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    Cold Call
    A podcast featuring faculty discussing cases they've written and the lessons they impart.
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    • 14 Feb 2019
    • Cold Call Podcast

    The Delicious History of Hershey Chocolate

    Have you ever wondered how Hershey chocolate came to be so popular? Professor Nancy Koehn discusses the life and vision of Milton Hershey, the entrepreneur and philanthropist behind the Hershey chocolate bar, the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the Milton Hershey School.  Open for comment; 0 Comment(s) posted.

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    InternetRemove Internet →

    New research on the internet from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including social media strategies, online marketing, and public policy questions such as net neutrality.
    Page 1 of 65 Results →
    • 30 May 2018
    • Research & Ideas

    Should Retailers Match Their Own Prices Online and in Stores?

    by Dina Gerdeman

    For multichannel retailers, pricing strategy can be difficult to execute and confusing to shoppers. Research by Elie Ofek and colleagues offers alternative approaches to getting the price right. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 24 May 2018
    • Research & Ideas

    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.

    • 12 Mar 2018
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Using Online Prices for Measuring Real Consumption Across Countries

    by Alberto Cavallo, W. Erwin Diewert, Robert C. Feenstra, Robert Inklaar, and Marcel P. Timmer

    The increasing availability of big data can improve measurement of real consumption in closer to real time. This study shows that online prices may enhance data of the International Comparisons Program, dramatically improving the frequency and transparency of purchasing power parities compared with traditional data collection methods.

    • 02 Mar 2018
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Evidence of Decreasing Internet Entropy: The Lack of Redundancy in DNS Resolution by Major Websites and Services

    by Samantha Bates, John Bowers, Shane Greenstein, Jordi Weinstock, and Jonathan Zittrain

    Stabilizing the domain name resolution (DNS) infrastructure is critical to the operation of the internet. Single points of failure become more consequential as a larger proportion of the internet's biggest sites are managed by a small number of externally hosted DNS providers. Providers could encourage diversification by requiring domain owners to select a secondary DNS provider.

    • 16 Nov 2016
    • Research & Ideas

    Turning One Thousand Customers into One Million

    by Thales S. Teixeira and Michael Blanding

    In the second part of a series on growing startups, Thales S. Teixeira explains how Uber, Etsy, and Airbnb climbed from one thousand customers to one million. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 19 Oct 2016
    • Book

    Three Critical Mistakes Digital Businesses Make With Content

    by Michael Blanding

    Do companies really understand the nature of today's digital transformation? Bharat Anand's book The Content Trap offers a new view of digital strategy that shifts the focus from "produce the best content" to "create the best connections." Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 14 Sep 2016
    • Research & Ideas

    Web Surfers Have a Schedule and Stick to It

    by Julia Hanna

    Note to web marketers: Consumers won't carve out more time to visit your site. So how do you attract them? Start by understanding their online habits, reports new research by Shane Greenstein and colleagues. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 17 Aug 2016
    • Working Paper Summaries

    The Empirical Economics of Online Attention

    by Andre Boik, Shane Greenstein, and Jeffrey Prince

    This study uses extensive data on user online activity between 2008 and 2013 to examine the links between user allocation of attention and characteristics of user. Findings show remarkable stability in how households allocated their scarce attention over the five years. Results imply that suppliers are competing for a finite supply of user time while generally lacking the ability to use price discounts to attract user attention.

    • 15 Aug 2016
    • Research & Ideas

    Black Swans and Big Trends Can Ruin Anyone's Internet Prediction

    by Thomas R. Eisenmann

    Coming off the dot-com bust, Thomas R. Eisenmann was confident enough in his internet vision that he wrote a book about what would happen next. For the most part, he was wrong. He offers lessons learned for navigating the boom-bust cycle. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 04 May 2016
    • What Do You Think?

    What Does Boaty McBoatface Tell Us About Brand Control on the Internet?

    by James Heskett

    SUMMING UP. Boaty McBoatface may have been shot down as the social-media sourced name of a research vessel, but James Heskett's readers are up to their hip-boots in opinions on the matter. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 07 Mar 2016
    • Working Paper Summaries

    Net Neutrality: A Fast Lane to Understanding the Trade-offs

    by Shane Greenstein, Martin Peitz, and Tommaso Valletti

    Shane Greenstein and colleagues identify the economic dimensions involved with net neutrality and show that many questions can be informed by simple economic models of the market for internet services.

    • 20 Jan 2016
    • Research & Ideas

    Maybe Uber isn't God's Gift to Mankind

    by Carmen Nobel

    Benjamin G. Edelman discusses the potential negative effects of transportation network companies in the so-called sharing economy. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 09 Dec 2015
    • Research Event

    When Hosts Attack: The Competitive Threat of Online Platforms

    by Carmen Nobel

    Online retail platforms like Amazon are great for the third-party businesses that use them—until the platform’s owner decides to start competing with them. Feng Zhu looks at the factors that turn hosts into predators. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 02 Nov 2015
    • Book

    Dear Internet: You Are Extraordinary, But Not Exceptional

    by Carmen Nobel

    Professor Shane Greenstein is annoyed by “Internet exceptionalism,” the prevalent idea that the Internet defies economic logic, that there’s never been anything like it in business history, and that its impact supersedes everything. In his new book, Greenstein argues that the Internet actually follows classic patterns of economic behavior, detailing the commercial forces that guided the Internet’s path from cool invention to successful innovation. Open for comment; Comment(s) posted.

    • 13 Jul 2015
    • Research & Ideas

    ‘Humblebragging’ is a Bad Strategy, Especially in a Job Interview

    by Carmen Nobel

    While humblebragging runs rampant on Twitter, it's a lousy self-promotion tactic that usually backfires according to recent research by Ovul Sezer, Francesca Gino, and Michael Norton. Open for comment; 18 Comment(s) posted.

    • 02 Jun 2014
    • Research & Ideas

    Secrets to a Successful Social Media Strategy

    by Carmen Nobel

    Misiek Piskorski explores the secrets of successful social media tactics in his new book, A Social Strategy: How We Profit From Social Media. Open for comment; 6 Comment(s) posted.

    • 05 Mar 2014
    • What Do You Think?

    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.

    • 24 Feb 2014
    • Research & Ideas

    Uncovering Racial Discrimination in the ‘Sharing Economy’

    by Carmen Nobel

    New research by Benjamin G. Edelman and Michael Luca shows how online marketplaces like Airbnb inadvertently fuel racial discrimination. Closed for comment; 1 Comment(s) posted.

    • 18 Nov 2013
    • Op-Ed

    Twitter IPO: Overvalued or the Start of Something Big?

    by Chet Huber

    Although it has yet to make a dime, share buyers valued Twitter's IPO at $25 billion. Asks professor Chet Huber, what do they see? Open for comment; 1 Comment(s) posted.

    • 29 Apr 2013
    • Working Paper Summaries

    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.

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