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 | 2018

    Shipping Fees and Product Assortment in Online Retail

    Chaoqun Chen and

    Shipping fees are an important aspect of online retail for both consumers and sellers. A common fee structure is contingent free shipping, in which consumers are granted free shipping for basket sizes above a minimum value and are charged a flat fee for orders below this threshold. We seek to characterize how contingent free shipping influences purchase outcomes in a multi-category shopping environment. We build a demand model in which consumers choose how to allocate their spending over different product categories to maximize their direct utility under contingent free shipping. We estimate model parameters using transaction data from a pure online fashion retailer. We find that, relative to offering free shipping, offering contingent free shipping increases basket sizes by encouraging consumers to meet the minimum order threshold. Consumers incur search costs to meet this threshold exactly; sellers may benefit from maintaining high search costs to encourage overshooting. Moreover, we find that contingent free shipping shifts demand to more popular products and that the effects of category-level price changes on profits depends on the active shipping policy. Our findings demonstrate the importance of jointly determining product assortment attributes and shipping fee policies.

    Keywords: shpping fee; e-commerce; multi-category demand; search costs; shipping membership; Spending; Consumer Behavior; Retail Industry;

    Citation:

    Chen, Chaoqun, and Donald Ngwe. "Shipping Fees and Product Assortment in Online Retail." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-034, September 2018.  View Details
    CiteView Details Read Now Related
  • RECENT PUBLICATION: Case

    Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2018

    Sigfox: Building a Global IoT Network

    , Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emilie Billaud

    In 2018, Ludovic Le Moan and Christophe Fourtet, co-founders of the French tech startup Sigfox, reflected on the evolution of their venture and the way forward. Founded in 2009, Sigfox was a company that provided a global connectivity network for devices connected to the internet. As the startup was scaling rapidly, the founders made the strategic decision to target fewer industry verticals and to focus on asset tracking as the common denominator of the business. With a committed target of reaching 1 billion devices connected to the Sigfox network by 2022, they wondered which consequential changes needed to be made in order to achieve success in the nascent IoT market. Which initiatives would help them bring the company to the next stage?

    Keywords: Internet of Things; Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Transition; Technology; Business Strategy; Internet; Technology Adoption; Technology Industry; Telecommunications Industry; France; Europe;

    Citation:

    Lal, Rajiv, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej, and Emilie Billaud. "Sigfox: Building a Global IoT Network." Harvard Business School Case 519-032, September 2018.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsRelated
  • RECENT PUBLICATION: Case

    Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2018

    OYO: Creating Effective Spaces

    , , Rachna Tahilyani and Mahima Rao-Kachroo

    Twenty-four-year old Ritesh Agarwal, founder and CEO of India-based online, hotel branding network OYO Rooms, has tackled the issue of unreliability in India's highly-fragmented budget hotel industry. In 2018, OYO branded 8,500 properties across 200 cities and managed to capture almost 1.5% of India's budget hotel market. Ritesh believes that in the process, OYO has honed technological skills and infrastructural capabilities that can transform the company from being a technology player to a hotel developer. OYO now aspires to convert corporate spaces and homes into accommodation spaces, and to make its mark worldwide.

    Keywords: technology; Accomodation; app development; research; marketing; change management; entrepreneurship; information technology; operations and processes; innovation; strategy; Sales; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; Information Technology; Operations; Innovation Strategy; Sales; Accommodations Industry; India; South Asia;

    Citation:

    Narayandas, Das, Sunil Gupta, Rachna Tahilyani, and Mahima Rao-Kachroo. "OYO: Creating Effective Spaces." Harvard Business School Case 519-023, September 2018.  View Details
    CiteView DetailsEducatorsRelated

Search all Marketing unit publications »

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.

View Open Positions »

Contact Information

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

HBS Working Knowledge

Pic
re Ayelet Israeli
Is it time to throw out the creative director and rely on big data to predict what consumers want to wear next? Assistant Professor Ayelet Israeli discusses how Gap CEO Art Peck considers a bold idea
PicPic
re Antonio Moreno and Donald K. Ngwe
Dynamic pricing is widely applied in industries like airline ticketing, ride-sharing, and online retailing. This paper identifies two downsides of dynamic pricing: opportunistic returns and strategic
Pic
re Donald K. Ngwe
Free shipping is an increasingly important tool in the online retailer's marketing arsenal, but profit is lost when not done right, says Donald Ngwe.

More »

Harvard Business Publishing

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

More »

Campus Map
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→ Map & Directions
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College