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Reinventing Retail: The Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores

by Ryan Raffaelli

Independent booksellers in the United States have proven resilient in the face of multiple technological and business model shifts in the bookselling industry. By tapping into a larger social movement that promotes the value of shopping local and a desire to cultivate community, successful booksellers are differentiating themselves from online and big box competitors.

Distance Still Matters in Business, Despite the Internet

by Sean Silverthorne

The internet makes distance less a problem for conducting business, but geography still matters in the digital age. Shane Greenstein explains why. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Black Business Leaders Series: The Entrepreneurship Behind Ebony Magazine

Over seven decades Ebony magazine has covered the most important African-American issues, personalities, and interests. Now it faces difficult times that most publications confront. Senior Lecturer Steve Rogers discusses his case study of Ebony's past, present, and future in this podcast. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

A Little Understanding Motivates Copyright Abusers to Pay Up

by Michael Blanding

Many Internet users don't give a second thought to copying and reusing an image. Hong Luo and Julie Holland Mortimer explain how copyright holders can gently persuade abusers to do the right thing. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

When CEOs Become Activists

by Carmen Nobel

More and more, CEOs are promoting social causes that lie far outside their core business interests. Research by Mike Toffel and Aaron Chatterji explores the rise of CEO activists and the effects on their companies. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

Why Fierce Competitors Apple and Amazon Became ’Frenemies’ Over eReaders

by Michael Blanding

New research by Feng Zhu and colleagues reveals why sometimes it's better for fierce competitors like Apple and Amazon to work together. Open for comment; 5 Comment(s) posted.

The Faculty Reader: Who is Reading What This Summer?

by Carmen Nobel

What titles made the Harvard Business Faculty short list for summer reading? Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Is Wikipedia More Biased Than Encyclopædia Britannica?

by Michael Blanding

By identifying politically biased language in Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, Feng Zhu hopes to learn whether professional editors or open-sourced experts provide the most objective entries. Open for comment; 16 Comment(s) posted.

Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia

by Shane Greenstein & Feng Zhu

Britannica and Wikipedia are sources that aspire to provide comprehensive information. They both face similar challenges over the length, tone, and factual basis of controversial, unverifiable, and subjective content. Such challenges are pervasive in the production of encyclopedic knowledge about current events and political debates surrounding topics like taxation, health care policies, biographical details of presidential candidates, and the funding of stem-cell research, for example. In this paper the authors begin with a simple observation: Each source resolves these challenges differently in distinct production processes. Britannica, for example, produces its final content after consultation between editors and experts. Wikipedia, on the other hand, relies on the "crowd" for its content, receiving contributions from tens of millions of individual users. Examining 3,918 pairs of articles about US politics that appeared in both outlets, the authors compare bias and slant from the two production models. Results suggest that the allocation of editorial time and user contributions is central to the minimization of differences in bias and slant between the two outlets. Among the managerial implications, community managers can work towards a balanced view if intervention alleviates disputes and generates the right kind of participation. Key concepts include: The costs of producing, storing, and distributing knowledge shape different biases and slants in the collective intelligence (Wikipedia) and the expert-based model (Britannica). Many of the differences between Wikipedia and Britannica arise because Wikipedia faces insignificant storage, production, and distribution costs. This leads to longer articles with greater coverage of more points of view. The number of revisions of Wikipedia articles results in more neutral point of view. In the best cases, it reduces slant and bias to a negligible difference with an expert-based model. As the world moves from reliance on expert-based production of knowledge to collectively-produced intelligence, it is unwise to blindly trust the properties of knowledge produced by the crowd. Their slants and biases are not widely appreciated, nor are the properties of the production model as yet fully understood. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Users Love Ello, But What’s the Business Model?

Re: John A. DeightonRe: Sunil Gupta

Social network upstart Ello is generating terrific buzz among users, but can its ad-free approach compete against Facebook? Professors John Deighton and Sunil Gupta provide insights into what drives social media success. Closed for comment; 5 Comment(s) posted.

Encouraging Niche Content in an Ad-Driven World

by Julia Hanna

Research by Feng Zhu and Monic Sun explores how advertising drives bloggers to shift their writing to subjects that will grab more eyeballs—namely, the stock market, celebrities, and salacious behavior. But surprise: Ads might also help generate more niche content. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

When Will the Next Dot.com Bubble Burst?

by James Heskett

Summing Up: Is that the sound of a dot.com bubble bursting? Could be, but is that a bad thing?, ask Jim Heskett's readers. Closed for comment; 14 Comment(s) posted.

Racist Umpires and Monetary Ministers

by Michael Blanding

Are baseball umpires racist? Are ministers motivated by money? Christopher Parsons teases important economic lessons from unlikely sources. Open for comment; 4 Comment(s) posted.

The Tricky Business of Managing Web Advertising Affiliates

by Kim Girard

Advertising through numerous website affiliates potentially helps marketers get more bang for their buck. But the far-flung systems can also lead to fraud, says Ben Edelman. What's the best way to manage your advertising network? Closed for comment; 2 Comment(s) posted.

HBS Cases: What Warren Buffett Saw in Newspapers

by Deborah Blagg

When Warren Buffett made a bid for troubled Media General's newspapers, analysts wondered whether the legendary investor had lost his fastball. Hardly, as Benjamin Esty's case reveals. Closed for comment; 3 Comment(s) posted.

Information and Incentives in Online Affiliate Marketing

by Benjamin G. Edelman & Wesley Brandi

Compared to historic advertising methods, online marketing invites advertisers to attempt a sharply increased quantity of partnerships. Online relationships reduce the transaction costs of buying ad placements. In many advertising marketplaces, standardized contracts let an advertiser accept a proposed placement with a single click, and ad networks widely sell bundles of hundreds or thousands of placements. Meanwhile, many advertisers find they can get valuable leads and favorable pricing from the Internet's myriad small sites. These numerous relationships entail costs, too, such as selecting, compensating, and supervising the sites, making sure each site is suitable to show the advertiser's offer, and making sure sites in fact deliver the promised benefits. Advertisers thus turn to specialists and outside firms to handle important aspects of advertising-buying. In this paper, the authors evaluate advertisers' chosen management structures by measuring the relative prevalence of advertising fraud targeting advertisers engaged in online "affiliate marketing," a performance-based compensation system increasingly common in online ad campaigns. Specifically, the authors identify the vulnerabilities best addressed by outsourcing marketing management to external specialists, versus the problems better overseen by keeping management decisions in-house. They find outside advisors most effective at enforcing clear rules, but in-house staff excel at preventing practices viewed as "borderline" under industry norms. While the results apply most directly to advertisers considering the management structure of their online marketing programs, the analysis also speaks to broader concerns of outsourcing and the boundary of the firm. Key concepts include: Affiliate marketing broadly aligns incentives between advertisers and affiliates by compensating affiliates only when sales occur. Rogue affiliates may seek commissions they have not fairly earned, typically by claiming to have referred customers who were already going to buy. Alternative structures of affiliate program management can influence merchants' vulnerability to affiliate fraud. Outsourced marketing managers tend to enjoy superior information about affiliates' practices, but outsourcers' incentives differ from advertisers' objectives. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Read All About It: Digital CEO Buys Traditional Media!

by Jim Aisner

At 136 years old, the Washington Post has reported on critical news events over the decades. Now the sale of the Post to Jeff Bezos is itself a game changer, for digital media. Harvard Business School strategy experts Bharat Anand and David Collis read between the lines. Closed for comment; 3 Comment(s) posted.

Exclusive Preferential Placement as Search Diversion: Evidence from Flight Search

by Benjamin G. Edelman & Zhenyu Lai

Measuring the net effect of search diversion is important for understanding the extent to which search engines and other intermediaries may act to influence consumer behavior. This paper makes two contributions. First, the authors develop a theoretical model to establish conditions when a search engine chooses to divert search to a less relevant service. Results indicate that search engines have a larger incentive to divert search when they are able to alter the consumers' perceptions of the difference between non-paid and paid placements, and when search engines place a large weight on revenue. These results are consistent with instances where some search engines have labeled paid links with confusing euphemisms or not at all, and where some search engines have mixed paid and non-paid links in the same area of the screen. Second, the authors measure the impact of a diversion mechanism where a search engine exclusively awards a non-paid preferred placement slot to its own service. Specifically, they examine Google's preferred placement of Flight Search. Analysis indicates that there was an 85 percent increase in click-through rates for paid advertising and a 65 percent decrease in click-through rates for non-paid algorithmic search traffic to competing online travel agencies. Both changes are statistically significant, providing evidence of Google's ability to influence how consumers choose services after they search. Key concepts include: There are significant cost increases for Internet startups that obtain large quantities of incoming traffic from search engines. These increases in costs could deter entry into thriving online industries. Search diversion particularly harms the sites that provide services most relevant to users' search queries. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Competing with Privacy

by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Andres Hervas-Drane

Personal consumer information has become a valuable asset in the marketplace and an important element of firm strategy. While consumers are unable to control the disclosure practices of services that collect their personal information, they can decide which services to trust and how much information to provide. How do these choices shape competition? The analysis in this paper explains how firms engaging in disclosure choose to share the benefits with consumers by subsidizing them, and firms charging positive prices choose not to engage in disclosure. Competition is likely to increase the supply of both subsidized and no-disclosure services. Moreover, subsidized services have the potential to remain highly profitable under competition despite the fact that disclosure generates consumer disutility. Overall, these findings are particularly relevant to the business models of Internet firms. Findings also contribute to inform the regulatory debate on consumer privacy. Key concepts include: High-disclosure services should be expected to play an important role in a competitive marketplace. Therefore, efforts to make disclosure practices salient and understandable for consumers are clearly desirable. High-disclosure services can outperform their no-disclosure counterparts in generating consumer surplus, ensuring that lower valuation consumers participate in the market. Initiatives to subsidize consumers in order to sustain disclosure revenues, such as Amazon's Special Offers program, are likely to become more widespread. There is scope for no-disclosure services to compete. Such services may attract consumers with larger stocks of personal information or those whose information is more sensitive to disclosure. Tensions surrounding consumer information provision and disclosure will remain for the foreseeable future. Closed for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

Marissa Mayer Should Bridge Distance Gap with Remote Workers

by Lakshmi Ramarajan

Marissa Mayer's decision to bring work-at-home Yahoo! employees back to the office has set off a firestorm. Lakshmi Ramarajan writes on how to mitigate the problem. Closed for comment; 13 Comment(s) posted.