
- 06 Oct 2020
- Sharpening Your Skills
18 Tips Managers Can Use to Lead Through COVID's Rising Waters
Here are recent ideas for managing through the pandemic on the topics of people management, strategy, marketing, and organizational design. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

- 04 Aug 2020
- Cold Call Podcast
Glossier Built a Cult-Brand and a Digital Community, but What’s Next?
Glossier, the digital-first, direct-to-consumer beauty brand considers shifting its strategy toward influencer marketing and paid media. Professor Jill Avery discusses her case study. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

- 16 Jul 2020
- Research & Ideas
Restaurant Revolution: How the Industry Is Fighting to Stay Alive
Top restaurant operators share their experiences attempting to survive the pandemic, and how they see the future. Research by Michael S. Kaufman, Lena G. Goldberg, and Jill Avery. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

- 07 Apr 2020
- Research & Ideas
What Customers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis
Many brands have turned off their marketing efforts during the pandemic, but Jill Avery and Richard Edelman argue that now is the time when customers need to hear from you most. But what do you say? Open for comment; 0 Comments.

- 28 Oct 2019
- Research & Ideas
Brick-and-Mortar Stores Are Making a Comeback
Left for dead alongside the retail highway, physical stores are suddenly finding new ways to compete, say Jill Avery and Antonio Moreno. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 09 Feb 2018
- Research & Ideas
Big Hits: The Best of the 2018 Super Bowl Ads
Harvard Business School marketing experts Jill Avery, Stephen Greyser, and Thales Teixeira discuss the best ads and how they reflect American society. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

- 18 Sep 2017
- Research & Ideas
'Likes' Lead to Nothing—and Other Hard-Learned Lessons of Social Media Marketing
A decade-and-a-half after the dawn of social media marketing, brands are still learning what works and what doesn't with consumers. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

- 24 Aug 2017
- Cold Call Podcast
Does Le Pliage Help or Hurt the Longchamp Luxury Brand?
Longchamp's iconic but affordable Le Pliage bag is a conundrum for the company, explains Jill Avery in this podcast. Does an affordable luxury product work against the top-tier brand? Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 15 Nov 2016
- First Look
November 15, 2016
Why gender inequality persists ... Is hiring best left to a hiring manager? ... Understanding brand portfolio strategy.
- 11 May 2016
- Research & Ideas
Fix This! Why is it so Painful to Buy a New Car?
Car-buying sends shivers up the backbones of American consumers, so why hasn’t the industry stepped up to create a better experience? Leonard Schlesinger, Jill Avery, and Ryan Buell tell their own war stories and talk about how the battle might yet be won. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 09 Jun 2015
- Sharpening Your Skills
Sharpening Your Skills: Social Media
Sharpening Your Skills culls the HBS Working Knowledge archive to deliver insights around important business topics. This week: developing a social media strategy. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 25 Mar 2015
- HBS Case
Tate’s Digital Makeover Transforms the Traditional Museum
What happens when the traditional museum-going experience meets the world of digital marketing? Meet the Magic Tate Ball and other wonders from the online version of the Tate museums. HBS senior lecturer and museum expert Jill Avery guides the tour. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 14 Jul 2014
- Research & Ideas
Pay Attention To Your ‘Extreme Consumers’
Jill Avery and Michael Norton explain what marketers can learn from consumers whose preferences lie outside of the mainstream. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 19 Mar 2014
- Research & Ideas
A Brand Manager’s Guide to Losing Control
Social media platforms have taken some of the marketing power away from companies and given it to consumers. Jill Avery discusses the landscape of "open source branding," wherein consumers not only discuss and disseminate branded content, they also create it. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Nov 2013
- Research & Ideas
Should Men’s Products Fear a Woman’s Touch?
Recent research shows that loyal customers often get upset when a brand associated with men expands to include products perceived as feminine. Senior Lecturer Jill J. Avery discusses the problem of "gender contamination." Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 12 Dec 2011
- HBS Case
HBS Cases: Clocky, the Runaway Alarm Clock
There had not been an innovative breakthrough in alarm clock design since the snooze button until entrepreneur Gauri Nanda created Clocky. Her runaway hit has been the inspiration for several cases written by Professor Elie Ofek. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 13 Sep 2010
- Research & Ideas
The Consumer Appeal of Underdog Branding
Research by HBS professor Anat Keinan and colleagues explains how and why a "brand biography" about hard luck and fierce determination can boost the power of products in industries as diverse as food and beverages, technology, airlines, and automobiles. Key concepts include: Underdog brand biographies feature two intertwined narrative threads: a seemingly disadvantaged position in the marketplace, coupled with the passion and determination to succeed. Examples of "brands" that emphasize their underdog roots include Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Oprah Winfrey; candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Nantucket Nectars, and Clif Bar. Underdog brand biographies resonate with consumers during tough economic times like those we live in. Popular stories about underdogs were prevalent during the Great Depression, too, and have been powerful around the world and throughout history. Use brand biographies carefully. Not all products and services are appropriate for underdog narratives. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 16 Aug 2010
- Lessons from the Classroom
HBS Introduces Marketing Analysis Tools for Managers
These tools can help managers make informed decisions on market analysis, breakeven analysis, customer lifetime value, profit and pricing, and analyzing the competitive environment. Interview with Tom Steenburgh. Key concepts include: Immense changes in marketing are driving an increasing need for data analysis. The five HBS-developed tools provide decision-making support for market analysis, breakeven analysis, customer lifetime value, profit and pricing, and analyzing the competitive environment. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

- 12 Feb 2007
- Working Paper Summaries
Adding Bricks to Clicks: The Effects of Store Openings on Sales through Direct Channels
Consider a retailer who operates both brick-and-mortar stores and direct channels such as direct mail catalogs and an Internet Web site. What effect does the opening of a new retail store have on direct channel sales in the retail trading area surrounding the store? Does the existence of more opportunities for consumer contact with the brand increase the retailer's direct sales, or does intra-brand, inter-channel competition erode the retailer's direct sales? Does consumer response to the retailer's brand evolve over time, perhaps as consumers go through some process of trial-and-error learning about the relative merits of stores and direct channels, or is the impact of the new store relatively discrete? Does the answer depend on whether consumers in the retail trading area have had the opportunity for previous experience with the brand's stores? This research used a proprietary longitudinal dataset from a multichannel retailer to understand what happens and to probe the implications for channel management strategy. Key concepts include: Adding a physical retail store to existing direct sales channels increases firm sales in the long run, as sales from the new store are incremental to sales from direct channels, which show little long term damage from channel competition. Adding channels produces both cannibalizing and complementary effects which operate in tandem and vary over time. Cannibalization occurs in the short term following the addition of a new channel, while complementarity takes time to manifest itself. Retail store openings cannibalize direct channel sales in the short term if physical stores do not already exist in the retail trading area, but produce complementary effects which overcome the losses from cannibalization in the long run. Our results suggest the underlying consumer shopping behavior driving this result. The opening of a retail store may induce some existing direct channel customers to switch their purchases to the retail store; simultaneously, new customers are attracted to the direct channels, perhaps due to a branding effect stemming from the publicity surrounding the new store which makes customers more aware of and more comfortable with the firm's direct channel operations. Use caution extrapolating these results to other retailers. This study involved only store openings by a single retailer with a well established and respected brand into markets where the retailer did not previously have stores. Direct retailers with less established brands may benefit even more than this retailer from branding effects by opening a new store. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
Delivering a Personalized Shopping Experience with AI
THE YES, a shopping app for fashion brands, uses a sophisticated algorithm to create and deliver a personalized store for every shopper, based on her style preferences, size, and budget. After launching the app in 2020, the founders had to decide whether to continue developing the algorithm to deliver on the company’s customer value proposition or to focus their resources on new customer acquisition, with the idea that more users on the app would improve the algorithm's performance. Senior Lecturer Jill Avery and The YES co-founder and CEO Julie Bornstein discuss this make-or-break dilemma in the case, The YES: Reimagining the Future of e-Commerce with Artificial Intelligence (AI). This episode was recorded live at Harvard Business School on March 30, 2022 as part of our Case Method 100 celebration.