Product Marketing →
- 18 Nov 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Standardized Color in the Food Industry: The Co-Creation of the Food Coloring Business in the United States, 1870–1940
Beginning in the late 19th century, US food manufacturers tried to create the “right” color of foods that many consumers would recognize and in time take for granted. The United States became a leading country in the food coloring business with the rise of extensive mass marketing. By 1938, when Congress enacted the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the food coloring business had become a central and permanent component of food marketing strategies. This paper shows how food manufacturers, dye makers, and regulators co-created the food coloring business. Food-coloring practices became integrated into an entire strategy of manufacturing and marketing in the food industry.
- 03 Oct 2016
- Book
Clayton Christensen: The Theory of Jobs To Be Done
Clayton M. Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma was a classic text on how companies fail. In a new book, Competing Against Luck, Christensen tackles the opposite challenge: how companies succeed. First lesson, discover what job consumers are hiring your product to do. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 25 Sep 2015
- Working Paper Summaries
Invest in Information or Wing It? A Model of Dynamic Pricing with Seller Learning
Dealers who need to price idiosyncratic products--like houses, artwork, and used cars--often struggle with a lack of information about the demand for their specific items. Analyzing sales data from the used-car retail market, the authors of this paper develop a model of dynamic pricing for idiosyncratic products, showing that seller learning has an impact on pricing dynamics through a rich set of mechanisms. Overall, findings suggest a potentially high return to taking a more serious information-based approach to pricing idiosyncratic products.
- 17 Dec 2014
- Research & Ideas
How Our Brain Determines if the Product is Worth the Price
Are consumers more likely to buy if they see the price before the product, or vice versa? Uma Karmarkar and colleagues scan the brains of shoppers to find out. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 01 Oct 2012
- Research & Ideas
Better by the Bundle?
Video game companies do it, fast-food restaurants, too. Why don't more companies bundle products and services together in one package at a bargain price? Research by Assistant Professor Vineet Kumar. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 23 Apr 2012
- Research & Ideas
How to Brand a Next-Generation Product
Upgrades to existing product lines make up a huge part of corporate research and development activity, and with every upgrade comes the decision of how to brand it. Harvard Business School marketing professors John T. Gourville and Elie Ofek teamed up with London Business School's Marco Bertini to suss out the best practices for naming next-generation products. Key concepts include: Companies often take one of two tacks in naming a next-generation product—the sequential naming approach or the complete name change approach. Experimental research showed that each naming approach affects customer expectations. With a name change, research participants expected features that were distinctly different or new. With a name continuation, they just expected improved performance on existing features. Companies must assess risk versus reward when branding a product upgrade, weighing the excitement generated by a new name against the danger of scaring away customers who worry that new features pose the threat of new glitches and a steep learning curve. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 22 Feb 2012
- Working Paper Summaries
The Dynamic Effects of Bundling as a Product Strategy
This paper investigates the practice of bundling as a product strategy, and identifies how consumers make choices between products and bundles in a dynamic environment. Authors Timothy Derdenger and Vineet Kumar look at the handheld video game market to study bundling in a platform setting with the goal of investigating several key questions of interest to practitioners who make product decisions: First, do consumers value bundles over and beyond their component products, indicating a synergy, which some researchers have hypothesized? Second, have there been differing opinions on whether mixed bundling, that is offering both the bundle and individual products for sale, is more effective than offering only pure bundles or even compared to offering only the products for sale? Given the prevalence of bundling in technology markets, it is critical to understand whether bundling is more effective in environments with strong network effects or with weak network effects. Key concepts include: Consumers have a negative synergy effect, that is they are willing to pay less for the bundle than for the individual console and game, leading to the question of whether introducing such bundles can increase revenue. Because bundles act similar to damaged goods, they work well in dynamically segmenting consumers and allow for purchases to occur earlier in time—the presence of bundles induces consumers to purchase earlier rather than wait. The time shifting of hardware purchases has a strong effect on software sales, since more consumers who own consoles will purchase video games over a longer time frame. Mixed bundling is especially effective compared to pure bundling, and the authors find that moving to pure bundling would reduce sales by over 20 percent. Strong network effects do not enhance the value of bundling, suggesting that bundling may instead prove more useful in settings with weak network effects. Bundling is thus a strategy that could serve as a substitute to creating stronger network effects. 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.
- 08 Jun 2009
- Research & Ideas
The Return of the Salesman
Salesmen have received a bad rap over the years, but increasingly the profession is drawing scholarly interest. Business History Review coeditor Walter A. Friedman discusses the publication's recent themed issue on salesmanship. Key concepts include: Scholarly books on the history of salespeople began to appear more frequently beginning in the 1990s, with more recent work comparing 20th-century salespeople in Europe with those in the United States. In addition to comparative trends, research in this area attempts to place the story of the salesperson within the broader themes of history. Salespeople played a positive role displacing old products and promoting innovation. A strong sales force could also create a barrier to entry, as in the case of IBM. Negative portrayals have had lasting effects on the field. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
- 30 Apr 2008
- Sharpening Your Skills
Sharpening Your Skills: Brand Management
Should I trust my brand to a sports endorser? Does B2B branding work? What does mystery writer James Patterson know about branding that I don't? Here are some recent Working Knowledge articles on issues that keep brand managers up at night. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.
Innovating in the Feminine Care Market
Founded in 2014, Thinx, Inc. makes absorbent underwear that can be worn during menstruation. But the feminine care market had seen virtually no innovation in half a century because of the taboo against discussing the topic of menstruation. As a result, the startup was competing against large incumbents like Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. Can CEO Maria Molland (MBA 2002) lead a marketing strategy that confronts those taboos in order to bring innovation to the feminine care market? Assistant Professor Rembrand Koning examines these strategic marketing challenges and discusses the importance of removing taboos and biases in order to bring innovation to the feminine care market in his case, “Thinx, Inc.—Breaking Barriers in Feminine Care.” Open for comment; 0 Comments.
How Should Advertisers Respond to Consumer Demand for Whiter Skin?
Skin-lightening creams are a fast-growing market in India. Rohit Deshpandé explores what firms should do when a product is decidedly popular—but may be promoting discrimination. Open for comment; 0 Comments.