at-fault could become an unexpected liability risk for AV firms, by exploring public perceptions of AV liability and defectiveness. We find that when such accidents occur, what is salient to consumers is that the human occupant of the AV was not in control. This leads consumers to spontaneously entertain counterfactuals in which the human occupant had more control of the vehicle, and to conclude that in such a case the human would have acted more optimally to prevent or avoid the accident, even if the human did not cause it. Given this inference, consumers conclude that the technology is preventing or impeding the driver from acting in their interests, leading consumers to judge AV firms as more liable than both HDV firms and HDV drivers for the damages. Suggesting potential intervention routes, we find that consumers are more likely to show this response pattern if they do not trust AVs.
Keywords: Autonomous Vehicles; Moral Judgment; Liabilities; Harm; Insurance; Moral Sensibility; Legal Liability; Risk and Uncertainty; Technological Innovation; Public Opinion
Related

Applegate Farms

By: Forest L. Reinhardt, Jose B. Alvarez and Natalie Kindred
  • December 2022 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Keywords: Agribusiness; Food; Consumer Behavior; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Brands and Branding; Integration; Strategy; Change Management; Change; Organizational Structure; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States
Related
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HBS Working Knowledge

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Harvard Business Publishing

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Seminars & Conferences

  • 31 Jan 2023

Nitin Mehta, University of Toronto

Marketing Seminar
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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