Sum-up Nontraditional performance measures, as highlighted in the movie 'Moneyball', will become an increasingly important part of the young manager's toolkit, Jim Heskett's readers say.
Thanks to ever-improving technology, customer loyalty programs are proving extremely popular among retailers—but merchants are not getting all they should out of them. The reason? Professor José Alvarez says retailers need to see customers as partners, not transactions.
About 95 percent of new products fail. The problem often is that their creators are using an ineffective market segmentation mechanism, according to HBS professor Clayton Christensen. It's time for companies to look at products the way customers do: as a way to get a job done.
Published in 2010
The tools can help managers inform decisions on market analysis, breakeven analysis, customer lifetime value, profit and pricing, and analyzing the competitive environment. Interview with Tom Steenburgh.
Summing Up: Are customer wishes irrelevant when creating a new product? Jim Heskett's readers say it depends on the product, on market goals, and where you are in the development cycle. (Online forum has closed; next forum opens September 2.)
Advertisers pay millions of dollars to air TV ads that are subsequently ignored by a third of viewers. New research by HBS professor Thales S. Teixeira offers a simple, inexpensive solution for marketers to retain brand recognition.
Published in 2009
At the same time that marketers must pare research expenditures, they face added pressure to secure high-quality data and insights. What's a CMO to do? Ask HBS marketing professor John Quelch.
Published in 2007
Sometimes a valuable customer may be the person who never buys a thing. In a new research paper, Professor Sunil Gupta discusses how to assess the profitability of a customer in a networked setting—a "free" customer who nevertheless influences your bottom line.
Published in 2006
The "long-tail phenomenon" is well documented: Amazon.com makes significant profits selling many low-volume books. But can the long tail work for video sales as well? A new working paper by professors Anita Elberse and Felix Oberholzer-Gee suggests that it may not bring the same benefits to Hollywood.
People who buy retail prescription drugs, invest funds, or participate in auctions rarely have complete information about the product they are buying. Often the only auction information participants have is the number of bidders, observed bids, and product characteristics. If data from an auction, for instance, is a function of bidder behavior, then external survey data may help in testing hypotheses about bidding behavior. Researchers often avoid using surveys because they consume time and effort, but Yin presents a survey design technique and econometric tool to deal with a general population of survey respondents. Her application tested eBay online auctions selling personal computers.
Published in 2005
Just how much do movie stars contribute to box office success? HBS professor Anita Elberse researched the notion of "star power" to better understand how A-list players contribute to Hollywood's bottom line.
Happy customers are good, but profitable customers are much better. In this article, professor and Balanced Scorecard guru Robert S. Kaplan introduces BSC Customer Profitability Metrics. From Balanced Scorecard Report.
There is a kind of "always on" communication system shaping up between the most committed of tech-minded users and those who supply them. Is the close monitoring of developing trends always in our best interests as marketers and customers?
Published in 2003
Don't blame your CRM technology. Be smarter about collecting and using your data, says Jean Ayers in this article from Harvard Management Update.
Using the Balanced Scorecard approach, Robert S. Kaplan, of Harvard Business School, and David P. Norton analyze the four essentials of customer management: customer selection, acquisition, retention, and growth.
Your competitors, closely analyzed, can help you influence your own customers and help grow the market for your products and services. Here’s how.
Confronting a per-capita income in China that varies from as low as $380 to as high as $5,000, brands face a special challenge gaining headway. At this panel, experts discussed the secrets of price competition and market research. Said one, "Our best tools are our two legs."
Published in 2002
Published in 2001
Great market research doesn't always lead to great results. Why? After a close look at sources of friction between managers and market researchers, HBS professors Gerald Zaltman and Rohit Deshpandé have ideas on how the two groups might better see eye to eye.
The battle cry of business, "know thy customer," is heralded in The Manager's Guide to Communicating with Customers Collection. This excerpt by Richard Bierck examines research by HBS professor Gerald Zaltman and consultant Paco Underhill on the downfalls of focus groups.
Published in 2000
Marketers have a whole new game to learn in the digital revolution, and the greatest benefit, says HBS Professor John A. Deighton, will go to those who comprehend and embrace the new medium most quickly. But, adds Deighton, that's unlikely to be a simple task.
Retailers and e-tailers have enormous amounts of data available to them today. But to take advantage of that data they need to move toward a new kind of retailing, one that blends the instinct and intuition of traditional systems with the prowess of information technology.
HBS Professor Gerald Zaltman makes metaphors come alive with his patented Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique or ZMET, a process that draws on psychology, anthropology, neuroscience and other disciplines to delve deep into the mind of the consumer. In this interview, Zaltman talks about the imagery and inspirations behind this unusual market research tool.
