Faculty & Research

Marketing

Marketing

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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.

Recent Publications

THE YES: Reimagining the Future of E-Commerce with Artificial Intelligence (AI)

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
  • May 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
THE YES, a multi-brand shopping app launched in May 2020 offered a new type of buying experience for women’s fashion, driven by a sophisticated algorithm that used data science and machine learning to create and deliver a personalized store for every shopper, based on her style preferences, size, and budget. When a woman downloaded THE YES app, she embarked upon an interactive shopping journey that leveraged a fun, easy, gamified user experience (UX) reminiscent of dating apps to collect a stream of data from her that could be used to dynamically curate an ever-changing product assortment just for her. The founders had to decide whether to continue developing the UX and the algorithm to deliver on the company’s customer value proposition, or to focus on new customer acquisition via paid media, with the idea that more users on the app improve the algorithm's performance. Several ideas for further monetizing the platform were on the table, including the development of social shopping features to make the shopping experience more viral, the design of an influencer program to bring fashion influencer voices onto the platform, and the construction of a customer loyalty program. Should THE YES invest in improving the algorithm, enhancing the UX with new functionality, or on customer acquisition?
Keywords: Data; Data Analytics; Artificial Intelligence; Ai; Ai Algorithms; Ai Creativity; Fashion; Retail; Retail Analytics; Digital Marketing; E-commerce; E-commerce Strategy; Platform; Platforms; Big Data; Preference Elicitation; Predictive Analytics; App Development; ＂marketing Analytics＂; Advertising; Mobile App; Mobile Marketing; Apparel; Referral Rewards; Referrals; Female Ceo; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Data and Data Sets; Analysis; Creativity; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Consumer Behavior; Demand and Consumers; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing Channels; Online Advertising; Online Technology; Mobile Technology; Fashion Industry; Retail Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Consumer Products Industry; United States
Related

Michelin: Building a Digital Service Platform

By: Sunil Gupta
  • May 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 520-061.
Related

BlackRock: Linking Purpose to Profit

By: Rohit Deshpandé, Aiyesha Dey and George Serafeim
  • May 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 120-042
Keywords: Blackrock; Investment Management; Stewardship Codes; Stewardship Role Of Institutions; Esg; Purpose; Corporate Purpose; Investment; Asset Management; Corporate Governance; Financial Services Industry; United States
Related

Time Dependence and Preference: Implications for Compensation Structure and Shift Scheduling

By: Doug J. Chung, Byungyeon Kim and Byoung G. Park
  • 2021 |
  • Working Paper |
  • Faculty Research
This study jointly examines agents’ time dependence—period effects within instantaneous utility—and time preference—behavior on discounting future utility. The study considers the start- and end-of-period effects for time dependence and exponential and hyperbolic discounting for time preference. It provides identification arguments and sufficient conditions for both time constructs. The data include agents’ work-shift schedules and daily observations in response to a firm’s non-linear compensation structure, in which the final payment depends on the history of performance. By illustrating how various time constructs jointly affect behavior, the study provides implications for designing compensation structure and employee-shift scheduling. Specifically, it disentangles the effects of time constructs to examine the effectiveness of long versus short quota-evaluation cycles, quota-bonus versus commission incentive schemes, and employee-shift scheduling. In addition, the study provides a field validation that compares post-analysis actual and counterfactual outcomes to validate the prediction accuracy of the model.
Keywords: Time Preferences; Present Bias; Hyperbolic Discounting; Compensation; Dynamic Structural Models; Identification; Time Management; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior; Performance; Compensation and Benefits
Related

Hot Wheels: Launching the Mixed-Play Experience

By: Elie Ofek and Andres Terech
  • April 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Related

Hot Wheels at Mattel: Reinventing the Wheel

By: Elie Ofek, Andres Terech and Lisa Shaughnessy
  • April 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Related

Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community

By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
  • April 2021 |
  • Teaching Note |
  • Faculty Research
Teaching Note for the "Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community" HBS Case No. 520-086.
Keywords: Influencer Marketing; Influencers; Influencer; Monetization; Monetization Strategy; Female; Female Entrepreneur; Female Protagonist; Direct-to-consumer; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Marketing Communications; Consumer Products Industry; Financial Services Industry; Advertising Industry; London; United Kingdom; Europe; North America
Related

Borusan CAT: Monetizing Prediction in the Age of AI (A)

By: Navid Mojir and Gamze Yucaoglu
  • April 2021 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Borusan Cat is an international distributor of Caterpillar heavy machines. Esra Durgun (Director of Strategy, Digitization, and Innovation) and Ozgur Gunaydin (CEO) seem to have bet their careers on developing Muneccim, a new predictive technology that is designed to reduce downtime of heavy construction machines that Borusan Cat sells. While they have been able to manage to develop the technology to a level that beats any human expert in predicting machine failures, they still have not been able to find a way to monetize the technology. After spending a few years and millions of dollars developing the technology, they are both under pressure from Borusan Group, Borusan Cat’s holding company, to show monetary results. Sales have been declining due to the economic downturn in Turkey, and the Company has been losing market share to their strong domestic competitors. Gunaydin and Durgun must decide about their monetization strategy for Muneccim and pick which segment of the market they want to target with this technology.
Keywords: Turkey
Related
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Contact Information

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