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Either click here to review your order or continue to add content from another title.    One Cafe Chain’s Facebook Experiment   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Dholakia, Utpal M.; Durham, Emily Publication Date: 03/01/2010 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: F1003E Subjects: Consumer marketing; Marketing campaigns; Social media Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: How much can you really influence consumers when you launch a Facebook page to attract “fans” and to pepper them with messages and offers? Quite a lot, one small cafe chain found.    The Mere Thought of Money Makes You Feel Less Pain   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Vohs, Kathleen D.; Berinato, Scott Publication Date: 03/01/2010 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: F1003F Subjects: Human behavior; Psychology; Motivation; Customer experiences Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Can cold, hard cash actually make you feel stronger? Yes, says professor Kathleen Vohs, whose studies showed that handling money actually reduced research subjects' physical and psychological pain levels. In fact, even pictures of cash had the same effect. Her research shows that money makes people more self-sufficient and more motivated-though it also makes them less helpful, less social, and less charitable. Her findings have interesting implications for companies in their dealings with customers as well as in their efforts to motivate employees.    How to Stop Customers from Fixating on Price   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Bertini, Marco; Wathieu, Luc Publication Date: 05/01/2010 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: R1005F Subjects: Market research; Value propositions; Competitive strategy; Pricing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Surprisingly, your best tool for getting customers to see beyond price may be the price itself. New research finds that four pricing moves in particular can cause buyers to stop treating your offering as a commodity and instead consider its quality and relevance to their individual needs. You can change the basis of your pricing structure, as Goodyear did when it priced tires according to how many miles they would last. You can stimulate curiosity with willful overpricing, as Burt's Bees does with its natural beauty products. You can partition a price into component charges to make customers notice a key benefit-as IKEA does by charging separately for a table's top and legs, reminding people of its useful modularity. Or you can price the options you provide uniformly-as Apple does when it charges 99 cents for any track on iTunes-so that customers simply focus on their preferences. The power of each of these strategies is illuminated by controlled studies the authors conducted to understand the link between price and customer attention.    A defense of direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Author(s): Cox, Anthony D.; Cox, Dena Publication Date: 03/15/2010 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana Univ. HBS Number: BH382 Subjects: Advertising; Advertising strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Within the past 20 years, consumer advertising of prescription drugs has grown from a rarity to one of the most pervasive forms of consumer advertising, with ads for antidepressants and heart medications now as common as those for fast food and automobiles. At the same time, direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising has attracted a growing chorus of criticism from consumer advocates, health professionals, and elected officials. This article explores the extent to which such criticism has merit and the extent to which it lacks soundness. Specifically, the article casts doubt on the charges that (1) DTC advertising is deceptive; (2) DTC downplays product risks; (3) DTC focuses on trivial or imaginary maladies; (4) DTC doesn't promote non-pharmaceutical solutions to health problems; (5) DTC harms the doctor-patient relationship; and (6) DTC is responsible for the rapid rise in drug costs.    Getting Brand Communities Right   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Author(s): Fournier, Susan; Lee, Lara Publication Date: 04/01/2009 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0904K Subjects: Brand equity; Brand management; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Marketers in a variety of industries are trying to increase customer loyalty, marketing efficiency, and brand authenticity by building communities around their brands. Few companies, however, understand what brand communities require and how they work. Drawing from their research as well as their experience at Harley-Davidson, the authors dispel some common misconceptions about brand communities and offer design principles, cautionary tales, and new approaches to leveraging those communities. For instance, many managers think of a brand community in terms of marketing strategy. In fact, for a community to have the greatest impact, it must be framed as a corporate strategy. Realizing this, Harley-Davidson, for example, retooled every aspect of its organization to support building and maintaining its brand community and treated all community-related activities not just as marketing expenses but as a companywide investment. Another common misconception is that a brand community exists to serve the business. An effective brand community exists to serve its members, who participate in order to fulfill many kinds of needs, such as building relationships, cultivating new interests, and contributing to society. Strong communities work to understand people's needs and to engage participants by offering a variety of roles. Finally, managers often think that a brand community must be tightly controlled. In reality, a robust community defies managerial control. Effective brand stewards    Causes and Effects   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Cone, Carol L.; Feldman, Mark A.; Dasilva, Alison T. Publication Date: 07/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: R0307H Subjects: Public relations; Corporate image; Social enterprise; Philanthropies; Strategic planning; Brand management; Social responsibility Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Most companies make charitable donations, but few approach their contributions with an eye toward enhancing their brands. Those that do take such an approach commit talent and know-how, not just dollars, to a pressing but carefully chosen social need and then tell the world about the cause and their service to it. Through the association, both the business and the cause benefit in ways they could not otherwise. Organizations such as Avon, ConAgra Foods, and Chevrolet have recognized that a sustained cause-branding program can improve their reputations, boost their employees' morale, strengthen relations with business partners, and drive sales. And the targeted causes receive far more money than they could have from direct corporate gifts alone. The authors examine these best practices and offer four principles for building successful cause-branding programs. First, they say, a company should select a cause that advances its corporate goals. Second, a business should commit to a cause before picking its charitable partners. Third, a company should put all its assets to work, especially its employees. And fourth, a company should promote its philanthropic initiatives through every possible channel.    How Snapple Got Its Juice Back   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Author(s): Deighton, John Publication Date: 01/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: R0201C Subjects: Organizational culture; Marketing strategy; Brands; Brand management; Marketing implementation; Implementing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: In 1993, Quaker Oats paid $1.7 billion for the rapidly growing Snapple brand. In 1997, it sold the brand to Triarc for a mere $300 million. In 2000, Triarc sold it to Cadbury Schweppes for an estimated $1 billion. How could so much value be lost and regained so quickly? John Deighton's answer to these questions is one that many marketing professionals are likely to resist: There is a vital interplay, he says, between the challenges that a brand faces and the culture of the corporation that owns it. Quaker's textbook marketing approach backfired, whereas Triarc's revival of Snapple's original anything-goes attitude worked. Success in brand management stems from the quality of strategy execution, and successful execution is a matter of temperament. Some strategies are best entrusted to managers with cautious, prudent temperaments; others flourish in the hands of risk takers. So before you commit to a deal, don't just consider a brand's sales. Also give some thought to its soul and how it fits with yours.    Marketing When Customer Equity Matters   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Hanssens, Dominique M.; Thorpe, Daniel; Finkbeiner, Carl Publication Date: 05/01/2008 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: R0805J Subjects: Models; Resource management; Marketing mix Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Measuring the effectiveness of marketing investments can be frustrating - especially if a company focuses on a long-term outcome like increasing customer equity. Though there are decision-support models to help marketers allocate their budgets, until recently such models aimed to maximize near-term sales, which aren't always consistent with long-term brand health. Now, how ever, Wachovia has created a model that helps it make customer-equity-driven marketing-mix decisions. The model's architects - Hanssens, a professor at UCLA; Thorpe, a senior vice president at Wachovia; and Finkbeiner, an executive VP at TNS - began by parsing customer equity, or the lifetime value of customers, into three measurable components: customer acquisition, customer retention, and share of wallet. They then assembled data on past marketing activities and changes in the components - a daunting task, given the decentralized nature of previous investments. Once the database was created, a model of how investments affected outcomes could be built and used to design equations focusing on marketing-mix questions. Wachovia now has, for example, an equation to estimate how an increase in cable TV advertising will affect customer acquisition in a market. Just as important, the model highlights how much factors beyond the control of marketing, such as economic swings, affect outcomes. After Wachovia began using the model, it found, as suspected, that a marketing mix with maximum short-term impact would not achieve the biggest increase in customer equity. Wachovia learned that it was overinvesting in traditiona    What Is a Free Customer Worth?   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Gupta, Sunil; Mela, Carl F. Publication Date: 11/01/2008 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: R0811G Subjects: Models; Valuation; Customer & client analysis Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Free customers who are subsidized by paying customers are essential to a vast array of businesses, such as media companies, employment services, and even IT providers. But because they generate revenue only indirectly, figuring out the true value of those customers - and how much attention to devote to them - has always been a challenge. Traditional customer-valuation models don't help; they focus exclusively on paying customers and largely ignore network effects, or how customers help draw other customers to a business. Now a new model, devised by professors Gupta, of Harvard Business School, and Mela, of Fuqua School of Business, takes into account not only direct network effects (where buyers attract more buyers or sellers more sellers) but also indirect network effects (where buyers attract more sellers or vice versa). The model calculates the precise long-term impact of each additional free customer on a company's profits, factoring in the degree to which he or she brings in other customers - whether free or paying - and the ripple effect of those customers. The model helped an online auction house make several critical decisions. The business made its money on fees charged to sellers but recognized that its free customers - its buyers - were valuable, too. As competition heated up, the company worried that it wasn't wooing enough buyers. Using the model, the business discovered that the network effects of buyers were indeed large and that those customers were worth over $1,000 each - much more than had been assumed. Armed with that information, the firm increased its research on buyers, invested more i    Rethinking Marketing   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Rust, Roland T.; Moorman, Christine; Bhalla, Gaurav Publication Date: 01/01/2010 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: R1001F Subjects: Organizational structure; Marketing; Marketing management; Customer relationship management; Focusing on customers Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Companies have never before had such powerful technologies for understanding and interacting with customers. Yet too many firms operate as if they're stuck in the 1960s, an era of mass marketing, mass media, and impersonal transactions. To compete in an aggressively interactive environment, companies must shift their focus from driving transactions to maximizing customer lifetime value. That means products and brands must be made subservient to customer relationships. And that means transforming the marketing department-traditionally focused on current sales-into a “customer department” by: replacing the CMO with a chief customer officer, cultivating customers rather than pushing products, adopting new performance metrics, and bringing under the marketing umbrella all customer-focused departments, including R&D and customer service. As the new year dawns-and as businesses crawl out from under the weight of the global recession-our focus is on reinvention. This HBR Spotlight examines that theme from various perspectives: how to manage corporate transformation, what we understand about personal resilience, whether the United States can reclaim its leadership role in innovation and invention, and how executives in strategy and marketing are reconceiving the work they do.    Let the Response Fit the Scandal   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Tybout, Alice M.; Roehm, Michelle Publication Date: 12/01/2009 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: R0912J Subjects: Crisis management; Customer relationship management; Scandals Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: A full-blown scandal can cause a company great turmoil, even if the organization isn't at fault. Crises easily extend beyond the original perpetrators, spilling over to other businesses along the value chain - and to those apart from the chain that resemble the guilty parties in some central way. For instance, the dairy, pet food, and toy-manufacturing scandals in China over the past few years have in many consumers' minds rendered all Chinese products suspect. Drawing on more than 10 years of research, marketing professors Tybout and Roehm have developed a framework for crafting just-right, just-in-time responses to scandals. They outline four important steps: assess the incident, acknowledge the problem, formulate a strategic response, and implement the response. The most effective approaches are carefully calibrated to the characteristics of the brand, the nature of the event, and the company's degree of seeming culpability. They can minimize brand damage and even, on occasion, provide firms with opportunities to deepen connections with customers. Antivirus-software maker Trend Micro, for example, reacted effectively after a flawed software update immobilized customers' computers. Within an hour and a half, the company removed the problematic file from its website and update servers, expanded its customer support staff, and held a press conference to apologize to customers and describe how the problem was being addressed.    Don’t Be Undersold!   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Steenkamp, Jan-Benedict E.M.; Kumar, Nirmalya Publication Date: 12/01/2009 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: R0912K Geographic Setting: United States; Europe Subjects: Competitive environment; Market analysis; Market share; Brands Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: “Aldi” is a word that strikes fear in the hearts of brand managers across Europe. A chain of low-budget retail stores with sales of $73.5 billion in 2008, Aldi invented what is commonly referred to as the hard-discount store, a format that is destroying between a quarter and a half trillion dollars in brand sales annually. Brand executives at major consumer packaged goods companies have mostly been caught off guard by this success. The authors' research identified four key misconceptions that explain why: (1) Hard discounters can succeed only in Europe; (2) they attract only the poor; (3) they offer inferior quality; (4) their success is a recessionary phenomenon. Aldi, Lidl, and other hard discounters keep costs low in part by restricting as much as 90% of their stock to their own private labels. But, as they are beginning to realize, that practice can gain only so much market share. A judicious mix of store labels and manufacturers' brands will win new customers for both. And brand manufacturers that fear sales cannibalization can take several proactive steps: sell unfamiliar sizes at the discounters, offer brands with a small market share, carefully manage the price gap, make shipping boxes attractive, and keep their brands dynamic.    Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Author(s): Kaplan, Andreas M.; Haenlein, Michael Publication Date: 01/15/2010 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana University HBS Number: BH369 Subjects: Marketing Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: The concept of Social Media is top of the agenda for many business executives today. Decision makers, as well as consultants, try to identify ways in which firms can make profitable use of applications such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life, and Twitter. Yet despite this interest, there seems to be very limited understanding of what the term “Social Media” exactly means; this article intends to provide some clarification. We begin by describing the concept of Social Media, and discuss how it differs from related concepts such as Web 2.0 and User Generated Content. Based on this definition, we then provide a classification of Social Media which groups applications currently subsumed under the generalized term into more specific categories by characteristic: collaborative projects, blogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds. Finally, we present 10 pieces of advice for companies which decide to utilize Social Media.    The More People Want Something, the Less They’ll Like It   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Khan, Uzma; Berinato, Scott Publication Date: 06/01/2010 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: F1006E Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Demand analysis Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: A new study found that denying people access to a product made them desire it more and work harder to get it-but also made them less satisfied with it. That has important implications for companies that do not meet the demand for their products.    Marketing in the Age of the Network: From Marketplace to U-Space   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Author(s): Pitt, Leyland; Watson, Richard T.; Berthon, Pierre R.; Zinkhan, George M. Publication Date: 11/15/2004 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana Univ. HBS Number: BH151 Subjects: Marketing; Information & technology; Computer networks Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: We have entered the age of the ubiquitous network. The future of business is being shaped by the interplay of strategic thinking and network technology advances, affecting company, supplier, and customer interactions in the production and consumption of value and creating an entirely new toolbox that will change marketing forever. Predicated on the characteristics of network ubiquity, universality, uniqueness, and unison, the term “U-commerce” captures these new marketing tools. What is the nature of U-commerce? How can we conceptualize marketing in such a “U-space?” And what are the implications for next-generation marketers?    A Crash Course in Customer Relationship Management   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Publication Date: 03/01/2000 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: It's the marketer's newest set of tools--but not every company needs it. Customer relationship management (CRM) is markedly different from past marketing strategies. CRM allows a company to identify customers, differentiate them in terms of their needs and value, interact with them, and customize some aspect of its products or services to meet those customers' needs. This article covers the basics of CRM and includes sidebars on CRM metrics, the technology behind CRM, and a discussion of what kinds of companies should be using CRM. HBS Number: U0003B Subjects: Customer relations; Marketing management; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Ad Spending: Growing Market Share   Added   View  8 pp.  Article Schroer, James C. Describes the relative share of voice effect in advertising. In most markets, consumer goods markets are in a state of equilibrium--advertising expenditures are relatively stable and changes in market share are small. To gain ground in market share, a competitor has to launch a huge ad campaign for a sustained period that outspends the biggest rival by at least 100%. HBS Number: 90113 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/90 Subjects: Advertising; Advertising campaigns; Consumer marketing; Market share; Marketing management    Ad Spending: Maintaining Market Share   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Jones, John Philip Accuracy in manufacturers' advertising budgeting is hampered by reliance on the case rate system. A better measure is a brand's market share compared with its share of voice (its share of the total value of the main media exposure in that product category). The interrelationship between market share and share of voice is not usually considered when determining ad budgets. HBS Number: 90108 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/90 Subjects: Advertising; Advertising strategy; Brands; Market share; Marketing management    Advance Selling for Services   Add   View  19 pp.  Article Author(s): Shugan, Steven M.; Xie, Jinghong Publication Date: 05/01/2004 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review Product Description: Advance selling can be profitable when consumers are uncertain about their future consumption state. At the time of consumption, that uncertainty is resolved, but buyer states still remain unobservable to sellers. Consequently, buyer and seller information is symmetric in advance but asymmetric at consumption (i.e., sellers have an informational disadvantage in the consumption period relative to the advance period). Therefore, sellers can profit from transacting in the advance period when they are at less of a disadvantage. New technologies (e.g., biometrics, electronic tickets, smart cards, online prepayments, and new e-commerce technologies) also enhance the profitability of advance selling by lowering advance-selling costs and restraining arbitrage. HBS Number: CMR283 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Customer relations; Services Academic Discipline: Marketing    Advertising: “The Poetry of Becoming”   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Levitt, Theodore People don't take vacations to "get away from it all," states marketing guru Ted Levitt, but to escape from modern commercialism. And the chief culprit is advertising: omnipresent, relentless, loud, sometimes tasteless. Even if you lik HBS Number: 93211 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/93 Subjects: Advertising; Ethics    After the Sale Is Over   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Levitt, Theodore Buyers no longer purchase products and services but sets of expectations. Thus, the relationship between buyer and seller often intensifies when the sale is made. How selling companies manage buyer-seller relationships increasingly affects their reputations and repeat sales. The seller can maintain a healthy relationship with the buyer after the purchase by regularly considering whether the relationship has been improving or deteriorating. To effectively manage relationships, managers must understand both the problems and the opportunities. HBS Number: 83511 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/83 Subjects: Customer relations; Marketing management; Sales management    All You Need to Know About Making Money on the Internet — as of This Month   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Billington, Jim Publication Date: 12/01/1996 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: While the conventional wisdom about using the Internet for profit changes monthly, there are two potentially enduring truths: 1) the Internet allows unprecedented, direct access to individual customers for business; and 2) the key to making money on the Internet is to focus on customer relationships, not on technology for technology's sake. There are four possible roles that a company can take to create a one-on-one relationship with its customers online: the guide (the salesperson as consultant), guiding the customer through a transaction; the customizer, tailoring a product to the individual consumer; the community participant, reaching customers through participation in an organization of electronic communities; and the coordinator or architect, exploiting technology to bring together different businesses and services to meet customer needs. The overarching theme is that technology is only a tool; the real pay dirt here is the customer. HBS Number: U9612C Geographic Setting: Industry Setting: Subjects: Customer relations; Electronic commerce; Information services; Internet; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    All-in-One Market   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Nunes, Paul; Wilson, Diane; Kambil, Ajit Most companies have only been able to sell goods in one way. Now, with the Internet, a single site can offer many different transaction methods. HBS Number: F00301 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/00 Subjects: Electronic commerce; Internet; Market structure; Sales strategy    Are the Strategic Stars Aligned for Your Corporate Brand?   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Author(s): Hatch, Mary Jo; Schultz, Majken Publication Date: 02/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: In recent years, companies have increasingly seen the benefits of creating a corporate brand. Rather than spend marketing dollars on branding individual products, giants like Disney and Microsoft promote a single umbrella image that casts one glow over all their products. A company must align three interdependent elements--call them strategic stars--to create a strong corporate brand: vision, culture, and image. Aligning the stars takes concentrated managerial skill and will, the authors say, because each element is driven by a different constituency: management, employees, or stakeholders. To effectively build a corporate brand, executives must identify where their strategic stars fall out of line. The authors offer a series of diagnostic questions designed to reveal misalignments in corporate vision, culture, and image. The first set of questions looks for gaps between vision and culture; for example, when management establishes a vision that is too ambitious for the organization to implement. The second set addresses culture and image, uncovering possible gaps between the attitudes of employees and the perceptions of the outside world. The last set of questions explores the vision-image gap--is management taking the company in a direction that its stakeholders support? The authors discuss the benefits of a corporate brand, but they also point to cases in which a corporate brand doesn't make sense. HBS Number: R0102K Subjects: Brand equity; Brands; Corporate branding; Corporate culture; Marketing strategy; Vision Academic Discipline: Marketing    Are You Getting the Best Solutions for Your Problems?   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Morgan, Nick Publication Date: 01/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: The essence of leadership is communicating a vision and a purpose for action. The rest is problem solving. But how do you know you are making the right decisions? Research suggests that if you become too attached to a particular way of thinking or a particular communication style, you risk closing yourself off to viable alternatives. Are You Getting the Best Solutions for Your Problems? describes six general leadership styles. By identifying your own style and recognizing your blind spots, you can learn how to make yourself receptive to real alternatives. HBS Number: C0201D Subjects: Decision making; Leadership; Management communication; Personal strategy & style; Problem solving Academic Discipline: Marketing    Are You Reaching Your Customers?   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Bierck, Richard Publication Date: 12/01/2000 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: To appeal to retain customers you need to understand what makes them tick. What better way to do that than by studying actual consumer behavior? Paco Underhill is a market research consultant whose firm studies the actions of retail shoppers, and Gerald Zaltman is a Harvard Business School marketing professor who studies the psychological reasons behind consumers' behavior. Taken together, the insights from these two experts offer solid tips on getting your message through to your customers. HBS Number: C0012B Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Market research; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Are You Ready for E-tailing 2.0?   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Hemp, Paul Publication Date: 10/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0610F Subjects: Electronic commerce; Virtual communities; Websites Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: E-commerce is shifting — from making purchases online to going shopping online, a social experience in which people interact in a 3-D Web space.    Art of Designing Markets   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Roth, Alvin E. Publication Date: 10/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0710G Subjects: Computers; Market structure Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Traditionally, markets have been viewed as simply the confluence of supply and demand. But to function properly, they must be able to attract a sufficient number of buyers and sellers, induce participants to make their preferences clear, and overcome congestion by providing both enough time to make choices and a speedy means of registering them. Solutions to these challenges are the province of market design — a blend of game theory and experimental economics. Roth, a professor of both business and economics at Harvard, is a leading market designer. He and his colleagues have rescued failing markets by, for example, designing labor clearinghouses through which U.S. doctors get their first jobs and auctions through which the Federal Communications Commission sells licenses for parts of the radio broadcast spectrum. They have also created market-like allocation procedures that involve neither prices nor an exchange of money; these include systems for assigning children to schools in Boston and New York and for facilitating exchanges of kidneys. Computers enable the design of “smart markets” that combine the inputs of users in complex ways: In kidney exchange, they run through every possible match of donors and recipients to arrange the greatest possible number of transplants. In the future, computers may make it possible to auction bundled goods, such as airport takeoff and landing slots. As online markets — like those for jobs and dating — proliferate, a growing understanding of markets in general will provide virtually limitless opportunities for market design.    Art of Moderation: Why Panels Need a Leader   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Wreden, Nick Publication Date: 02/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: Moderating a panel requires a specific set of skills that aren't typically in a manager's tool kit. This article offers advice on how to turn a panel of individuals into an ensemble cast. HBS Number: C0202C Subjects: Management communication; Presentations Academic Discipline: Marketing    Assessing the Long-Term Value of Advertising   Add   View  13 pp.  Article Dhalla, Nariman K. Advertising is an investment which generates sales revenue over time. The duration and amount of the revenue depends on the loyalty of customers, the frequency of purchase and competitive products. Companies often regard advertising costs as expenses incurred in a short-term context, although advertising has a cumulative effect. The distributed lag model can measure this cumulative effect. This method, based on an analysis of a company's past performance, can forecast advertising induced sales. HBS Number: 78104 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/78 Subjects: Advertising; Marketing strategy; Models; Return on investment; Sales forecasting    Attractors: Building Mountains in the Flat Landscape of the World Wide Web   Add   View  22 pp.  Article Author(s): Watson, Richard T.; Akselsen, Sigmund; Pitt, Leyland Publication Date: 01/01/1998 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review HBS Number: CMR101 Subjects: Advertising strategy; Marketing strategy; Customization; Information & technology; Information age; Customer relationship management Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Advocates of the World Wide Web claim it is a great leveler and that participants have a more equal voice. This flatness of the Web creates a major challenge for many businesses: How do you attract visitors and prospective customers to the firm's Web site? The Web site that can attract more visitors, all other things being equal, is more likely to communicate its message to a wider audience or sell its product to more people. Organizations want to build mountains — or “attractors” — in the otherwise flat landscape of Web-based marketing and advertising. This article classifies existing approaches to creating attractors, identifies four basic types of attractors, and predicts that there will be a move toward creating highly interactive attractors as a device for mass customization. The article also addresses the notion of sustainable attractiveness and presents recommendations for designing an attractor.    Automation to Boost Sales and Marketing   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Moriarty, Rowland T., Jr.; Swartz, Gordon Forward-looking companies, installing marketing and sales productivity (MSP) systems, are seeing increases of up to 30% in sales and sales force productivity. MSP systems automate routine tasks and gather and interpret data that was either scattered or uncollected before. They not only upgrade sales and marketing efficiency but also improve the timeliness and quality of executives' decision making. Viewed as a corporate strategic investment, companies can exploit the synergies possible from linkages with other parts of the organization. HBS Number: 89105 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/89 Subjects: Automation; Marketing information systems; Marketing management    Avatar-Based Marketing   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Hemp, Paul Publication Date: 06/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0606B Industry Setting: Banking industry; Entertainment industry; Gaming industry; Online information services; Soft drink industry Subjects: Behavior; Brand management; Consumer marketing; Corporate branding; Customer experiences; Market research; Online gaming; Product placement; Psychology; Virtual communities; Virtual reality; Websites Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Advertising has always targeted a powerful consumer alter ego: that hip, attractive, incredibly popular person just waiting to emerge (with the help of the advertised product) from an all-too-normal self. Now, in cyberspace, consumers are taking the initiative and adopting alter egos that are anything but under wraps. These online personae, called avatars, range from simple but personalized cartoonlike characters used as pictorial signatures in instant messaging to fully developed characters in virtual worlds. And they represent a huge population of “shadow” customers who can be analyzed, segmented, and targeted. The experience of living through another self is most powerful in so-called massively multiplayer online role-playing games, which enable thousands of people to interact simultaneously within the same three-dimensional virtual world. In such settings, participants effectively become the avatars they've created, looking out through their eyes and engaging with other such beings. In this article, which expands upon an item in “The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2006” (HBR reprint R0602B), the author examines early efforts to market real-world products in virtual worlds. He argues that companies need to look quickly beyond the market itself and think about the potential customer, which may be the avatar rather than its creator. Of course, the human behind the    Avoid the Four Perils of CRM   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Rigby, Darrell; Reichheld, Frederick F.; Schefter, Phil Publication Date: 02/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Customer relationship management is one of the hottest management tools today. But more than half of all CRM initiatives fail to produce the anticipated results. Why? And what can companies do to reverse that negative trend? The authors -- three senior Bain consultants -- have spent the past 10 years analyzing customer-loyalty initiatives, both successful and unsuccessful, at more than 200 companies in a wide range of industries. They've found that CRM backfires in part because executives don't understand what they are implementing, let alone how much it will cost or how long it will take. The authors' research unveiled four common pitfalls that managers stumble into when trying to implement CRM. Each pitfall is a consequence of a single flawed assumption -- that CRM is software that will automatically manage customer relationships. It isn't. Rather, CRM is the creation of customer strategies and processes to build customer loyalty, which are then supported by the technology. This article looks at best practices in CRM at several companies, including the New York Times Co., Square D, GE Capital, Grand Expeditions, and BMC Software. It provides an intellectual framework for any company that wants to start a CRM program or turn around a failing one. HBS Number: R0202J Subjects: Consumers; Customer relations; Customer retention; Customer service; Customization; Loyalty; Market segmentation Academic Discipline: Marketing    Avoid the Four Perils of CRM (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Rigby, Darrell; Reichheld, Frederick F.; Schefter, Phil Publication Date: 02/01/2002 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article HBS Number: 8946 Subjects: Consumers; Customer relations; Customer retention; Customer service; Customization; Loyalty; Market segmentation Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: This is an enhanced edition of the HBR reprint R0202J, originally published in February 2002. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. Customer relationship management is one of the hottest management tools today. But more than half of all CRM initiatives fail to produce the anticipated results. Why? And what can companies do to reverse that negative trend? The authors — three senior Bain consultants — have spent the past 10 years analyzing customer-loyalty initiatives, both successful and unsuccessful, at more than 200 companies in a wide range of industries. They've found that CRM backfires in part because executives don't understand what they are implementing, let alone how much it will cost or how long it will take. The authors' research unveiled four common pitfalls that managers stumble into when trying to implement CRM. Each pitfall is a consequence of a single flawed assumption — that CRM is software that will automatically manage customer relationships. It isn't. Rather, CRM is the creation of customer strategies and processes to build customer loyalty, which are then supported by the technology. This article looks at best practices in CRM at several companies, including the New York Times Co., Square D, GE Capital, Grand Expeditions, and BMC Software. It provides an intellectual framework for any company that wants    Backward Market Research   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Andreasen, Alan R. Successful research is designed to lead to actionable conclusions. By working backward and ascertaining results before the research actually hits the field, managers are more likely to get results they can work with. Managers must tell researchers the answers they need to accomplish company goals. By determining where they want to go, and then figuring out how to get there, both managers and researchers can expect successful research. HBS Number: 85301 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/85 Subjects: Market research; Polls & surveys    Beating the Market with Customer Satisfaction   Added   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Hart, Christopher W. Publication Date: 03/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0703H Subjects: Consumers; Customer satisfaction; Market analysis; Stocks Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: A growing body of research conclusively shows that higher customer satisfaction leads to higher share prices.    Better Marketing at the Point of Purchase   Add   View  9 pp.  Article Quelch, John A.; Cannon-Bonventre, Kristina The retail point of purchase (POP) is the time and place at which all the elements of a sale--the consumer, the money, and the product--converge. Marketers must make the most of the communications possibilities at this point to increase their sales. By making effective displays, designing appropriate, easily identifiable packaging, making shopping exciting, and focusing in-store advertising media on the POP, marketers can address the various interests of the manufacturer, the retailer, and the consumer. HBS Number: 83614 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/83 Subjects: Advertising; Marketing strategy; Retailing; Sales management; Sales promotions    Better Sales Networks   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Ustuner, Tuba; Godes, David Publication Date: 07/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Anyone in sales will tell you that social networks are critical. The more contacts you have, the more leads you’ll generate and, ultimately, the more sales you’ll make. But that’s a vast oversimplification. Different configurations of networks produce different results, and the salesperson who develops a nuanced understanding of social networks will outshine competitors. The salesperson’s job changes over the course of the selling process. Different abilities are required in each stage of the sale: identifying prospects, gaining buy-in from potential customers, creating solutions, and closing the deal. Sparse networks are better, for example, at generating unique information. Managers can use three levers — sales force structure, compensation, and skills development — to encourage salespeople to adopt a network-based view and make the best possible use of social webs. For example, the sales force can be restructured to decouple lead generation from other tasks because some people are very good at building diverse ties but not so good at maintaining other kinds of networks. Companies that take steps of this kind to help their sales teams build better networks will reap tremendous advantages. HBS Number: R0607H Industry Setting: Computer hardware; Electronic components; Legal services Subjects: Compensation; Corporate culture; Incentives; Lead generation; Referrals; Sales compensation; Sales organization; Sales strategy; Social networks; Structure Academic Discipline: Marketing    Beware the Pitfalls of Global Marketing   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Kashani, Kamran In 1982, the West German company Henkel relaunched Pattex, an internationally accepted but stagnating contact adhesive. The relaunch was successful and Henkel attempted to duplicate it with Pritt, its glue stick. The strategy failed. The experience illustrates two pitfalls of global marketing: insufficient use of research and poor follow-up. Other pitfalls include overstandardization, narrow vision, and inflexibility in implementation. A committee of managers from headquarters and subsidiaries should oversee the global marketing process. HBS Number: 89506 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/89 Subjects: Brands; Competition; International marketing; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Product management    Blueprint for Constructing a Personal and Professional Network   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Krattenmaker, Tom Publication Date: 04/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: Networking has a bad reputation in some circles; it conjures pictures of shameless self-promoters bent on manipulating every contact for personal gain. But that sort of networking is not only ethically questionable, it just plain doesn't work. True networking is built on a solid foundation of respect and reciprocity. In this article, networking experts give their tips for building a personal and professional network that works. HBS Number: C0204B Subjects: Interpersonal relations; Management communication; Networking; Networks Academic Discipline: Marketing    Boost Your Marketing ROI with Experimental Design   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Almquist, Eric; Wyner, Gordon Publication Date: 10/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0109K Subjects: Consumer marketing; Internet marketing; Marketing implementation; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy; Statistical analysis; Statistical methods; Test markets Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Consumers are regularly blitzed with thousands of marketing messages — television commercials, telephone solicitations, supermarket circulars, and Internet banner ads. Still, a lot of these messages fail to hit their targets or elicit the desired response: the purchase of a product or service. It has been very difficult for companies to isolate what drives consumer behavior, largely because there are so many possible combinations of stimuli. In this article, consultants Eric Almquist and Gordon Wyner explain that although marketing has always been a creative endeavor, adopting a scientific approach to it may actually make it easier — and more cost effective — for companies to target the right customers. “Experimental design” techniques, which have long been applied in other fields, let people project the impact of many stimuli by testing just a few of them. By using mathematical formulas to select and test a subset of combinations of variables, marketers can model hundreds or even thousands of marketing messages accurately and efficiently — and they can adjust their messages accordingly. The authors use a fictional company, Biz Ware, to describe how companies can map out on a grid a combination of the attributes (or variables) of a marketing message and the levels (or variations) of those attributes. Marketers can test a few combinations of those attributes and levels and can apply logistic regression analysis to extrapolate the probable customer responses to all of the possible combinations. The company can then    Bottom-Feeding for Blockbuster Businesses   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Rosenblum, David; Tomlinson, Doug; Scott, Publication Date: 03/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Marketing experts tell companies to analyze their customer portfolios and weed out buyer segments that don't generate attractive returns. Loyalty experts stress the need to aim retention programs at "good" customers--profitable ones--and encourage the "bad" ones to buy from competitors. And customer relationship management software provides evermore sophisticated ways to identify and eliminate poorly performing customers. On the surface, the movement to banish unprofitable customers seems reasonable. But writing off a customer relationship simply because it is currently unprofitable is at best rash and at worst counterproductive. Executives need to ask, "How can we make money off the customers that everyone else is shunning?" Consider Paychex, a payroll-processing company that built a nearly billion-dollar business by serving small companies. Established players had ignored these customers on the assumption that small companies couldn't afford the service. When founder Tom Golisano couldn't convince his bosses at Electronic Accounting Systems that they were missing a major opportunity, he started a company that now serves 390,000 U.S. customers, each employing around 14 people. In this article, the authors look closely at bottom-feeders--companies that assessed the needs of supposedly unattractive customers and redesigned their business models to turn a profit by fulfilling those needs. And they offer lessons that other executives can use to do the same. HBS Number: R0303C Subjects: Business models; Consumers; Customer relations; Customer retention; Loyalty; Market segmentation; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Brand Confusion   Added   View  3 pp.  Article Author(s): Clancy, Kevin J.; Trout, Jack Publication Date: 03/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Consumers are finding it hard to distinguish among competing products. The fault lies partly with marketers and ad agencies, but ultimately it's the CEO's job to stop brand dilution. HBS Number: F0203B Subjects: Brand management; Brands; Market positioning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Brand Leverage Power: The Critical Role of Brand Balance   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Lane, Vicki R. Attempts to leverage a brand's value by brand extensions run the risk of undermining the value of the brand. This article offers an approach to assessing a brand's leverage power before deciding to extend the brand. Evidence suggests managers need to assess both consumer familiarity with, and consumer regard for, the brand. Analysis indicates that brands balanced in terms of consumer familiarity and consumer regard have higher potential for leveraging than do brands high in one of those characteristics but low in the other. A fivefold typology of brands--Coveted Icons, Tarnished Treasures, Developers, Troopers, and Diamonds--is offered for describing the degree of brand balance. HBS Number: BH003 Type: Business Horizons Article Publication Date: 1/15/98 Subjects: Brands; Consumer marketing; Marketing strategy; Product lines Publisher: Publisher:Business Horizons/Indiana University    Brand Relationship Spectrum: The Key to the Brand Architecture Challenge   Add   View  17 pp.  Article Author(s): Aaker, David A.; Joachimsthaler, Erich Publication Date: 07/01/2000 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review Product Description: The classic brand manager dealt with simple brand structures in part because he or she was faced with a relatively simple environment and simple business strategies. Today the situation is far different. Brand managers now face market fragmentation, channel dynamics, global realities, and business environments that have drastically changed their task. In addition, there is pressure to leverage brand assets because of the prohibitive cost of creating new brands. This set of challenges has created a new discipline called "brand architecture." A coherent brand architecture can lead to impact, clarity, synergy, and leverage rather than market weakness, confusion, waste, and missed opportunities. Brand architecture is an organizing structure of the brand portfolio that specifies brand roles and the nature of relationships between brands. This article introduces a powerful brand architecture tool, the "brand relationship spectrum." It is intended to help brand architecture strategists employ insight and subtlety to subbrands, endorsed brands, and their alternatives. Subbrands and endorsed brands can play a key role in creating a coherent and effective brand architecture. HBS Number: CMR177 Subjects: Brand equity; Brand management; Brands; Corporate strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Brand Report Card   Added   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Keller, Kevin L. Publication Date: 01/01/2000 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R00104 Subjects: Brand equity; Brand management; Brands; Consumer marketing; Marketing management; Marketing mixes; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Most managers recognize the value in building and properly managing a brand. But few can objectively assess their brand's particular strengths and weaknesses. Most have a good sense of one or two areas in which their brand may excel or may need help. But, if pressed, many would find it difficult even to identify all the factors they should be considering. To give managers a systematic way to think about their brands, Tuck School professor Kevin Lane Keller lays out the ten characteristics that the strongest brands share. He starts with the relationship of the brand to the customer: The strongest brands excel at delivering the benefits customers truly desire, he says. They stay relevant to customers over time. Pricing truly reflects consumers' perceptions of value. Keller then moves on to consider marketing strategy and implementation: Strong brands are properly positioned. The brand stays consistent. Sub-brands relate to one another in an orderly way within a portfolio of brands. A full range of marketing tools are employed to build brand equity. Finally, he looks at management considerations: Managers of strong brands understand what the brand means to customers. The company gives the brand proper support and sustains it over the long term. And the company consistently measures sources of brand equity. By grading a brand according to how well it addresses each dimension, managers can come up with a comprehensive brand report card. By doing the same for competitors' brands, they can gain a fuller understanding of the relative strengths of their own brands in the marketplace. May be used with    Branded by the Past   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Ettenson, Richard; Klein, Jill Publication Date: 11/01/2000 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: In a global economy, marketing managers need to consider factors that don't apply in domestic markets. When an Israeli refuses to buy a German car, for instance, the issue isn't product quality. It's history. HBS Number: F00604 Subjects: Consumer behavior; International business; International marketing; Marketing management Academic Discipline: Marketing    Brands vs. Private Labels: Fighting to Win   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Quelch, John A.; Harding, David How real is the private-label threat to branded products? What should national-brand manufacturers do about it? On the one hand, manufacturers have reason to be concerned. There are more private labels on the market than ever before; c HBS Number: 96109 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/96 Subjects: Brands; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Product planning & policy; Retailing    Break Free from the Product Life Cycle   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Author(s): Moon, Youngme Publication Date: 05/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0505E Subjects: Marketing strategy; Product differentiation; Product life cycle; Product positioning Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Most firms build their marketing strategies around the concept of the product life cycle — the idea that after introduction, products inevitably follow a course of growth, maturity, and decline. It doesn't have to be that way, says Harvard Business School marketing professor Youngme Moon. By positioning their products in unexpected ways, companies can change how customers mentally categorize them. In doing so, they can shift products lodged in the maturity phase back — and catapult new products forward — into the growth phase. The author describes three positioning strategies that marketers use to shift consumers' thinking. Reverse positioning strips away “sacred” product attributes while adding new ones (JetBlue, for example, withheld the expected first-class seating and in-flight meals on its planes while offering surprising perks like leather seats and extra legroom). Breakaway positioning associates the product with a radically different category (Swatch chose not to associate itself with fine jewelry and instead entered the fashion accessory category). And stealth positioning acclimates leery consumers to a new offering by cloaking the product's true nature (Sony positioned its less-than-perfect household robot as a quirky pet). Clayton Christensen described how new, simple technologies can upend a market. In an analogous way, these positioning strategies can exploit the vulnerability of established categories to new positioning. A company can use these techniques to go on the offensive and transform a category by demolishing its traditional boundaries. Companies that disrupt a category through positioning cr    Breeze in the Face   Add   View  6 pp.  Article Schuster, Thomas F. Large U.S. consumer goods manufacturers and retailers have seen profits decline disastrously when they have overpromoted lines to stimulate short-term volume. A simple application of economic theory shows that overpromotion costs too much - whatever extra volume is generated will be eaten up by increased competition, overhead costs, and customers who learn to wait for a sale rather than to buy at full price. HBS Number: 87613 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/87 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Pricing; Retailing; Sales promotions    Bringing a Dying Brand Back to Life   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Jackson, Mannie Publication Date: 05/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: In 1992, the Harlem Globetrotters were headed toward extinction, but Honeywell executive and former Globetrotter Mannie Jackson believed the brand still had value after 75 years in the public eye. He bought the organization in order to translate this widespread brand recognition into financial results. Jackson describes how he took over the Globetrotters in August 1993, intending to fold the team and replace it with an organization that would sell Globetrotters merchandise. But those plans changed when he met with the team for the first time and looked into the eyes of some of the great ones from the Globetrotters' past. Instead of shutting things down for good, Jackson started preaching to the squad about building a competitive team, about the team being well known for its contributions to charities, about the players working more with kids, and about rebuilding the quality of the organization. The players believed--and slowly but surely, audiences and arena managers did, too. By focusing on providing quality basketball, forging good business relationships, and insisting on accountability in the business, Jackson helped the Globetrotters dramatically increase revenue, profit, and attendance. HBS Number: R0105B Subjects: Brand equity; Brand management; Brands; Entertainment industry; Management of change; Marketing strategy; Organizational change; Sports Academic Discipline: Marketing    Bringing Customers into the Boardroom   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): McGovern, Gail J.; Court, David; Quelch, John A.; Crawford, Blair Publication Date: 11/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0411D Subjects: Board of directors; Growth strategy; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Misguided marketing strategies have destroyed more shareholder value than shoddy accounting or shady fiscal practices. Yet, marketing functions typically reside deep in the organization, far from the executive suite and boardroom, and they are often poorly aligned with corporate strategy. Boards of directors, it would seem, have compelling reasons to monitor their companies' marketing activities. The authors argue that boards lack a clear understanding of how their companies are meeting customer needs and how their marketing strategies drive (or often fail to drive) top-line growth. To help remedy that problem, they've devised a “marketing dashboard,” a series of management reports that could give the board this critical knowledge. The dashboard has three parts, each of which the board should review regularly. The first part tracks the company's main business drivers — those business conditions that, when manipulated or otherwise changed, will directly and predictably affect the company's performance. The second part describes the specific innovations in a pipeline of growth ideas that will allow the company to reach its short- and long-term revenue goals. And the third part provides an overview of the company's marketing skill set so the board can determine not only if the company has enough marketing talent, but also if it has the right marketing talent. Unlike isolated measures of marketing performance that are often insufficient, irrelevant, or misleading, the dashboard allows the board to assess quickly and routinely the effectiveness of its company's marketing strategies. Arm    Build Customer Relationships That Last   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Jackson, Barbara B. Marketing has long emphasized the importance of being close to the customer. A research project that explored long-term relationships between industrial customers and their suppliers led to questions about how realistic this goal is and revealed other issues regarding patterns of customer-vendor behavior. Discussed here are the concepts of relationship marketing and transaction marketing and how customers' purchasing behaviors call for one or the other approach. To build and maintain lasting customer ties, and to outperform competitors, marketers will profit from careful and explicit consideration of their customer relationships. HBS Number: 85608 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/85 Subjects: Customer relations; Industrial markets; Purchasing    Building a Brand: The Saturn Story   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Aaker, David A. Publication Date: 01/01/1994 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review Product Description: Within its first two years, Saturn created one of the strongest automobile brands. This article explains how and why General Motors (GM) was able to accomplish this unique feat. It involved creating a world-class product, developing a team-oriented organization outside the GM fold, selling the company not the car, creating a new retailing strategy and relationship with the customer, and implementing a consistent communication effort. Ironically, Saturn's success raises difficult strategic issues as to its future management and its role in the future of GM. HBS Number: CMR046 Industry Setting: Automotive industry Subjects: Automobiles; Brands; Marketing organization; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Building a Strong Services Brand: Lessons from Mayo Clinic   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Author(s): Berry, Leonard L.; Seltman, Kent D. Publication Date: 05/15/2007 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana University HBS Number: BH230 Industry Setting: Health care industry Subjects: Brand management; Marketing; Service management; Word-of-mouth Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: A strong services brand is built and sustained primarily by customers' interactions with the provider. A services branding model depicts the dynamics of brand creation. From the interrelationships among the presented brand, external communications, and customers' experiences emerge brand awareness, meaning, and ultimately, equity. Illustrates the services branding model by showing how one organization has created, extended, and protected a powerful brand through an unwavering commitment to the well being of its customers. Managers outside of healthcare can benefit from three branding lessons embedded in the Mayo Clinic story: (1) attend to organizational values; (2) play defense, not just offense; and (3) turn customers into marketers.    Building Brand: A Road Map   Add   View  3 pp.  Article Author(s): Sandberg, Kirsten D. Publication Date: 07/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: In our short-attention-span culture, the value of brand has eroded. Image and awareness definitely help if you want to build a strong brand, but you might want to start the process of brand elsewhere, both inside your organization and with your customers. The ideas in this article are based on a panel discussion that took place this past May at the Burning Questions 2001 conference, a gathering of leadership practitioners and management experts, sponsored by Harvard Business School Publishing. The marketing panelists were Regis McKenna, Mary Modahl, Sharon Patrick, and Fred F. Reichheld. HBS Number: U0107E Subjects: Brand management; Brands; Customer relations; Employees; Loyalty; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Building Brands Without Mass Media   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Joachimsthaler, Erich; Aaker, David A. Costs, market fragmentation, and new media channels that let customers bypass advertisements seem to be in league against the old ways of marketing. Relying on mass media campaigns to build strong brands may be a thing of the past. Several companies in Europe, making a virtue of necessity, have come up with alternative brand-building approaches and are blazing a trail in the post-mass-media age. In England, Nestle's Buitoni brand grew through programs that taught the English how to cook Italian food. The Body Shop garnered loyalty with its support of environmental and social causes. Cadbury funded a theme park tied to its history in the chocolate business. Haagen-Dazs opened posh ice-cream parlors and got itself featured by name on the menus of fine restaurants. Hugo Boss and Swatch backed athletic or cultural events that became associated with their brands. HBS Number: 97107 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/97 Subjects: Advertising strategy; Brands; Europe; Marketing strategy; Strategic market planning    Building Loyalty in Business Markets   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Author(s): Narayandas, Das Publication Date: 09/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0509H Subjects: Consumer behavior; Customer relations; Customer retention; Customization; Loyalty; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Companies often apply consumer marketing solutions in business markets without realizing that such strategies only hamper the acquisition and retention of profitable customers. Unlike consumers, business customers inevitably need customized products, quantities, or prices. A company in a business market must, therefore, manage customers individually, showing how its products or services can help solve each buyer's problems. And it must learn to reap the enormous benefits of loyalty by developing individual relationships with customers. To achieve these ends, the firm's marketers must become aware of the different types of benefits the company offers and convey their value to the appropriate executives in the customer company. It's especially important to inform customers about what the author calls nontangible, nonfinancial benefits — above-and-beyond efforts, such as delivering supplies on holidays to keep customers' production lines going. The author has developed a simple set of devices — the benefit stack and the decision-maker stack — to help marketers communicate their firm's myriad benefits. The vendor lists the benefits it offers, then lists the customer's decision makers, specifying their concerns, motivations, and power bases. By linking the two stacks, the vendor can systematically communicate how it will meet each decision maker's needs. The author has also developed a tool called a loyalty ladder, which helps a company determine how much time and money to spend on relationships with various customers. As customers become increasingly loyal, they display behaviors in a predictable sequence, fr    Business Marketing; Understand What Customers Value   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Author(s): Anderson, James C.; Narus, James A. Publication Date: 11/01/1998 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: In this article, authors James Anderson, professor at the Kellogg Graduate School, Northwestern University, and James Narus, associate professor at the Babcock Graduate School, Wake Forest University, illustrate several ways in which suppliers can figure out exactly what their offerings are worth by creating and using what they call customer value models. Field value assessments — the most commonly used method for building customer value models — call for suppliers to gather data about their customers firsthand whenever possible. Through these assessments, a supplier can build a value model for an individual customer or for a market segment, drawing on data gathered from several customers in that segment. Suppliers can use customer value models to create competitive advantage in several ways. First, they can capitalize on the inevitable variation in customers' requirements by providing flexible market offerings. Second, they can use value models to demonstrate how a new product or service they are offering will provide greater value. Third, they can use their knowledge of how their market offerings specifically deliver value to craft persuasive value propositions. And fourth, they can use value models to provide evidence to customers of their accomplishments. Doing business based on value delivered gives companies the means to get an equitable return for their efforts. Once suppliers truly understand value, they will be able to realize the benefits of measuring and monitoring it for their customers. HBS Number: 98601 Subjects: EVA; Industrial markets; Market analysis; Market research; Marketing strategy; Pricing strategy; Product positioning Academic Discipline: Marketing    Business Marketing; Understand What Customers Value   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Anderson, James C.; Narus, James A. In this article, authors James Anderson, professor at the Kellogg Graduate School, Northwestern University, and James Narus, associate professor at the Babcock Graduate School, Wake Forest University, illustrate several ways in which s HBS Number: 98601 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/98 Geographic Setting: : Subjects: EVA; Industrial markets; Market analysis; Market research; Marketing strategy; Pricing strategy; Product positioning    Buying Hardball, Playing Price   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Yama, Elliott Publication Date: 09/15/2004 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana University HBS Number: BH160 Subjects: Communication; Customers; Negotiations; Pricing; Profitability; Sales management Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Sales negotiations are a game that can either destroy or build value. Managing buyers' perceptions of the value a firm's products and services deliver is both a necessity for properly establishing price in a negotiation and a key to improved profitability. With the right tools, sellers can understand how to communicate value to customers and deal with their hardball tactics by negotiating the offer instead of the price. Because customers will not be easily deterred from tough negotiating, the insights provided here help sellers anticipate and counter the arguments customers construct to derail their value message.    Buzz on Buzz   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Dye, Renee Publication Date: 11/01/2000 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Word-of-mouth promotion has become an increasingly potent force, capable of catapulting products from obscurity into runaway commercial successes. Harry Potter, collapsible scooters, the Chrysler PT Cruiser, and The Blair Witch Project are all recent examples of the considerable power of buzz. Yet many top executives and marketing managers are misinformed about the phenomenon and remain enslaved to some common myths. In her article, author Renee Dye explores the truth behind these myths. As globalization and brand proliferation continue, writes Dye, buzz may come to dominate the shaping of markets. Indeed, companies that are unable to control buzz may soon find the phenomenon controlling them. Subjects: Advertising campaigns; Advertising management; Advertising strategy; Consumer marketing; Consumer products industry; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Buzz on Buzz (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Dye, Renee Publication Date: 10/01/2001 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article Product Description: This is an enhanced edition of the HBR reprint R00606, originally published in November 2000. HBR OnPoint Articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. Word-of-mouth promotion has become an increasingly potent force, capable of catapulting products from obscurity into runaway commercial successes. Harry Potter, collapsible scooters, the Chrysler PT Cruiser, and The Blair Witch Project are all recent examples of the considerable power of buzz. Yet many top executives and marketing managers are misinformed about the phenomenon and remain enslaved to some common myths. In her article, author Renee Dye explores the truth behind these myths. As globalization and brand proliferation continue, writes Dye, buzz may come to dominate the shaping of markets. Indeed, companies that are unable to control buzz may soon find the phenomenon controlling them. HBS Number: 7966 Subjects: Advertising campaigns; Advertising management; Advertising strategy; Consumer marketing; Consumer products industry; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    By Any Other Name   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Morse, Gardiner Publication Date: 11/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: When you name your brand, trust your gut. HBS Number: F0411L Subjects: Brand management; Brands; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Can Marketing and Manufacturing Coexist?   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Shapiro, Benson P. Every manufacturing company experiences conflict, often internecine, between its marketing and manufacturing functions. There is a strong likelihood of conflict in managing the marketing/manufacturing interface in eight areas: capacity planning and long-range sales forecasting; production scheduling and short-range sales forecasting; delivery and physical distribution; quality assurance; breadth of product line; cost control; new product introduction; and adjunct services. HBS Number: 77511 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/77 Subjects: Manufacturing; Marketing management    Can Selling Be Globalized?: The Pitfalls of Global Account Management   Add   View  14 pp.  Article Author(s): Arnold, David J.; Birkinshaw, Julian; Toulan, Omar Publication Date: 10/01/2001 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review HBS Number: CMR212 Subjects: Globalization; Sales; Customer retention; Sales strategy; Customer relationship management Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: There is a strong current trend toward globalization of the sales function, driven by increasing customer power, initiatives in customer relationship management, and the design of customer-centric organizations. This article questions the wisdom of rapid adoption of global account management by vendor companies. Drawing on field and survey research among global account managers, the authors highlight a number of ways in which vendors can fail to reap the benefits of global customer relationships and, instead, suffer falling prices. A number of managerial guidelines are suggested for a strategic approach toward global customer management and an effective implementation of global account management programs.    Can This Brand Be Saved?   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Maruca, Regina Fazio In this fictional case study, Caroline Portal knows that La Shampoo is in trouble. Introduced in 1975 and targeted at women between the ages of 15 and 30, La Shampoo has a stylish image that had immediately become popular. Its slogan, HBS Number: 94508 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/94 Subjects: Brands; Consumer goods; HBR Case Discussions; Marketing strategy; Product management    Can This High-Tech Product Sell Itself?   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Virden, Thomas W. When Jim Merrick left a well-known computer graphics company for California Vision Tools, he was excited about creating a dynamic marketing department of his own. But he failed to ascertain how much financial support his new company wa HBS Number: 95611 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/95 Subjects: Computer industry; HBR Case Discussions; Marketing implementation; Marketing management; Marketing strategy    Can You Standardize Multinational Marketing?   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Buzzell, Robert D. The prevailing view of multinational companies (MNCs) is that marketing strategy is a local problem which differs from country to country. There are, however, potential benefits in standardizing multinational marketing strategy. Significant cost savings, consistency in dealing with customers, improved planning and control, and the exploitation of good ideas represent potential gains with an integrated approach to marketing strategy. In view of the trend toward at least partial centralization of marketing management, the right balance between local autonomy and central coordination is essential if marketing strategy is to encompass a multinational perspective. HBS Number: 68603 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/68 Subjects: Centralization; International business; International marketing; Marketing strategy; Multinational corporations    Capturing Customers’ Spare Change   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Albert, Terri C.; Winer, Russell S. Publication Date: 05/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Software that ``understands'' psychology is helping fast-food restaurants capture customers' spare change, explains GE edgelab's Terri C. Albert and marketing professor Russell S. Winer. HBS Number: F0505K Subjects: Fast food industry; Marketing strategy; Psychology; Software Academic Discipline: Marketing    Case for Discount Discipline   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Geisman, Jim; Maruskin, John Publication Date: 11/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0611G Subjects: Consumer marketing; Discounts; Pricing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Few companies even record their discounting practices, much less manage them. Here's how to do discounts right.    Case of the Migrating Markets   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Levitt, Theodore Describes an established company whose profits are being sustained by price increases on a few core products and gradual population growth. How can the company expand product lines in a way that appeals to younger people but does not jeopardize brand identity and customer loyalty? Cathleen Black, publisher of USA Today and executive vice president for marketing of Gannett Co., Inc; David W. Johnson, president and CEO of Campbell Soup Co.; Stephen H. Haeckel, director of advance marketing development at IBM; Carl Spielvogel, chairman and CEO of Backer Spielvogel Bates Worldwide, Inc.; and Sir Adrian Cadbury, former chairman of Cadbury Schweppes PLC consider the CEO's alternatives. HBS Number: 90408 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/90 Subjects: Corporate strategy; HBR Case Discussions; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Product management    Case of the Pricing Predicament   Added   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Karr, Mary Publication Date: 03/01/1988 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Scott Palmer’s most important account, Occidental Aerospace, is pushing for a discount, but Standard Machine Corp., Scott’s company, has a long-standing policy of selling its products at list price — discounts are out of the question. Occidental also has plans for two new plants so Standard’s bid may affect millions of dollars in future business. And two Asian machine-tool companies have set their sights on Occidental’s home market. Has Standard’s fixed-price policy outlived its usefulness? F.G. Rogers, formerly vice president of marketing at IBM; Bruce Moore, president and CEO of H.R. Krueger Machine Tool, Inc.; Richard T. Lindgren, president and CEO of Cross & Trecker Corp.; and William Whitescarver, president of the Bindery & Forms Press Division of Harris Graphics consider whether Standard’s pricing policy can withstand the pressures of new competition and more demanding customers. HBS Number: 88205 Industry Setting: Machinery industry Subjects: Brief case; HBR case discussions; Machinery; Pricing; Sales management; Sales strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Case of the Profitless PC   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Blackburn, Andy; Halprin, Matt; Veloria, Ruth This fictitious case written by Andy Blackburn, a Boston Consulting Group vice president based in San Francisco, explores the question of how PC companies can make money in the increasingly price-competitive consumer market. The senior HBS Number: 98603 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/98 Geographic Setting: : Subjects: Computer industry; Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; HBR Case Discussions; Market definition; Market segmentation; Marketing strategy    Case of the Test Market Toss-up   Add   View  9 pp.  Article Star, Stephen H.; Urban, Glen L. The marketing committee of Paradise Foods decided against national rollout of Sweet Dream, the company's new premium frozen dessert. They feared Sweet Dream would take away market share from LaTreat, the company's first, and still succ HBS Number: 88513 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/88 Subjects: HBR Case Discussions; Market share; Marketing management; Product introduction; Product management    CEO Hits the Road (and Other Sales Tales)   Add   View  6 pp.  Article Mackay, Harvey B. CEOs must spend a certain amount of their time in the trenches, to learn first-hand how the business is going. Time spent on the road with the sales force is especially valuable. Executives learn whether the sales team knows its prospects and sets reasonable expectations; how much the salespeople know about the product, particularly in ways that differentiate it from the competition; whether the sellers keep abreast of changes in customers' businesses; and if the salespeople feel they have a stake in the business. HBS Number: 90208 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/90 Subjects: Executives; Leadership; Managerial skills; Participatory management; Sales management    Changing Channels: The Impact of the Internet on Distribution Strategy   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Author(s): Pitt, Leyland; Berthon, Pierre R.; Berthon, Jean-Paul Publication Date: 03/15/1999 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana Univ. HBS Number: BH036 Subjects: Distribution; Marketing channels; Distribution planning; Marketing strategy; Internet Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: A new medium — the Internet and World Wide Web — is changing distribution channels like no other force since the Industrial Revolution. It is modifying many of the assumptions on which channel structure is based, and in some cases it is transforming and even obliterating channels themselves. As a result, many intermediaries will die out, while new channels and intermediaries will take their place. There are three essential purposes of distribution channels: to support economies of scope, to routinize transactions, and to search for information essential to both producer and consumer. However, the Internet and Web have brought about the death of distance, the homogenization of time, and the irrelevance of location. A matrix model of these developments, arrayed versus distribution channel functions, provides a guide to identifying which traditional channels will either undergo transformation or perish and where new channels will emerge. The matrix model suggests how existing firms and entrepreneurs can perform their distribution functions more efficiently. It enables identification of competitors poised to use the media to change the rules of the marketplace. Finally, it helps managers brainstorm ways in which an existing industry can be vulnerable and a totally new one defined.    Charge What Your Products Are Worth   Added   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Bala, Venkatesh; Green, Jason Publication Date: 09/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0709D Subjects: Customer satisfaction; Value chains Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: For customers, value has two components: benefits received and price paid. After gauging their customers' perceptions of value, managers can plot a simple chart that reveals any misalignment and use it to balance the benefit-price equation.    Clueing In Customers   Added   View  8 pp.  Article Author(s): Berry, Leonard L.; Bendapudi, Neeli Publication Date: 02/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: When customers lack the expertise to judge a company's offerings, they naturally turn detective, scrutinizing people, facilities, and processes for evidence of quality. The Mayo Clinic understands this and carefully manages that evidence to convey a simple, consistent message: The needs of the patient come first. From the way it hires and trains employees to the way it designs its facilities and approaches its care, the Mayo Clinic provides patients and their families concrete evidence of its strengths and values--an approach that has allowed it to build what is arguably the most powerful brand in health care. Marketing professors Leonard Berry and Neeli Bendapudi conducted a five-month study of evidence management at the Mayo Clinic. Their experiences led them to identify best practices applicable to just about any company, in particular those that sell intangible or technically complex products. Essentially, the authors say, companies need to determine what story they want to tell, then ensure that their employees and facilities consistently show customers evidence of that story. At Mayo, the evidence falls into three categories: people, collaboration, and tangibles. The way in which Mayo manages evidence to communicate its message is an example to be followed. HBS Number: R0302H Subjects: Brand management; Communication in organizations; Customer relations; Health care; Health organizations management; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Coming Battle for Customer Information   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Hagel, John, III; Rayport, Jeffrey F. Companies collect information about customers to target valuable prospects more effectively, tailor their offerings to individual needs, improve customer satisfaction, and identify opportunities for new products or services. But manage HBS Number: 97104 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/97 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Information technology; Marketing strategy; Strategic planning; Technological change; Technology; Value of information    Coming Soon to a Conference Room Near You   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): McFarland, Jennifer Publication Date: 02/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: The videoconferencing industry has seen a 40% to 50% spike in videoconferencing reservations since September 11. Is this merely a reaction of travel-wary executives or an indication of a long-term trend of replacing some business travel with videoconferencing? Although technological improvements and falling costs make the latter a possibility, the answer really lies in whether companies are willing to invest the necessary time and effort to learn the ins and outs of this communication tool. This article offers practical tips for getting the most out of videoconferencing. HBS Number: C0202B Subjects: Management communication; Meetings; Presentations; Technology Academic Discipline: Marketing    Communicating with Your Customers on the Web   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Publication Date: 08/01/2000 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: We asked Web site design experts for ways to improve business Web sites. The response was overwhelming: forget the flashy features and focus on your customers. Includes a sidebar entitled "Catching the Cluetrain: Communicating with Your Customers in an Internetworked World." HBS Number: C0008A Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Internet; Technology; World Wide Web Academic Discipline: Marketing    Communication Technology That’s Worth a Second Look   Add   View  3 pp.  Article Author(s): Marcus, Eric Publication Date: 02/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: After months--and in some cases, years--of hype, some communication technologies are beginning to add value to the bottom line. Technology expert Eric Marcus examines the future of the Internet, knowledge sharing and knowledge management, real-time virtual communication, and search engines for how the current technological developments can improve communication. HBS Number: C0202D Subjects: Internet; Knowledge management; Management communication; Technology Academic Discipline: Marketing    Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): McGovern, Gail; Moon, Youngme Publication Date: 06/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0706E Subjects: Customer satisfaction; Customers Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Why do companies bind customers with contracts, bleed them with fees, and baffle them with fine print? Because bewildered customers, who often make bad purchasing decisions, can be highly profitable. Most firms that profit from customers' confusion are on a slippery slope. Over time, their customer-centric strategies for delivering value have evolved into company-centric strategies for extracting it. Not surprisingly, when a rival comes along with a friendlier alternative, customers defect. Adversarial value-extracting strategies are common in such industries as cell phone service, retail banking, and health clubs. Overly complex product and pricing options, for example, may have been designed to serve various segments. But in fact they take advantage of how difficult it is for customers to predict their needs (such as how many cell phone minutes they'll use each month) and make it hard for them to choose the right product. Similarly, penalties and fees, which may have been instituted to offset the costs of undesirable customer behavior, like bouncing checks, turn out to be very profitable. As a result, companies have no incentive to help customers avoid them. Tactics like these generate bad publicity and fuel customer defections, creating opportunities for competitors. Virgin Mobile USA, for example, has lured millions of angry cell phone customers away from the incumbents by offering a straightforward plan with no hidden fees, no time-of-day restrictions, and no contracts. ING Direct, now the fourth-largest thrift bank in the United States, offers accounts with no fees, no tiered interest rates, and no minimums. In industries where squeezing value from customers is common    Competence-Based Marketing   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Golfetto, Francesca; Mazursky, David Publication Date: 12/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Professors Francesca Golfetto and David Mazursky describe how a group of Italian yarn makers market their expertise, not just their products. HBS Number: F0412L Subjects: Italy; Marketing strategy; Textiles Academic Discipline: Marketing    Computerized Sales Management   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Hughes, G. David Microcomputers can help sales managers decide the right number of calls, improve the contribution of an account, reduce selling costs, manage assets more effectively, teach time-management skills, and evaluate representatives. The user can accomplish these things for less than $5,000 in hardware and software. Managers can construct planning models quickly using electronic spreadsheets and can save or duplicate the models on disks. Representatives and district managers can then use these "template" disks by filling in the appropriate figures. HBS Number: 83211 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/83 Subjects: Sales management; Software    Consultant’s Comeuppance   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Buday, Robert Publication Date: 02/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: For ten years, Jeff Patterson's firm, Flynn Fuller Consulting, has worked on projects for financial services giant GloBank. Now Jeff's contact, Bill Holland, says another project is imminent--good news for the recession-battered consultancy--but there's just one problem: GloBank has an enigmatic new CEO, H. Frank Maloney III. Brought in to restore profitability, Maloney has been examining GloBank's bottom line, looking for places to cut. The new CEO wants to slash GloBank's extensive use of consultants, which means that division presidents like Bill must justify major consulting projects. Worse, firms like Flynn Fuller must sell themselves again to GloBank. Jeff will have just one hour to try to sway Maloney, or his client will disappear. How can Jeff persuade Maloney that outside consultants are worth the cost? Jeff's presentation isn't a progress report or a pitch to a new client; rather, it's a defense of Flynn Fuller's continuing added value. Jeff pulls together a team to make the case, but he hears as many approaches as there are people in the room. Commentators P. William Bane, a recently retired vice-president and director at Mercer Management Consulting; Tom Van Berkel, the president and CEO of insurance firm Main Street America Group; Peter Klein, the senior vice-president of strategy and business development for Gillette; and Tricia Stone, a founding partner of Stone Communications, offer advice in this fictional case study. HBS Number: R0302A Subjects: Consulting firms; Financial services; HBR Case Discussions; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy; Presentations Academic Discipline: Marketing    Consumer Behavior Exercise (A)   Add   View  2 pp.  Article Deighton, John; Fournier, Susan Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a low-involvement product or service in depth about his/her buying decision. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumer choice domain (e.g., stages in the buying process, decision-making roles, habit versus deliberation). Teaching Purpose: Familiarizes students with consumer behavior principles and provides an opportunity for face-to-face consumer contact. May be used with: (9-596-040) Consumer Behavior Exercise (B); (9-596-041) Consumer Behavior Exercise (C); (9-596-042) Consumer Behavior Exercise (D); (9-596-043) Consumer Behavior Exercise (E); (9-596-044) Consumer Behavior Exercise (F). HBS Number: 9-596-039 Type: Exercise Publication Date: 8/25/95 Revision Date: 1/29/97 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research Supplementary Materials: Teaching Note, (5-597-041), 14p, by Susan Fournier, John Deighton   Add   View  14 pp.  Teaching Note For use with 9-596-039 HBS Number: 5-597-041 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research    Consumer Behavior Exercise (B)   Add   View  2 pp.  Article Deighton, John; Fournier, Susan Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a high-involvement/utilitarian product or service in depth about his/her buying decision. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumer choice domain (e.g., stages in the buying process, decision-making roles, habit versus deliberation). Teaching Purpose: Familiarizes students with consumer behavior principles and provides an opportunity for face-to-face consumer contact. May be used with: (9-596-039) Consumer Behavior Exercise (A); (9-596-041) Consumer Behavior Exercise (C); (9-596-042) Consumer Behavior Exercise (D); (9-596-043) Consumer Behavior Exercise (E); (9-596-044) Consumer Behavior Exercise (F). HBS Number: 9-596-040 Type: Exercise Publication Date: 8/25/95 Revision Date: 1/29/97 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research Supplementary Materials: Teaching Note, (5-597-041), 14p, by Susan Fournier, John Deighton   Add   View  14 pp.  Teaching Note For use with 9-596-040 HBS Number: 5-597-041 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research    Consumer Behavior Exercise (C)   Add   View  2 pp.  Article Deighton, John; Fournier, Susan Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a high-involvement/ego-expressive product or service in depth about his/her buying decision. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumer choice domain (e.g., stages in the buying process, decision-making roles, habit versus deliberation). Teaching Purpose: Familiarizes students with consumer behavior principles and provides an opportunity for face-to-face consumer contact. May be used with: (9-596-039) Consumer Behavior Exercise (A); (9-596-040) Consumer Behavior Exercise (B); (9-596-042) Consumer Behavior Exercise (D); (9-596-043) Consumer Behavior Exercise (E); (9-596-044) Consumer Behavior Exercise (F). HBS Number: 9-596-041 Type: Exercise Publication Date: 8/25/95 Revision Date: 1/29/97 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research Supplementary Materials: Teaching Note, (5-597-041), 14p, by Susan Fournier, John Deighton   Add   View  14 pp.  Teaching Note For use with 9-596-041 HBS Number: 5-597-041 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research    Consumer Behavior Exercise (D)   Add   View  2 pp.  Article Deighton, John; Fournier, Susan Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a low-involvement product or service in depth about his/her ownership and usage experiences. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumption domain (e.g., customer satisfaction, product meaning, brand loyalty). Teaching Purpose: Familiarizes students with consumer behavior principles and provides an opportunity for face-to-face consumer contact. May be used with: (9-596-039) Consumer Behavior Exercise (A); (9-596-040) Consumer Behavior Exercise (B); (9-596-041) Consumer Behavior Exercise (C); (9-596-043) Consumer Behavior Exercise (E); (9-596-044) Consumer Behavior Exercise (F). HBS Number: 9-596-042 Type: Exercise Publication Date: 8/25/95 Revision Date: 1/29/97 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research Supplementary Materials: Teaching Note, (5-597-041), 14p, by Susan Fournier, John Deighton   Add   View  14 pp.  Teaching Note For use with 9-596-042 HBS Number: 5-597-041 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research    Consumer Behavior Exercise (E)   Add   View  2 pp.  Article Deighton, John; Fournier, Susan Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a high-involvement product or service in depth about his/her ownership and usage experiences. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumption domain (e.g., customer satisfaction, product meaning, brand loyalty). Teaching Purpose: Familiarizes students with consumer behavior principles and provides an opportunity for face-to-face consumer contact. May be used with: (9-596-039) Consumer Behavior Exercise (A); (9-596-040) Consumer Behavior Exercise (B); (9-596-041) Consumer Behavior Exercise (C); (9-596-042) Consumer Behavior Exercise (D); (9-596-044) Consumer Behavior Exercise (F). HBS Number: 9-596-043 Type: Exercise Publication Date: 8/25/95 Revision Date: 1/29/97 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research Supplementary Materials: Teaching Note, (5-597-041), 14p, by Susan Fournier, John Deighton   Add   View  14 pp.  Teaching Note For use with 9-596-043 HBS Number: 5-597-041 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research    Consumer Behavior Exercise (F)   Add   View  2 pp.  Article Deighton, John; Fournier, Susan Students are instructed to interview a recent purchaser of a high-involvement/ego-expressive product or service in depth about his/her ownership and usage experiences. The exercise provides students with first-hand understanding of important concepts in consumption domain (e.g., customer satisfaction, product meaning, brand loyalty). Teaching Purpose: Familiarizes students with consumer behavior principles and provides an opportunity for face-to-face consumer contact. May be used with: (9-596-039) Consumer Behavior Exercise (A); (9-596-040) Consumer Behavior Exercise (B); (9-596-041) Consumer Behavior Exercise (C); (9-596-042) Consumer Behavior Exercise (D); (9-596-043) Consumer Behavior Exercise (E). HBS Number: 9-596-044 Type: Exercise Publication Date: 8/25/95 Revision Date: 1/29/97 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research Supplementary Materials: Teaching Note, (5-597-041), 14p, by Susan Fournier, John Deighton   Add   View  14 pp.  Teaching Note For use with 9-596-044 HBS Number: 5-597-041 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research

Consumer Credit: The Next Crisis   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): MacMillan, Ian C. Publication Date: 07/01/2009 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: W0906B Subjects: Consumer credit; Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: The degree to which consumers have come to depend on easy, inexpensive credit is a far greater threat to the economy than most realize. To pay it off, the average U.S. consumer would have to hand over every penny of his take-home pay for 16 months. And in all that time he wouldn't be able to buy anything else — no clothes, food, coffee, nothing. Okay, so no one is going to do that. But what will people do? Individual decisions to cut back on consumption — or perhaps run up the credit cards to the max and then declare bankruptcy — will translate in the aggregate into tremendous volatility and risk for the companies customers buy (or suddenly stop buying) from. In fact, warn investment banker Jarvis and Wharton professor MacMillan, the profits and cash flows of nearly all U.S. companies are built directly or indirectly on consumer spending, and the connection is not always obvious. How many loyal supermarket customers are quietly opting to pay for their food with their credit cards rather than their debit cards? How many consumers will tap their home-equity lines of credit to pay for their next vacation? How many companies are unaware of their indirect connection to these debt-laden consumers through their distributors, retailers, and financial institutions? Those directly involved in the credit industry itself should be bracing for record numbers of bankruptcies. Those companies, like the auto dealers, that finance consumer purchases directly should be working flat out to reduce their dependence stream. And any company whose customers — or whose customers' customers — pay with credit need to be bolstering their reserves, now. The authors detail a tool that will let you measure    Contextual Marketing: The Real Business of the Internet   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Kenny, David; Marshall, John F. Publication Date: 11/01/2000 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: The painful truth is that the Internet has been a letdown for most companies--largely because the dominant model for Internet commerce, the destination Web site, doesn't suit the needs of those companies or their customers. Most consumer product companies don't provide enough value or dynamic information to induce customers to make the repeat visits--and disclose the detailed information--that make such sites profitable. Instead of trying to create destinations that people will come to, companies need to use the power and reach of the Internet to deliver tailored messages and information to customers. Companies have to become what the authors call "contextual marketers." Delivering the most relevant information possible to consumers in the most timely manner possible will become feasible, the authors say, as access moves beyond the PC to shopping malls, retail stores, airports, bus stations, and even cars. The authors describe how the ubiquitous Internet will hasten the demise of the destination Web site--and open up scads of opportunities to reach customers through marketing "mobilemediaries," such as smart cards, e-wallets, and bar code scanners. HBS Number: R00608 Subjects: Brand management; Consumer marketing; Direct marketing; Internet marketing; Marketing strategy; New economy; Technological change; World Wide Web Academic Discipline: Marketing    Continuous Learning About Markets   Add   View  23 pp.  Article Author(s): Day, George S. Publication Date: 07/01/1994 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review HBS Number: CMR049 Subjects: Market analysis; Market research; Marketing management Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Market-driven firms stand out in their ability to continuously anticipate market opportunities and respond before their competitors. The market learning processes in these firms are distinguished by: open-minded inquiry based on the belief that all decisions are made from the market back; widespread information distribution that ensures that relevant facts are available when needed; mutually informed mental models that guide interpretation and ensure that everyone pays attention to the essence and potential of the information; and an accessible memory of what has been learned. However, mastery of all the steps in the learning process is rare. Most firms suffer disabilities at one or more stages. Overcoming these learning disabilities and enhancing market learning competency is an important management challenge.    Controlled Infection! Spreading the Brand Message Through Viral Marketing   Add   View  7 pp.  Article Author(s): Dobele, Angela; Toleman, David; Beverland, Michael Publication Date: 03/15/2005 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana University Product Description: Viral marketing uses electronic communications to trigger brand messages throughout a widespread network of buyers. Often, the process is portrayed as a random, ground-up phenomenon over which marketers have little control. But an examination of successful viral marketing cases reveals a number of strategies underpinning this chaotic phenomenon, providing insight into how marketers can use it to position their brands, change their image, and increase adoption rates. Successful viral marketing campaigns have an engaging message that involves imagination, fun, and intrigue; encourages ease of use and visibility; targets credible sources; and leverages combinations of technology. HBS Number: BH118 Subjects: Brand management; Brands; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Corporate Imagination and Expeditionary Marketing   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Hamel, Gary; Prahalad, C.K. Publication Date: 07/01/1991 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: In the 1990s, competitive success will come from building and dominating fundamentally new markets. Core competencies are one prerequisite for creating these new markets. Corporate imagination and expeditionary marketing are the keys that unlock the markets. Corporate imagination is unleashed when companies escape the tyranny of their served markets, think about needs and functionalities instead of marketing's more conventional customer-product grid, overturn tradition price-performance assumptions, and lead customers rather than follow them. HBS Number: 91409 Subjects: Creativity; Innovation; Marketing strategy; New product marketing; Product development; Product management; Research & development Academic Discipline: Marketing    Cost Transparency: The Net’s Threat to Prices and Brands   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Sinha, Indrajit There is much euphoria about the possibilities offered by e-commerce. Consumers envision lower prices and easy shopping; investors imagine cashing in on Internet IPOs; and start-ups want their business model to be the one that transfor HBS Number: R00210 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/00 Subjects: Brand management; Consumer marketing; Electronic commerce; Internet; Internet marketing; Marketing strategy; Pricing    Cost Transparency: The Net’s Threat to Prices and Brands (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Sinha, Indrajit HBR OnPoint Articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, a HBS Number: 4738 Type: HBR OnPoint Article Publication Date: 9/1/00 Subjects: Brand management; Consumer marketing; Electronic commerce; Internet; Internet marketing; Marketing strategy; Pricing    Cost-Conscious Marketing Research   Add   View  6 pp.  Article Andreasen, Alan R. Many small businesses and nonprofit organizations avoid doing marketing research because they have at least five misconceptions about it: the big decision myth; the survey myopia myth; the big bucks myth; the sophisticated researcher myth; and the most research is not read myth. HBS Number: 83401 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/83 Subjects: Market research; Nonprofit organizations; Small business    Costly Bargain of Trade Promotion   Added   View  10 pp.  Article Buzzell, Robert D.; Quelch, John A.; Salmon, Walter J. Over the last decade, power in the retailing of packaged goods has shifted from manufacturers to wholesalers and sellers. One result has been an increase in consumer and trade promotion. But many trade promotion practices are costly to manufacturers, retailers, and eventually consumers. The authors single out forward buying in the grocery trade and offer evidence of the costs of this practice to the distribution system as a whole. They suggest a policy called "everyday low purchase price", designed to smooth the peaks and valleys of demand and reduce the costs of distribution. HBS Number: 90201 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/90 Subjects: Advertising; Industry analysis; Marketing management; Retailing; Sales promotions    Crap Circles   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Morse, Gardiner Publication Date: 11/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: The most dubious business plans can appear solid, even smart, when illustrated with snappy circle-and-arrow graphics. Look closely, though, and you'll see that many of these diagrams are full of it. HBS Number: F0511C Geographic Setting: Boston, MA; Canada; United States Industry Setting: Accounting firms; Software industry; Solar energy Subjects: Business plans; Engineering; Models; Process analysis Academic Discipline: Marketing    Crisis in the Arts: The Marketing Response   Add   View  25 pp.  Article Author(s): Scheff, Joanne; Kotler, Philip Publication Date: 10/01/1996 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review HBS Number: CMR072 Industry Setting: Arts administration; Entertainment industry; Performing arts Subjects: Arts administration; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: The nonprofit performing arts industry in America, along with many performing arts organizations around the world, are facing crises on a variety of fronts. Accordingly, arts organizations must learn new ways to attract the resources they need to sustain their mission and quality. Arts managers must improve their skills in increasing and broadening their audience base, improving accessibility to various art forms, and learning how to better meet the needs of specific audience segments and contributors. To accomplish this, they must develop a better understanding of their own business and of the interests, attitudes, and motivations of their customers. They must professionalize their marketing and management skills and learn to be accountable to all their publics: their artists, their funders, and their audiences. Then they can create offerings, services, and messages to which the target audience will enthusiastically respond, without compromising their artistic integrity.    CRM Done Right   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Rigby, Darrell K.; Ledingham, Dianne Publication Date: 11/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0411H Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Customer service; Customization; Information technology; Loyalty; Market segmentation Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Disappointed by the high costs and elusive benefits, early adopters of customer relationship management systems came, in the post dot-com era, to view the technology as just another overhyped IT investment whose initial promise would never be fulfilled. But this year, something unexpected is happening. System sales are rising, and executives are reporting satisfaction with their CRM investments. What's changed? A wide range of companies are successfully taking a pragmatic, disciplined approach to CRM. Rather than use it to transform entire businesses, they've directed their investments toward solving clearly defined problems within their customer relationship cycle. The authors have distilled the experiences of these CRM leaders into four questions that all companies should ask themselves as they launch their own CRM initiatives: Is the problem strategic? Is the system focused on the pain point? Do we need perfect data? What's the right way to expand an initial implementation? The questions reflect a new realism about when and how to deploy CRM to its best advantage. Understanding that highly accurate and timely data are not required everywhere in their businesses, CRM leaders have tailored their real-time initiatives to those customer relationships that can be significantly enhanced by “perfect” information. After they've succeeded with their first targeted CRM project, they can use it as a springboard for solving additional problems. CRM, in other words, is coming to resemble any other valuable management tool, and the keys to successful implementation are als    CRM Done Right (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Rigby, Darrell K.; Ledingham, Dianne Publication Date: 11/01/2004 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article HBS Number: 8355 Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Customer service; Customization; Information technology; Loyalty; Market segmentation Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Disappointed by the high costs and elusive benefits, early adopters of customer relationship management systems came to view the technology as just another overhyped IT investment. But now, system sales are rising, and executives are reporting satisfaction with their CRM investments. What's changed? A wide range of companies are successfully taking a pragmatic, disciplined approach to CRM. Rather than use it to transform entire businesses, they've directed their investments toward solving clearly defined problems within their customer relationship cycle. The authors have distilled the experiences of these CRM leaders into four questions: Is the problem strategic? Is the system focused on the pain point? Do we need perfect data? What's the right way to expand an initial implementation? The questions reflect a new realism about when and how to deploy CRM to its best advantage. Understanding that highly accurate and timely data are not required everywhere in their businesses, CRM leaders have tailored their real-time initiatives to those customer relationships that can be significantly enhanced by “perfect” information. After they've succeeded with their first targeted CRM project, they can use it as a springboard for solving additional problems. CRM is coming to resemble any other valuable management tool, and the keys to successful implementation are also becoming familiar: strong executive and business unit leadership, careful strategic planning, clear performance measures, and a coordinated program that combines organizational and process changes with the application of    Customer Feedback: How to Get It, How to Pass It Along   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Von Hoffman, Constantine Publication Date: 04/01/1998 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: Customer feedback--whether positive or negative--is vital to any business. It can tell you not only how well your company is doing, but also what it should be doing. This article offers methods of identifying and interpreting relevant information from customer feedback and then communicating it to your employees. The article also includes advice on obtaining and taking action on feedback from employees themselves. HBS Number: U9804D Geographic Setting: Industry Setting: Subjects: Customer relations; Market research Academic Discipline: Marketing    Customer Has Escaped, The   Added   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Nunes, Paul F.; Cespedes, Frank V. Publication Date: 11/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Every company makes choices about the channels it will use to go to market. For instance, traditionally, customer demographics guided the decision to sell through a discount superstore or a pricey boutique. It was a fair assumption that certain customer types were held captive by certain channels. The problem, the authors say, is that today's customers have become unfettered. As their channel options have proliferated, they've come to recognize that different channels serve their needs better at different points in the buying process. The result is “value poaching.” For example, certain channels hope to use higher margin sales to cover the cost of providing expensive high-touch services. Potential customers use these channels to do research, then leap to a cheaper channel when it's time to buy. What does this mean for your go-to-market strategy? The authors urge companies to make a fundamental shift in mind-set toward designing for buyer behaviors, not customer segments. A company should design pathways across channels to help its customers get what they need at each stage of the buying process. Customers are not mindful of channel boundaries — and you shouldn't be either. HBS Number: R0311G Industry Setting: Automotive industry; Financial services; Food industry; Office supplies industry Subjects: Channels; Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Customer retention; Market segmentation; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Customer Intimacy and Other Value Disciplines   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Wiersema, Frederik D.; Treacy, Michael; Wiersema, Fred Publication Date: 01/01/1993 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: 93107 Subjects: Operations; Core competencies; Organizational culture; Marketing strategy; Product development; Customer service; Customer relationship management Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: To today's customers, value can mean any number of things, from convenience of purchase to after-sale service and dependability. But that doesn't mean companies have to excel at everything. A study of over 40 companies found that market leaders like Dell Computer, Home Depot, and NIKE succeed by narrowing their business focus, not by broadening it. They concentrate on one of three value disciplines — operational excellence, customer intimacy, or product leadership — and align their entire operating model to serve that discipline. Companies should choose a value discipline that fits with their existing capabilities and culture and then push themselves relentlessly to sustain it. And they should willingly change their operations to support that value discipline.    Customer Pyramid: Creating and Serving Profitable Customers   Add   View  26 pp.  Article Author(s): Zeithaml, Valarie A.; Rust, Roland T.; Lem Publication Date: 07/01/2001 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review Product Description: As relationships and service become increasingly pivotal in business, the profitability of customers is becoming more important than the profitability of products. In this environment, marketing success will be equivalent to generating maximum profits from a firm's total set of customers. Doing so requires allocating managerial resources to the groups of customers that can be cultivated most efficiently by a firm. This article presents a management methodology called the "Customer Pyramid" that enables a firm to supercharge its profits by customizing its responses to distinct customer profitability tiers. The Customer Pyramid provides a tool for managers to strengthen the link between service quality and profitability and to determine the optimal allocation of often scarce resources to maximize profitability. Product and service strategies, customized for each customer tier, become more closely aligned with an individual customer's underlying utility functions. This results in more effective and profitable strategies for serving the customer. Also provides numerous examples and practical guidelines for improving firm profits by moving customers up the Customer Pyramid. HBS Number: CMR211 Subjects: Corporate strategy; Customer relations; Customer retention; Profitability analysis Academic Discipline: Marketing    Customer Relationship Management: In B2C Markets, Often Less Is More   Add   View  19 pp.  Article Author(s): Dowling, Grahame Publication Date: 04/01/2002 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review Product Description: Customer relationship management (CRM) is premised on the belief that developing a relationship with customers is the best way to gain their loyalty. It is argued that loyal customers are more profitable than nonloyal customers. Recently, academic researchers have questioned some of the key premises that are used to support CRM in general and relationship marketing and customer loyalty programs in particular. This article critically examines the assumptions that underpin CRM and presents the results of research that is skeptical of its value. CRM should be adopted only after a careful appraisal of its cost effectiveness. HBS Number: CMR229 Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Loyalty; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Customer Value Propositions in Business Markets   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Anderson, James C.; Narus, James A.; van Rossum, Wouter Publication Date: 03/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0603F Geographic Setting: Alabama; Benelux; Chicago, IL; Europe; Milwaukee, WI; Pennsylvania; South Carolina; United States Industry Setting: Chemicals; Computer hardware; Consulting; Consumer products; Engineering; Packaging, carton & container industries; Software industry Subjects: Competitive advantage; Competitive bidding; Customer satisfaction; Marketing strategy; Product positioning; Sales strategy; Suppliers; Target markets; Value proposition Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Examples of consumer value propositions that resonate with customers are exceptionally difficult to find. When properly constructed, value propositions force suppliers to focus on what their offerings are really worth. Once companies become disciplined about understanding their customers, they can make smarter choices about where to allocate scarce resources. The authors illuminate the pitfalls of current approaches, then present a systematic method for developing value propositions that are meaningful to target customers and that focus suppliers' efforts on creating superior value. When managers construct a customer value proposition, they often simply list all the benefits their offering might deliver. But the relative simplicity of this all-benefits approach may have a major drawback: benefit assertion. In other words, managers may claim advantages for features their customers don't care about in the least. Other suppliers try to answer the question: Why should our firm purchase your offering instead of your competitor's? But without a detailed understanding of the customer's requirements and preferences, suppliers can end up stressing points of difference that deliver relatively little value to the target customer. The p    Customer Value Propositions in Business Markets (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Anderson, James C.; Narus, James A.; van Rossum, Wouter Publication Date: 03/01/2006 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article HBS Number: 3544 Subjects: Competitive bidding; Customer satisfaction; Marketing strategy; Product positioning; Sales strategy; Suppliers; Target markets; Value proposition Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Examples of consumer value propositions that resonate with customers are exceptionally difficult to find. When properly constructed, value propositions force suppliers to focus on what their offerings are really worth. Once companies become disciplined about understanding their customers, they can make smarter choices about where to allocate scarce resources. The authors illuminate the pitfalls of current approaches, then present a systematic method for developing value propositions that are meaningful to target customers and that focus suppliers' efforts on creating superior value. When managers construct a customer value proposition, they often simply list all the benefits their offering might deliver. But the relative simplicity of this all-benefits approach may have a major drawback: benefit assertion. In other words, managers may claim advantages for features their customers don't care about in the least. Other suppliers try to answer the question: Why should our firm purchase your offering instead of your competitor's? But without a detailed understanding of the customer's requirements and preferences, suppliers can end up stressing points of difference that deliver relatively little value to the target customer. The pitfall with this approach is value presumption: assuming that any favorable points of difference must be valuable for the customer. Drawing on the best practices of a handful of suppliers in business markets, the authors advocate a resonating focus approach. Suppliers can provide simple, yet powerfully captivating, cons    Customer-Centered Brand Management   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Rust, Roland T.; Zeithaml, Valarie A.; Lemon, Katherine N. Publication Date: 09/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0409H Industry Setting: Consumer products Subjects: Brand equity; Brand management; Customer relations; Customer retention; Loyalty; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Most executives today agree that their efforts should be focused on growing the lifetime value of their customers. Yet, few companies have come to terms with the implications of that idea for their marketing management. Oldsmobile, for example, enjoyed outstanding brand equity with many customers through the 1980s. But as the century wore further on, the people who loved the Olds got downright old. So why did General Motors spend so many years and so much money trying to reposition and refurbish the tired, tarnished brand? Why didn't GM managers instead move younger buyers along a path of less resistance, toward another of the brands in GM's stable — or even launch a wholly new brand geared to their tastes? Catering to new customers, even at the expense of the brand, would surely have been the path to profits. The reason, argue the authors, is that in large consumer goods companies like General Motors, brands are the raison d'etre. They are the focus of decision making and the basis of accountability. But this overwhelming focus on growing brand equity is inconsistent with the goal of growing customer equity. Drawing on a wide range of current examples, the authors offer seven tactics that will put brands in the service of growing customer equity. These include replacing traditional brand managers with a new position — the customer segment manager; targeting brands to as narrow an audience as possible; developing the capability and the mind-set to hand off customers from one brand to another within the company; and changing    Customer-Centered Brand Management (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Added   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Rust, Roland T.; Zeithaml, Valarie A.; Lemon, Katherine N. Publication Date: 01/18/2006 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article HBS Number: 2955 Industry Setting: Consumer products Subjects: Brand equity; Brand management; Customer relations; Customer retention; Loyalty; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Most executives today agree that their efforts should be focused on growing the lifetime value of their customers. Yet, few companies have come to terms with the implications of that idea for their marketing management. Oldsmobile, for example, enjoyed outstanding brand equity with many customers through the 1980s. But as the century wore further on, the people who loved the Olds got downright old. So why did General Motors spend so many years and so much money trying to reposition and refurbish the tired, tarnished brand? Why didn't GM managers instead move younger buyers along a path of less resistance, toward another of the brands in GM's stable — or even launch a wholly new brand geared to their tastes? Catering to new customers, even at the expense of the brand, would surely have been the path to profits. The reason, argue the authors, is that in large consumer goods companies like General Motors, brands are the raison d'etre. They are the focus of decision making and the basis of accountability. But this overwhelming focus on growing brand equity is inconsistent with the goal of growing customer equity. Drawing on a wide range of current examples, the authors offer seven tactics that will put brands in the service of growing customer equity. These include replacing traditional brand managers with a new position — the customer segment manager; targeting brands to as narrow an audience as possible; developing the capability and the mind-set to hand off customers from one brand to another within the company; and changing the way brand    Customer-Driven Distribution Systems   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Stern, Louis W.; Sturdivant, Frederick D. This eight-step process for designing a distribution system calls for in-depth study of what services and conveniences the company's customers value and then segmentation of the market according to those values. At several crucial stages, the process requires getting outside checks and hard data for market segments, company objectives, and the projected costs of distribution outlets. The climax of the process is an off-site meeting at which top management tests its prejudices against evidence that researchers have gathered. HBS Number: 87411 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/87 Subjects: Distribution channels; Distribution planning; Market research; Marketing strategy    Customer-Driven Growth   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Tobler, Adam Publication Date: 10/01/1997 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: Corporations today are finding that the road to growth is paved by the customer. Despite previous decades of ignoring consumers' needs and wants, companies are now forced to think about the customer in terms of relationships rather than transactions. Customer-driven growth involves finding innovative ways to listen to current, as well as prospective, customers. The author gives a number of examples, such as Mazda's practice of visiting junkyards to discover why customers might be dissatisfied with its cars. By focusing market development efforts on the actual end-users of their products, companies have been able to satisfy and create loyal customers, while at the same time growing their businesses. HBS Number: U9710A Geographic Setting: Industry Setting: Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Growth strategy; Market research; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Customer-Driven Innovation   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Billington, Jim Publication Date: 07/01/1998 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: 70% of all product innovations are driven by market need, and more than half of the innovations made in many industries are the result of consumers guiding or adding value to a producer's new concept. This article points out the importance of observing customer behavior in addition to more formal customer inquiry to get a true idea of the customers' needs and desires. Also included are four pointers on the best way to integrate the customer into the innovation process. HBS Number: U9807C Geographic Setting: Industry Setting: Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumers; Innovation; Market research Academic Discipline: Marketing    Customers Drive a Technology-Driven Company: An Interview with George M.C. Fishe   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Fisher, George M.C.; Avishai, Bernard; Taylor, William In this interview, George M.C. Fisher describes the management techniques Motorola uses to understand, anticipate, and respond effectively to customer needs. He describes several of the company's most important products and systems, and explains the lessons each offers for effective technology management. Fisher also reviews technology-based competition with Japan as he offers an optimistic forecast for U.S. companies. Fisher distinguishes between the future of U.S. companies and the United States as a nation. HBS Number: 89603 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/89 Subjects: Customer relations; Executives; Interviews; Sales management; Technology    Customer-Satisfaction Measurements: An Answer to Yesterday’s Problem?   Add   View  3 pp.  Article Author(s): Hochman, Mark Publication Date: 08/01/1999 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: Your customers tell you they're satisfied, but suddenly they're buying from your competitors. Why? The author cautions against equating customer satisfaction with customer loyalty and offers advice on measuring customer satisfaction in ways that really matter. Mark Hochman is president of Hochman & Co., an affiliate of Lochridge & Co., in Boston. HBS Number: U9908E Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention Academic Discipline: Marketing    Customize Your Product Development   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Krubasik, Edward G. When the product market changes quickly, companies have to respond fast if they want to preserve their positions. But being fast to market is no advantage if the product isn't right. A better approach is to determine what the entry risks and opportunity costs are, and then use the appropriate strategy plotted on the product development map. For some products, it makes sense to use a step-by-step approach that breaks the development task into smaller, more manageable steps. For others, it may be better to develop a hybrid product. At other times, the best plan is to acquire the needed technology or to exit the market completely. HBS Number: 88607 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/88 Subjects: Marketing management; Product development; Product introduction; Product management    Customizing Global Marketing   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Quelch, John A.; Hoff, Edward J. The big issue for multinationals today is not whether to go global but how to tailor the global marketing concept to fit each business. In determining the degree of standardization or adaptation that is appropriate, managers should consider their companies' overall business strategy, which products will benefit from the economies or efficiencies of standardization, which products won't fight cultural barriers, what trade-offs will result from standardizing various elements of the marketing mix, and how standardization will vary from country to country. HBS Number: 86312 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/86 Subjects: Cross cultural relations; International marketing; Marketing mixes; Multinational corporations    Cutting Through the Marketing Clutter   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Publication Date: 02/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: How do you capture and hold the fickle consumer's attention? E-mail is giving new vigor to a marketing technique that's been around for some time: permission marketing. Marketers offer incentives for consumers to hand over some personal information that will help the marketers tailor more relevant offers to them. It's a way to turn marketing into a collaborative process. The key to a successful program is establishing and keeping your promises to the customer. Among the risks: the novelty of permission-based marketing may soon wear off, much like banner ads, and Internet service providers may begin to block messages that look like spam. Includes the sidebar entitled, "Taking Permission One Step Further." HBS Number: C0102B Subjects: Advertising; Direct marketing; Electronic commerce; Internet marketing Academic Discipline: Marketing    Defeating Feature Fatigue   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Rust, Roland T.; Thompson, Debora Viana; Hamilton, Rebecca W. Publication Date: 02/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0602E Industry Setting: Automotive industry; Cellphone; Consumer products; Electronics industry Subjects: Complexity; Consumer marketing; Customer retention; Function; Innovation; Market research; Preferences; Product design; Product development; Product portfolio management; Profitability; Strategic planning; Supply & demand Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Consider a coffeemaker that offers 12 drink options, a car with more than 700 features on the dashboard, and a mouse pad that's also a clock, calculator, and FM radio. All are examples of “feature bloat,” or “featuritis,” the result of an almost irresistible temptation to load products with lots of bells and whistles. The problem is that the more features a product boasts, the harder it is to use. Manufacturers that increase a product's capability — the number of useful functions it can perform — at the expense of its usability are exposing their customers to feature fatigue. The authors have conducted three studies to gain a better understanding of how consumers weigh a product's capability relative to its usability. They found that even though consumers know that products with more features are harder to use, they initially choose high-feature models. They also pile on more features when given the chance to customize a product for their needs. Once consumers have actually worked with a product, however, usability starts to matter more to them than capability. For managers in consumer products companies, these findings present a dilemma: Should they maximize initial sales by designing high-feature models, which consumers consistently choose, or should they limit the number of features to enhance the lifetime value of their    Defeating Feature Fatigue (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Rust, Roland T.; Thompson, Debora Viana; Hamilton, Rebecca W. Publication Date: 02/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: 3439 Subjects: Consumer marketing; Customer retention; Innovation; Market research; Product development; Product portfolio management; Profitability; Strategic planning Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Consider a coffeemaker that offers 12 drink options, a car with more than 700 features on the dashboard, and a mouse pad that's also a clock, calculator, and FM radio. All are examples of “feature bloat,” or “featuritis,” the result of an almost irresistible temptation to load products with lots of bells and whistles. The problem is that the more features a product boasts, the harder it is to use. Manufacturers that increase a product's capability — the number of useful functions it can perform — at the expense of its usability are exposing their customers to feature fatigue. The authors have conducted three studies to gain a better understanding of how consumers weigh a product's capability relative to its usability. They found that even though consumers know that products with more features are harder to use, they initially choose high-feature models. They also pile on more features when given the chance to customize a product for their needs. Once consumers have actually worked with a product, however, usability starts to matter more to them than capability. For managers in consumer products companies, these findings present a dilemma: Should they maximize initial sales by designing high-feature models, which consumers consistently choose, or should they limit the number of features to enhance the lifetime value of their customers? The authors' analytical model guides companies toward a happy middle ground: maximizing the net present value of the typical customer's profit stream. The a    Defensive Marketing: How a Strong Incumbent Can Protect Its Position   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Roberts, John H. Publication Date: 11/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0511J Geographic Setting: Australia Industry Setting: Telecommunications industry Subjects: Brand equity; Competitive rivalry between existing players; Customer retention; Market entry; Marketing implementation; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: There has been a lot of research on marketing as an offensive tactic — how it can help companies successfully launch new products, enter new markets, or gain share with existing products in their current markets. But for nearly every new product launch, market entrant, or industry upstart grabbing market share, there is an incumbent that must defend its position. And there has been little research on how these defenders can use marketing to respond to new or anticipated threats preemptively. John H. Roberts outlines four basic types of defensive marketing strategies: positive, inertial, parity, and retarding. With the first two, you establish and communicate your points of superiority relative to the new entrant; with the second two, you establish and communicate strategic points of comparability with your rival. Before choosing a strategy, you need to assess the weapons you have available to protect your market position — your brand identity, the products and services that support that identity, and your means of communicating it. Then assess your customers' value to you and their vulnerability to being poached by rivals. The author explains how Australian telecommunications company Telstra, facing deregulation, used a combination of the four strategies (plus the author's customer response model) to fend off market newcomer Optus. Telstra was prepared, for instance, to reach deep into its pockets and engage in a price war. But the customer response model indicated that a pari    Denying the Urge to Splurge   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Okada, Erica Mina Publication Date: 09/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: To sell more goods, separate the necessities from the luxuries. HBS Number: F0509K Subjects: Consumer marketing; Product positioning Academic Discipline: Marketing    Diamonds in the Data Mine   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Author(s): Loveman, Gary W. Publication Date: 05/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0305H Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Customer service; Data bases; Market segmentation; Marketing information systems; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Harrah's Entertainment may not offer the most dazzling casinos in the business, but it is the most profitable gaming company in the United States. Since 1998, Harrah's has recorded 16 straight quarters of same-store revenue growth. It boasts the most devoted clientele in the casino industry, a business notorious for fickle customers. In this article, Harrah's Entertainment CEO and former Harvard Business School Professor Gary Loveman explains how his company has trumped its competitors by mining customer data, running experiments using customer information, and using the findings to develop and implement marketing strategies that keep customers coming back for more. Harrah's identified its best customers — who were not typical high rollers — and taught them to respond to the casino's marketing efforts in a way that added to their individual value. The company's customer preference data were collected through its Total Rewards incentive program; in addition, it used decision-science-based analytical tools and database marketing. This deep data mining has succeeded because Harrah's has simultaneously maintained its focus on satisfying its customers. Loveman outlines the specific strategies and employee-performance measures that Harrah's uses to nurture customer loyalty across its 26 casinos. May be used with: (9-184-048) Controls at the Sands Hotel and Casino.    Diamonds in the Data Mine (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Added   View  8 pp.  Article Author(s): Loveman, Gary Publication Date: 05/01/2003 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article Product Description: This is an enhanced edition of HBR article R0305H, originally published in May 2003. HBR OnPoint articles include the full-text HBR article, plus a synopsis and annotated bibliography. Harrah's Entertainment may not offer the most dazzling casinos in the business, but it is the most profitable gaming company in the United States. Since 1998, Harrah's has recorded 16 straight quarters of same-store revenue growth. It boasts the most devoted clientele in the casino industry, a business notorious for fickle customers. In this article, Harrah's Entertainment CEO and former Harvard Business School Professor Gary Loveman explains how his company has trumped its competitors by mining customer data, running experiments using customer information, and using the findings to develop and implement marketing strategies that keep customers coming back for more. Harrah's identified its best customers -- who were not typical high rollers -- and taught them to respond to the casino's marketing efforts in a way that added to their individual value. The company's customer preference data were collected through its Total Rewards incentive program; in addition, it used decision-science-based analytical tools and database marketing. This deep data mining has succeeded because Harrah's has simultaneously maintained its focus on satisfying its customers. Loveman outlines the specific strategies and employee-performance measures that Harrah's uses to nurture customer loyalty across its 26 casinos. HBS Number: 3647 Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Customer service; Data bases; Market segmentation; Marketing information systems; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Discover Your Products’ Hidden Potential   Add   View  12 pp.  Article MacMillan, Ian C.; Gunther McGrath, Rita A successful strategy for selling your products or services depends on your ability to get into the minds of your targeted customers. But sometimes the customers themselves do not know what is in their minds. A simple tool called the ACE (Attribute Categorization and Evaluation) Matrix can help managers understand customers' behavior and bring hidden product attributes to the surface. It helps companies see that a product may have different salient attributes for different customer segments. The matrix gives companies an iterative process for validating assumptions about product attributes and for monitoring changes that occur because of competition. HBS Number: 96305 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/96 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Market research; Market segmentation; Product positioning    Discovering Hidden Pricing Power   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Author(s): Potter, David V. Publication Date: 11/15/2000 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana University Product Description: Even in a mature and complex market, which is resistant to across-the-board price increases, there are still many ways to deftly raise effective prices and increase market share. Pricing policy, if wielded wisely, can still be a powerful tool. The path to these pricing opportunities lies in three actions management can take: changing the structure of the price (bundle benefits, unbundle benefits, offer alternative service levels and price points, link future purchases to current transactions, change the price effectiveness period, substitute components of the price, shift some of the price to suppliers); building more subtlety into the pricing process (set prices selectively rather than across the board, move prices in smaller increments, raise invisible prices, match price moves to the market, use discounts strategically to build relationships with desirable clients); and exploiting patterns common in other difficult markets (price against the leader, follow the leader, seek out segments that will tolerate higher prices). With the hidden power of pricing, a company facing a highly price-competitive market can use knowledge and subtlety to improve its returns and share. HBS Number: BH055 Subjects: Competition; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Pricing; Pricing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Disintegrated Marketing   Add   View  3 pp.  Article Author(s): Klein, Daniel Publication Date: 03/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Companies typically divide up the aspects of major marketing campaigns, assuming that the efforts of a half-dozen or more specialty agencies and internal groups will reinforce one another. But a better approach is to "systems engineer" a campaign, which may require that each component be compromised to serve the needs of the whole. HBS Number: F0303B Subjects: Marketing management; Marketing organization; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Distribution Lessons from Mom and Pop   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Niezen, Carlos; Rodriguez, Julio Publication Date: 04/01/2008 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0804D Geographic Setting: Latin America Subjects: Competitive strategy; Developing countries; Family-owned businesses Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Coca-Cola developed a distribution model for emerging markets by learning how its Peruvian bottler succeeded in the mom-and-pop channel. The tenets: Turn wholesalers into distributors, use IT to link and control distributors, and employ simple technology. PepsiCo has taken a page from the same playbook; other multinationals can, too.    Do Better at Doing Good   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Rangan, V. Kasturi; Karim, Sohel; Sandberg, Sheryl K. In spite of top-notch efforts, many social-change initiatives fail. What goes wrong? How can the initiatives be presented more effectively? Analyzing the costs and benefits of the proposed change from the perspective of the targeted co HBS Number: 96308 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/96 Subjects: Advertising campaigns; Marketing strategy; Nonprofit marketing; Nonprofit organizations; Public opinion; Social enterprise    Do Customer Communities Pay Off?   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Algesheimer, Rene; Dholakia, Paul M. Publication Date: 11/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0611E Subjects: Customer retention; Customer satisfaction; Virtual communities Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: New research says they do, in spades, especially for online businesses.    Do I Hear a Question?   Add   View  3 pp.  Article Author(s): Bierck, Richard Publication Date: 03/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, talks with HMCL about his tricks for making speeches and getting audiences involved. HBS Number: C0203C Subjects: Management communication; Presentations Academic Discipline: Marketing    Do Rewards Really Create Loyalty?   Add   View  11 pp.  Article O'Brien, Louise; Jones, Charles Although reviled in the business press as short-term fads, rewards programs are gaining popularity. Rewards can and do build customer loyalty. Unfortunately, they are widely misunderstood and often misapplied. A rewards program needs to share value in proportion to the value the customer loyalty creates for the company. A company must first make sure that its rewards align with company capabilities, then take into account the five elements that determine value to a customer: cash value, choice, aspirational value, relevance, and convenience. Any company can attain access to the full set of capabilities. Some businesses choose to band together with others in a rewards network. The authors detail the ways American Express, General Motors, State Farm, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, MCI, Air Miles, and others are building customer loyalty. HBS Number: 95307 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/95 Subjects: Customer relations; Customer service; Market research; Marketing implementation; Marketing management; Marketing organization; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy    Do You Want to Keep Your Customers Forever?   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Pine, B. Joseph, II; Peppers, Don; Rogers, Martha Publication Date: 03/01/1995 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Customers, whether consumers or businesses, do not want more choices. They want exactly what they want -- when, where, and how they want it -- and technology now makes it possible for companies to give it to them. But few companies are exploiting that potential. Most managers continue to view the world through the twin lenses of mass marketing and mass production. They try to churn out a greater variety of goods and services and to tailor their messages to ever finer market segments. But they end up bombarding their customers with too many choices. A company that aspires to give customers exactly what they want must use technology to become two things: a mass customizer that efficiently provides individually customized goods and services, and a one-to-one marketer that elicits information from each customer. The process of acquiring those skills will bind producer and consumer together in what the authors call a learning relationship -- an ongoing collaboration to meet the customer's needs over time that will continually strengthen their bond. HBS Number: 95209 Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Customization; Information age; Marketing strategy; New economy; Product portfolio management Academic Discipline: Marketing    Doing Better at Doing Good: When, Why, and How Consumers Respond to Corporate Social Initiatives   Add   View  17 pp.  Article Author(s): Bhattacharya, C.B.; Sen, Sankar Publication Date: 11/01/2004 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review Product Description: Although companies are devoting significant resources to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, insights into the optimal formulation, implementation, and effectiveness estimation of CSR strategies are currently scarce. Takes an in-depth look at when, why, and how CSR works from a consumer's perspective. In contrast to the simple, monotonic relationships between CSR and consumer purchase behavior evident in marketplace polls, this article proposes a more complex, contingent model of consumer responses to CSR. Articulates both the internal outcomes (e.g., awareness, attitudes, attachment) and external outcomes (e.g., word of mouth, purchase, loyalty) of CSR initiatives for not just the company, but also the consumer and the CSR issue/cause. Delineates the key factors that are likely to moderate the extent to which the inputs lead to the internal outcomes and the internal outcomes lead to the external ones. This framework can help guide companies in formulating and implementing their CSR initiatives as well as measuring the effectiveness of these initiatives. HBS Number: CMR295 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Corporate responsibility; Social issues Academic Discipline: Marketing    Don’t Blame the Metrics   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Clancy, Kevin J.; Stone, Randy L. Publication Date: 06/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Improved measurement methods show marketing is losing its magic, say consultants Kevin J. Clancy and Randy L. Stone. HBS Number: F0506J Subjects: Innovation; Academic Discipline: Marketing    Don’t Discount Off-Price Retailers   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Kaikati, Jack G. Off-price retailing's recent growth came from the demise of fair-trade laws, adverse economic conditions, strong demand for widely recognized brands, and continuing consumer disenchantment with traditional retailers. Traditional department stores and discount chains are challenging the success of off-pricers by competing, avoiding conflict, or diversifying by starting their own similar outlets. HBS Number: 85309 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/85 Subjects: Brands; Distribution channels; Franchising; Marketing strategy; Retailing    Double Jeopardy of Sales Promotions   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Jones, John Philip Many U.S. manufacturers, searching for growth in maturing consumer markets, have shifted their emphasis from advertising to sales promotions. But promotions actually mean price reductions. The loss of profits can be severe. Promotions bring volatile demand, whereas the producer seeks stable demand. Theme advertising that seeks to sustain a brand's image and build customer loyalty can actually help stabilize demand. HBS Number: 90505 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/90 Subjects: Advertising; Advertising strategy; Consumer marketing; Sales promotions    Drivers of Technology Licensing: An Industry Comparison   Add   View  24 pp.  Article Author(s): Lichtenthaler, Ulrich Publication Date: 08/01/2007 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review HBS Number: CMR372 Subjects: Corporate strategy; Licensing; Marketing strategy; Product positioning; Technology; Technology transfer Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: In the past, most industrial firms focused on applying technology assets in their own products and services. Along with the trend towards open innovation, however, many firms have recently started to actively license out technology. These firms consider technology licensing a strategic activity, which may include all technology assets and which goes far beyond the marginal activity of commercializing residual technologies. The research collected for this article shows that the strategic drivers of technology licensing are often more important than generating licensing revenues. The strategic drivers strengthen the interdependencies between internally and externally commercializing technology. Product marketing and licensing are complements rather than substitutes in technology exploitation.    Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers: Understanding the Psychology of New-Product Adoption   Added   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Gourville, John T. Publication Date: 06/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0606F Geographic Setting: Burlington, VT; Canada; United States Industry Setting: Automotive industry Subjects: Alternatives; Behavior; Change management; Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Decision making; Innovation; Losses; Market positioning; Product introduction; Product positioning; Psychology; Resistance; Value Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Companies that introduce new innovations are the most likely to flourish, so they spend billions of dollars making better products. But studies show that new innovations fail at a staggering rate. While many blame these misses on lackluster products, the reality isn't so simple. The goods that consumers dismiss often do offer improvements over existing ones. So why don't people purchase them? And why do companies keep peddling products that buyers are likely to reject? The answer, says the author, can be found in the brain. New products force consumers to change their behavior, and that has a psychological cost. Many products fail because people irrationally overvalue the benefits of the goods they own over those they don't possess. Executives, meanwhile, overvalue their own innovations. This leads to a serious clash. Studies show, in fact, that there is a mismatch of nine to one between what innovators think consumers want and what consumers truly desire. Fortunately, companies can overcome this disconnect. To start, they can determine where their products fall in a matrix with four categories: easy sells, sure failures, long hauls, and smash hits. Each has a different ratio of product improvement to change required from the consumer. Once businesses know where their products fit into this grid, they can manage the resistance to change. For some innovations, major behavior change is a given.    Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers: Understanding the Psychology of New-Product Adoption (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Gourville, John T. Publication Date: 06/01/2006 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article HBS Number: 4516 Subjects: Change management; Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Innovation; Market positioning; Product introduction; Product positioning; Psychology; Value Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Companies that introduce new innovations are the most likely to flourish, so they spend billions of dollars making better products. But studies show that new innovations fail at a staggering rate. While many blame these misses on lackluster products, the reality isn't so simple. The goods that consumers dismiss often do offer improvements over existing ones. So why don't people purchase them? And why do companies keep peddling products that buyers are likely to reject? The answer, says the author, can be found in the brain. New products force consumers to change their behavior, and that has a psychological cost. Many products fail because people irrationally overvalue the benefits of the goods they own over those they don't possess. Executives, meanwhile, overvalue their own innovations. This leads to a serious clash. Studies show, in fact, that there is a mismatch of nine to one between what innovators think consumers want and what consumers truly desire. Fortunately, companies can overcome this disconnect. To start, they can determine where their products fall in a matrix with four categories: easy sells, sure failures, long hauls, and smash hits. Each has a different ratio of product improvement to change required from the consumer. Once businesses know where their products fit into this grid, they can manage the resistance to change. For some innovations, major behavior change is a given. In those cases, companies can either wait for consumers to warm to the product, make the improvement so great that buyers get past their apprehension, or try to eliminate the incumbent prod    E-Loyalty: Your Secret Weapon on the Web   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Reichheld, Frederick F.; Schefter, Phil In the rush to build Internet businesses, many executives mistakenly concentrate all their attention on attracting customers rather than retaining them. But chief executives at the cutting edge of e-commerce--from eBay's Meg Whitman to HBS Number: R00410 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/00 Subjects: Customer retention; Customer service; Information technology; Internet; Internet marketing; Marketing strategy; World Wide Web    E-Loyalty: Your Secret Weapon on the Web (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Reichheld, Frederick F.; Schefter, Phil HBR OnPoint Articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, a HBS Number: 5181 Type: HBR OnPoint Article Publication Date: 10/1/00 Subjects: Customer retention; Customer service; Information technology; Internet; Internet marketing; Marketing strategy; World Wide Web    Embrace the Dark Side   Added   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Fanuele, Michael J. Publication Date: 10/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0610D Subjects: Authenticity; Brand management; Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Product positioning Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Consumers these days prefer authenticity to purity, so brands should capitalize on their flaws, or “shadow ” attributes.    End-Game Strategies for Declining Industries   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Harrigan, Kathryn; Porter, Michael E. In today's world of little or no economic growth and rapid technological change, many companies are faced with declining product demand beyond their control. A study of the strategies of over 95 companies that confronted declining markets suggests that companies can often be very successful if they analyze all the characteristics that shape competition in the end game and act in accordance with their own needs. Strategic alternatives for declining business include leadership; niche; harvest; and quick divestment. HBS Number: 83409 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/83 Subjects: Competition; Corporate strategy; Market share; Marketing strategy; Product management    Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Kotler, Philip; Rackham, Neil; Krishnaswamy, Suj Publication Date: 07/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0607E Industry Setting: Airline industry; Electronics industry; Energy; Equipment; Financial services; High technology; Insurance industry; Medical equipment & device industry Subjects: Alignment; Brands; Collaboration; Communication in organizations; Compensation; Conflict management; Corporate culture; Feedback; Information sharing; Integration; Interdepartmental relations; Liaisons; Marketing mix; Marketing organization; Metrics; Objectives; Performance measurement; Pricing strategy; Products; Relationship management; Resource allocation; Sales & marketing; Sales organization; Sales strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Sales departments tend to believe that marketers are out of touch with what's really going on in the marketplace. Marketing people, in turn, believe the sales force is myopic — too focused on individual customer experiences, insufficiently aware of the larger market, and blind to the future. In short, each group undervalues the other's contributions. Both stumble (and organizational performance suffers) when they are out of sync. Yet, few firms seem to make serious overtures toward analyzing and enhancing the relationship between these two critical functions. Curious about the misalignment between Sales and Marketing, the authors interviewed pairs of chief marketing officers and sales vice-presidents to capture their perspectives. They looked in depth at the relationship between Sales and Marketing in a variety of companies in different industries. Their goal was to identify best practices that could enhance the joint performance and increase the contributions of these two functions. Among their findings: The marketing function takes different forms in different companies at different product    Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Kotler, Philip; Rackham, Neil; Krishnaswamy, Suj Publication Date: 07/01/2006 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article HBS Number: 1014 Subjects: Alignment; Conflict management; Marketing organization; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy; Relationship management; Sales organization; Sales strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Sales departments tend to believe that marketers are out of touch with what's really going on in the marketplace. Marketing people, in turn, believe the sales force is myopic — too focused on individual customer experiences, insufficiently aware of the larger market, and blind to the future. In short, each group undervalues the other's contributions. Both stumble (and organizational performance suffers) when they are out of sync. Yet, few firms seem to make serious overtures toward analyzing and enhancing the relationship between these two critical functions. Curious about the misalignment between Sales and Marketing, the authors interviewed pairs of chief marketing officers and sales vice-presidents to capture their perspectives. They looked in depth at the relationship between Sales and Marketing in a variety of companies in different industries. Their goal was to identify best practices that could enhance the joint performance and increase the contributions of these two functions. Among their findings: the marketing function takes different forms in different companies at different product life cycle stages. Marketing's increasing influence in each phase of an organization's growth profoundly affects its relationship with Sales; and the strains between Sales and Marketing fall into two main categories: economic (a single budget is typically divided between Sales and Marketing, and not always evenly) and cultural (the two functions attract very different types of people who achieve success by spending their time in very different way    Evaluate Your Company with “Marketing Due Diligence”   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Clemente, Mark N.; Greenspan, David S.; Sa Publication Date: 05/01/1999 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: Marketing due diligence, according to consultants Mark N. Clemente and David S. Greenspan, is a systemic, comprehensive assessment of a company's marketing efforts. It tells a company how a smart buyer evaluates its chances for success in tomorrow's marketplace as well as today's. In this interview, Clemente and Greenspan explain how marketing due diligence differs from a marketing audit and what benefits a company can expect from applying marketing due diligence. Includes a sidebar entitled "Why Snapple Went South," an explanation of Quaker Oats' costly acquisition of Snapple. HBS Number: U9905B Subjects: Acquisitions; Interviews; Marketing management; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Even Commodities Have Customers   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Jacques, Francois M. Publication Date: 05/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0705G Subjects: Commodities; Consumer groups; Market segmentation; Market structure Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: When Francois Jacques became head of marketing at Lafarge's cement division in late 2001, old-timers told him that there were only two types of customers: those who liked golf and those who liked fishing. Welcome to the front lines of your typical cement company, a hardscrabble world peopled by grizzled salesmen whose pitches are about making friends rather than demonstrating that their products are better than the competition's. It isn't easy to establish a marketing function in a company that doesn't think it needs one. From the start, Jacques tackled the challenge on a number of fronts. First, he formed a three-person steering committee with both his strongest ally and his most vociferous foe in the executive ranks. Then he set right to work applying marketing's most basic and powerful tools — segmentation and pricing strategy — to four carefully chosen pilot projects. To make the value of those efforts quickly apparent, he measured their effectiveness with readily understood metrics. He shared the ongoing results as widely as possible by establishing regional networks of marketing and sales executives. He wove marketing into Lafarge's mainstream management processes by becoming a fixture at the company's strategic-planning, performance, and budgeting discussions. Step by step, over the next four years, Jacques and his team of first temporary, and then permanent, marketers fundamentally transformed Lafarge's commodity mind-set. Segmenting customers allowed people to see that they were selling to different groups that required different products, which in many cases could be sold for higher-than-commodity prices. Customer satisfacti    Exploit the Product Life Cycle   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Levitt, Theodore The product life cycle measures the likelihood, character, and timing of competitive and market events. A product strategy that includes some sort of plan for a timed sequence of conditional moves provides an offensive rather than a reactive move. Most successful products pass through certain recognizable stages. Awareness of these stages affects decisions on marketing factors such as pricing, product identity, and sales and distribution networks. New uses and new customers extend the product life cycle. Planning in the early stages for product life extension helps to guide the direction of ongoing technical research in support of the product. HBS Number: 65608 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/65 Subjects: Marketing strategy; Product life cycle    Extend Profits, Not Product Lines   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Quelch, John A.; Kenny, David Publication Date: 09/01/1994 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: 94509 Subjects: Brands; Consumer marketing; Product lines; Product management; Product portfolio management; Profitability; Strategic planning Academic Discipline: Competitive strategy Product Description: In the last 10 years, products have proliferated in every category of consumer goods and services, and the deluge shows few signs of letting up. Most companies are pursuing product expansion strategies — in particular, line extensions — full steam ahead. But more and more evidence is indicating the pitfalls of such aggressive tactics. The strategic role of each product becomes muddled when a line is oversegmented. Also, a company that extends its line risks undermining brand loyalty. Some companies, such as Procter & Gamble, Chrysler, and a leading U.S. snack foods company, have discovered that a carefully focused and well-managed line can increase profits and sales volume. John A. Quelch and David Kenny describe how marketing managers can sharpen their product-line strategies by improving cost accounting, allocating resources to popular products, researching consumer behavior, coordinating marketing efforts, working with channel partners, and fostering a climate in which product-line deletions are not only accepted but also encouraged.    Fit Products and Channels to Your Markets   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Weigand, Robert Courts increasingly frown on companies' efforts to keep markets separate. To avoid conflicts and problems that can arise along the channel or in the laws under which a business operates, and understanding of the various possible combinations of markets, channels, and products is essential. Sellers sending their products through both captive and independent outlets may face the problem of discrimination during periods of supply shortages or a possible "price squeeze”. A company that uses separate channels to sell the same product to different markets must often deal with price differentials and contracts. Suppliers using different types of channels when selling in different geographic regions are subject to government intervention through price controls and tax differences. HBS Number: 77111 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/77 Subjects: Distribution channels; Distribution planning; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Product management    Five Keys to Keeping Your Best Customers   Add   View  6 pp.  Article Author(s): Billington, Jim Publication Date: 07/01/1996 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: Recognizing the importance of retaining loyal customers, this article offers five major recommendations for mastering customer retention: 1) identify core customers; 2) measure key satisfaction indicators; 3) rigorously analyze defections; 4) mass customize to your core market; and 5) learn to address the unspoken needs of your customers. Presents specific examples of how successful firms are able to leverage this important skill to the benefit of the business. HBS Number: U9607A Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Customization; Market analysis; Market research; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Focus on the Benefits   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Sandberg, Kirsten D. Publication Date: 04/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: Focus groups are rarely used effectively, yet they remain one of the most popular ways to gather information about a market. To provide actionable information, they have to be done right. This article provides tips for getting real benefits from focus groups. Accompanying the article is a sidebar, "Support Communications--And Don't Stop at the Top." HBS Number: C0204E Subjects: Focus groups; Management communication; Market research Academic Discipline: Marketing    Forget the Product Life Cycle Concept   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Dhalla, Nariman K.; Yuspeh, Sonia Although the product life cycle (PLC) concept has been the mainstay of marketing strategy for many years, its accuracy and empirical basis are both questionable. In many cases, products do not develop along the traditional stages. The possible variations are so unpredictable that the most effective system employs unique information systems for each product. Product class, product form, and brand are the three stages of PLC, however, the model has little validity for brand life cycles. An effective model predicts sales drops and rises, and it serves as an indicator of the short-term success of strategy. Market-communication models greatly improve product life code models because they quantitatively measure the influences on sales, evaluate different opinions, and provide advance warning signals. HBS Number: 76104 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/76 Subjects: Brands; Marketing strategy; Product life cycle; Product management    Found in Translation   Added   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Nunes, Paul F.; Dull, Stephen Publication Date: 05/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Companies struggling to rejuvenate tired brands may want to look east. SoBe beverages, Nissan, and others are exploiting Westerners' fascination with products that are -- or merely seem -- Asian. HBS Number: F0405B Subjects: Asia; Brand management; Consumer marketing; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Four Steps to Forecast Total Market Demand   Add   View  9 pp.  Article Author(s): Barnett, William P. Publication Date: 07/01/1988 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing HBS Number: 88401 Subjects: Industry analysis; Economic analysis; Forecasting; Market analysis; Market segmentation; Corporate strategy; Demand analysis Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Forecasting total market demand can be crucial to creating a smart marketing strategy. Some companies — and even whole industries — have learned the hard way that a product's historical demand curve doesn't necessarily predict future demand. An accurate total market demand forecast can yield clues about future product performance. Here are the four steps to creating one: 1) define the market, 2) divide total industry demand into segments, 3) find out what drives demand in each segment and project how those drivers might change, and 4) assess the risks to the forecast and decide which assumptions are most critical to success. Just going through this process can help managers better understand the real world in which they operate.    Fourfold Path to Figuring Out What Your Customers Really Want   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Billington, Jim Publication Date: 09/01/1998 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: Purchase-intention surveys are frequently used to predict sales of new products. But current research suggests what many managers have long known: all too often, the intent to purchase does not translate into an actual purchase. Why are customers so difficult to figure out? Is market research no more reliable than reading tea leaves? Not exactly. Nimble marketing minds have learned how to glean insight into customer behavior despite the inherent unpredictability. It requires keen powers of observation, deep listening, and a nuanced appreciation for the various contexts in which customers may use products, as well as a Zen-like watchfulness. HBS Number: U9809B Geographic Setting: Industry Setting: Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Consumers; Market research Academic Discipline: Marketing    Framework for Customer Relationship Management   Add   View  18 pp.  Article Author(s): Winer, Russell S. Publication Date: 07/01/2001 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review Product Description: The essence of the information technology revolution and, in particular, the World Wide Web is the opportunity afforded companies to choose how they interact with their customers. The web allows companies to build better relationships with customers than has been previously possible in the offline world. This revolution in customer relationship management (CRM) has been referred to as the new "mantra" of marketing. However, a problem is that CRM means different things to different people. This article develops a comprehensive CRM model incorporating seven phases: database creation, analysis of the database, customer selection, customer targeting, relationship marketing, privacy issues, and new metrics necessary for evaluating the CRM effort. Also discusses the implications of CRM for future marketing organizations. HBS Number: CMR209 Subjects: Customer relations; Electronic commerce; Information technology; Internet; Marketing information systems; Models; World Wide Web Academic Discipline: Marketing    From Managing Pills to Managing Brands   Added   View  4 pp.  Article Corstjens, Marcel; Carpenter, Marie Data show that the top-selling drugs today are not the products of breakthrough science. That's why drug companies need to learn the lessons of marketing that consumer-goods manufacturers know so well. HBS Number: F00204 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/00 Subjects: Brand management; Consumer marketing; Pharmaceuticals industry    From Sales Obsession to Marketing Effectiveness   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Kotler, Philip U.S. companies confuse marketing effectiveness with sales effectiveness. Executives determine whether an organization understands and practices marketing by conducting a marketing effectiveness audit. The audit rates marketing effectiveness in each of five major functions: customer philosophy, integrated marketing organization, adequate marketing information, strategic orientation, and operational efficiency. The resulting score tells where the organization falls on a scale ranging from no marketing effectiveness to superior effectiveness. HBS Number: 77605 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/77 Subjects: Marketing management; Sales management    Future of Interactive Marketing   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Editors Is interactivity the greatest marketing opportunity of all time? Or does it represent 101 ways to lose money? If it is an opportunity, how will it manifest itself? What will interactive marketing look like, and what will it mean for cu HBS Number: 96607 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/96 Subjects: Market segmentation; Marketing implementation; Marketing management; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy    Gateways to Entry   Add   View  9 pp.  Article Yip, George S. A study of 793 U.S. and Canadian consumer and industrial markets indicates that barriers to entry are surmountable and that direct entry may be a viable alternative to corporate growth through acquisition and to development of present markets. The entrant faces six major classes of barriers: 1) economies of scale, 2) product differentiation, 3) absolute cost, 4) access to distribution, 5) capital requirement, and 6) incumbent reaction. Direct entrants reduce or avoid barriers by taking one of two strategic approaches: 1) reducing barriers by employing the same competitive strategy as incumbents, or 2) avoiding barriers by using a different strategy altogether. HBS Number: 82512 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/82 Subjects: Market share; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Product management    Get Emotional   Add   View  3 pp.  Article Author(s): Robinette, Scott Publication Date: 05/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Most companies seemingly do their best to alienate customers by making them feel like faceless targets of marketing campaigns. The director of Hallmark's Loyalty Marketing Group describes three ways to forge emotional bonds with clients. HBS Number: F0105B Subjects: Consumer marketing; Customer relations; Customer retention; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Get More Out of Your Trade Shows   Add   View  9 pp.  Article Bonoma, Thomas V. Trade show expenditures are the major form of organized marketing communications activity for many companies outside of efforts by their sales force and distributors. Yet managers are frequently unenthusiastic about shows, despite the opportunities they offer for contact with existing and potential customers. This attitude is primarily due to the difficulty of measuring the success of any given trade show program in effectively and efficiently meeting a company's marketing needs. It is useful to classify trade shows in terms of their function, dividing them roughly into those where the major focus is selling activities and those where satisfaction of nonselling objectives is a likelier consequence of participation. HBS Number: 83101 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/83 Subjects: Industrial markets; Marketing strategy    Get Your Act Together   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Argenti, Paul A.; Haley, Thea S. Publication Date: 10/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0610E Subjects: Communication; Communication in organizations; Corporate strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Consistent corporate communications depend less on specific organizational structures than on carefully designed strategy.    Getting Attention for Unrecognized Brands   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Goldstein, Daniel G. Publication Date: 03/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0703E Subjects: Brand management; Product introduction; Product positioning Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: People prefer a brand they know over one they don't — even when the familiar one is dangerous. But there are ways for unknown brands to compensate.    Getting the Most Out of Advertising and Promotion   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Abraham, Magid M.; Lodish, Leonard M. A new kind of marketing data enable managers to measure incremental sales of a product due to advertising and promotion. Single-source data correlate actual consumer purchases with corresponding television advertising or promotion events. Single-source data challenge much of the conventional wisdom on advertising. To take advantage of the data, managers must continually examine the appropriate balance between advertising and promotion. HBS Number: 90301 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/90 Subjects: Advertising; Consumer marketing; Market research; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Sales promotions    Getting the Most Out of All Your Customers   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Thomas, Jacquelyn S.; Reinartz, Werner; Kumar, V. Publication Date: 07/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0407J Subjects: Customer retention; Direct marketing; Loyalty; Marketing implementation; Marketing strategy; Profitability; Regression analysis Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Companies spend billions of dollars on direct marketing, targeting individual customers with ever more accuracy. Yet despite the power of the myriad data collecting and analytical tools at their disposal, they're still having trouble optimizing their direct marketing investments. Many marketers try to minimize costs by pursuing only those customers who are cheap to find and cheap to keep. Others try to get the most customers they possibly can and keep all of them for as long as they can. But a customer need not be loyal to be highly profitable, and many loyal customers turn out to be highly unprofitable. Companies can get more out of direct marketing if they see it as a single system for generating profits than if they try to maximize performance measures at each stage of the process. This article describes a tool for doing just that. Called ARPRO (Allocating Resources for Profits), the tool is essentially a complex regression analysis that can estimate the impact of a company's direct marketing investments on the profitability of its customer pool. With data that companies already gather, the tool can show managers how much to spend on acquisition vs. retention and even what percentage of their funds they should allocate to the different direct marketing channels. Using the model, companies can easily see that even small deviations from the optimal levels of customer profitability are expensive. The tool can also show that finding the optimal balance between investments in acquisition and retention can be more important than finding the optimum amount to inves    Give Me That Old-Time Motivation   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Friedman, Walter A. Publication Date: 07/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: People remember the salesman, but rarely is the sales manager recognized in the history books. Still, some old-time sales leadership techniques may hold the key to present-day success. HBS Number: F0607E Subjects: Leadership development; Motivation; Sales agents; Sales management Academic Discipline: Marketing    Global Advertising and the World Wide Web   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Kassaye, W. Wossen The potential to reach so many diverse markets makes the Web immensely attractive for global advertising. This prospect notwithstanding, compared to television and radio, there are lots of things about the Web that fit into the categor HBS Number: BH032 Type: Business Horizons Article Publication Date: 5/15/97 Subjects: Advertising media; Advertising strategy; Internet; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; World Wide Web Publisher: Publisher:Business Horizons/Indiana University    Good Cause, Good Business   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Welsh, Jerry C. A lot of companies have launched marketing campaigns tied to charitable causes. But according to Jerry Welsh, one of the pioneers of cause-related marketing, most of the programs fail to create real benefits for either the companies or the charities. HBS Number: F99503 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/99 Subjects: Charities; Consumer marketing; Marketing strategy    Good Product Support Is Smart Marketing   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Lele, Miland M.; Karmarkar, Uday When making purchases, customers have expectations about the level of post-purchase support. Companies need to have an explicit support strategy. They should centralize responsibility for product support, factor support needs into product design early, and consider what is important to customers. HBS Number: 83611 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/83 Subjects: Customer relations; Customer service; Marketing strategy; Product management; Product planning & policy    Gray Markets: Causes and Cures   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Cespedes, Frank V.; Corey, E. Raymond; Rangan, V. Kasturi Gray markets may be the result of natural forces like maturity in a product life cycle (when price emerges as the key factor in purchases) or dislocations in foreign exchange rates. Gray markets are also convenient channels for distributors and producers, and so represent opportunities. HBS Number: 88403 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/88 Subjects: Distribution; Distribution planning; Marketing management; Marketing strategy; Pricing    Growing Ventures Can Anticipate Marketing Stages   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Tyebjee, Tyzoon T.; Bruno, Albert V.; McIntyre, Shelby H. A growing business evolves by adapting to changes in its environment through its marketing function. Usually this function goes through four stages: entrepreneurial marketing; opportunistic marketing; responsive marketing; and diversified marketing. HBS Number: 83116 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/83 Subjects: Marketing organization; Marketing strategy; Organizational development; Small business    Hazards of Hounding, The   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Dholakia, Paul M. Publication Date: 10/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Customers who buy your product because they want to -- not because you make them -- are the most loyal, says Rice University's Paul M. Dholakia. HBS Number: F0510F Industry Setting: Automotive industry; Fast food industry; Financial services Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Incentives; Loyalty; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing    Hedging Customers   Add   View  6 pp.  Article Author(s): Dhar, Ravi; Glazer, Rashi Publication Date: 05/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0305F Subjects: Assets; Customer retention; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy; Profitability Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: You are a marketing director with $5 million to invest in customer acquisition and retention. Which customers do you acquire, and which do you retain? Up to a point, the choice is obvious: Keep the consistent big spenders and lose the erratic small ones. But what about the erratic big spenders and the consistent small ones? It's often unclear whether you should acquire or retain them and at what cost. Businesses have begun dealing with unpredictable customer behavior by following the practices of sophisticated investors who own portfolios comprising dozens of stocks with different, indeed divergent, histories and prospects. Each portfolio is diversified so as to produce the investor's desired returns at the particular level of uncertainty he or she can tolerate. Customers, too, are assets — risky assets. As with stocks, the cost of acquiring them is supposed to reflect the cash-flow values they are likely to generate. The authors explain how to construct a portfolio based on the notion that a customer's risk-adjusted lifetime value depends on its anticipated effect on the riskiness of the group it is joining. The concept of risk-adjusted lifetime value has a transforming power: For companies that rely on it, product managers will be replaced by customer managers, and the current method of accounting for profit and loss — which is by product — will be replaced by one that determines each customer's P&L. Once adjusted for risk, those P&Ls will become the firm's key performance and operational metric.    Hidden Minds   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Zaltman, Gerald; Morse, Gardiner Publication Date: 06/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: What do your customers really think? Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman discusses his novel market-research method for revealing consumers' unconscious thoughts about everything from fabric sprays to the Internet. HBS Number: F0206C Subjects: Consumer marketing; Interviews; Market research; Marketing implementation; Marketing strategy; Research methodology Academic Discipline: Marketing    Hidden Wealth in B2B Brands   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Gregory, James R.; Sexton, Donald E. Publication Date: 03/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0703C Subjects: Brand management; Business to business Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Managers consistently skimp on B2B brand building. That's an expensive mistake.    High-Performance Marketing: An Interview with Nike’s Phil Knight   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Knight, Phil; Willigan, Geraldine E. Behind Nike's catchy slogans and flashy TV commercials is the vision of founder, chairman, and CEO Phil Knight. Knight has taken Nike from a small-time distributor of Japanese track shoes to the top of the athletic shoe and apparel market. He has transformed his technology company into a marketing company whose product is its most important marketing tool. Knight learned how to build brands and understand consumers, and then how to split those brands into sub-brands to help keep the company growing. That approach brought Nike to a broader range of consumers while preserving the customer base. To create an emotional tie with the consumer, Nike started advertising on TV. "Sports is at the heart of American culture," Knight says. "You can't explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don't have to. It's that simple." HBS Number: 92406 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/92 Subjects: Advertising; Brands; Consumer marketing; Footwear; Interviews; Leadership; Product lines    High-Tech the Old-Fashioned Way: An Interview with Tom Siebel of Siebel Systems   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Siebel, Tom; Fryer, Bronwyn Publication Date: 03/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: There is a growing awareness among corporations that the quality of the customer experience they provide directly affects their bottom line. Many are turning to high-flying software maker Siebel Systems for help in managing those relationships. The young company holds a leadership position in an explosive market — enterprise application software. But customer satisfaction, not dot-com chic, is foremost on the mind of Siebel Systems' founder, chairman, and CEO, Tom Siebel. The buttoned-down Siebel rejects the freewheeling management style and culture that characterize many Silicon Valley companies. As the former CEO of Gain Technology and a former executive at Oracle, Siebel believes in putting customers ahead of technology, discipline ahead of inspiration. In this interview, conducted at the company's San Mateo, California, headquarters, Siebel describes how this obsessive focus on customer satisfaction has been the driving force behind the company's success. He talks about how the organization remains true to its core values: a deep commitment to providing customer satisfaction; responsible fiscal practices that have created a cash-positive business amid today's cash-negative dot-coms; and general professionalism. Siebel Systems rejects the concept of going to war with rivals; instead, the CEO says, the company has forged an ecosystem of partnerships that allows it to support and integrate its own systems with other companies' software products and ultimately ease the customer's software installations. Indeed, Siebel says, the CEO's most important job is to understand what customers need and deliver that. HBS Number: R0103H Subjects: CEO; Customer relations; Customer service; Enterprise systems; Internet; Interviews Academic Discipline: Marketing    How Big Is “Tall”?   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Krishna, Aradhna Publication Date: 04/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0504F Subjects: Consumer marketing; Consumers; Human behavior Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Consumers make clear and consistent distinctions among sizes.    How Concepts Affect Consumption   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Ariely, Dan; Norton, Michael I. Publication Date: 06/01/2009 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0906A Subjects: Consumer marketing; Customer experiences Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Duke behavioral economist Ariely and Harvard Business School professor Norton explore how our consumption of concepts influences physical consumption, both positively and negatively.    How Do You Know When the Price Is Right?   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Dolan, Robert J. Too often when managers think about pricing, the first question they ask is, What should the price be? In fact, what they should be asking is, Have we addressed all the considerations that will determine the correct price? Robert J. Dolan describes two broad qualities of an effective pricing process and provides eight steps to enable managers to develop and use such a process. The pricing scorecard included at the end of the article will allow managers to evaluate how well their pricing practices meet these guidelines. HBS Number: 95501 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/95 Subjects: Consumer marketing; Cost benefit analysis; Industrial markets; Market research; Marketing strategy; Pricing; Pricing strategy; Sales strategy    How E-Commerce Will Trump Brand Management   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Sealey, Peter At a time when other areas of business are undergoing dramatic improvements in productivity, marketing seems to be getting more expensive and less effective. Marketing has seen no great advances since the advent of brand management and HBS Number: 99409 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/99 Subjects: Advertising; Consumer marketing; Customer relations; Electronic commerce; Internet; Marketing management; Marketing strategy    How Global Brands Compete   Added   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Holt, Douglas B.; Quelch, John A.; Taylor, Earl L. Publication Date: 09/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0409D Subjects: Brand management; Competition; Globalization; Marketing strategy; Multinational corporations Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: It's time to rethink global branding. More than two decades ago, Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt argued that corporations should grow by selling standardized products all over the world. But consumers in most countries had trouble relating to generic products, so executives instead strove for global scale on backstage activities such as production while customizing product features and selling techniques to local tastes. Such “glocal” strategies now rule marketing. Global branding has lost more luster recently because transnational companies have been under siege, with brands like Coca-Cola and Nike becoming lightning rods for antiglobalization protests. The instinctive reaction of most transnational companies has been to try to fly below the radar. But global brands can't escape notice. In a research project involving 3,300 consumers in 41 countries, the authors found that most people choose one global brand over another because of differences in the brands' global qualities. Rather than ignore the global characteristics of their brands, it's critical for firms to manage those characteristics, because future growth for most companies will likely come from foreign markets. Consumers base preferences on three dimensions of global brands — quality (signaled by a company's global stature); the cultural myths that brands author; and firms' efforts to address social problems. The authors also found that it didn't matter to consumers whether the brands they bought were American — a remarkable finding considering that the study was conducted when anti-American sen    How Markets Help Marketers   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Elberse, Anita Publication Date: 09/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Stock market simulations can help you determine optimal marketing strategies for products prior to launch. HBS Number: F0509L Subjects: Marketing strategy; Product introduction; Simulation; Stock market indices Academic Discipline: Marketing    How Not to Extend Your Luxury Brand   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Reddy, Mergen; Terblanche, Nic Publication Date: 12/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Don't extend your premium brands into other product categories -- unless they are adjacent to your core categories. HBS Number: F0512C Subjects: Brand management; Luxury brands & goods Academic Discipline: Marketing    How Prices, Ad Expenditures, and Profits Are Linked   Add   View  14 pp.  Article Farris, Paul W.; Reibstein, David J. Coordination between advertising and price strategies may lead to higher profits. Analyses of data from 227 businesses show the price-advertising relationship. The results show that companies with higher advertising budgets charge premium prices; consumers are willing to pay more for a perceived "high quality" product; and the association between advertising expenditures and price is strongest in the last stage of the product cycle. The price-advertising consistency principle is important for attaining a substantial return on investment. HBS Number: 79606 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/79 Subjects: Advertising; Consumer behavior; Pricing strategy; Product life cycle

How Right Should the Customer Be?   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Anderson, Erin; Onyemah, Vincent Publication Date: 07/01/2006 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0607D Geographic Setting: Africa, Western; France; Germany; Global Industry Setting: Banking industry; Health care industry; Health services; Insurance industry Subjects: Alignment; Coaching; Compensation; Consistency; Control systems; Employee morale; Employee retention; Employee training; Performance appraisals; Performance measurement; Rewards; Sales compensation; Sales force management; Sales organization Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: If your salespeople aren't sure who their boss is — the district manager? the regional manager? the customer? — it could be a sign that your company's sales force controls are working at cross-purposes and that your sales function is in trouble. Sales force controls are the policies and practices that govern the way you train, supervise, motivate, and evaluate your sales staff. They include the types of compensation you offer your people and the criteria your sales managers use to evaluate the reps' performance. These controls let salespeople know which trade-offs the company would prefer them to make when the inevitable conflicts arise between what they want to do (spend lots of time and money to get a sale) and what they actually can do (use limited resources and still get the sale). When sales force controls aren't aligned — when, say, the system simultaneously encourages reps to be entrepreneurial but also to file detailed call reports and check in frequently with their bosses — individuals become discouraged and unproductive, and they eventually leave the company. The authors' research suggests there are significant differences between the control systems of companies that encourage salespeople to put the customer first — outcome control (OC) systems — and those    How Right Should the Customer Be? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Anderson, Erin; Onyemah, Vincent Publication Date: 07/01/2006 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article HBS Number: 1001 Subjects: Alignment; Control systems; Performance measurement; Sales compensation; Sales organization; Sales strategy; Training Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: If your salespeople aren't sure who their boss is — the district manager? the regional manager? the customer? — it could be a sign that your company's sales force controls are working at cross-purposes and that your sales function is in trouble. Sales force controls are the policies and practices that govern the way you train, supervise, motivate, and evaluate your sales staff. They include the types of compensation you offer your people and the criteria your sales managers use to evaluate the reps' performance. These controls let salespeople know which trade-offs the company would prefer them to make when the inevitable conflicts arise between what they want to do (spend lots of time and money to get a sale) and what they actually can do (use limited resources and still get the sale). When sales force controls aren't aligned — when, say, the system simultaneously encourages reps to be entrepreneurial but also to file detailed call reports and check in frequently with their bosses — individuals become discouraged and unproductive, and they eventually leave the company. The authors' research suggests there are significant differences between the control systems of companies that encourage salespeople to put the customer first — outcome control (OC) systems — and those that encourage reps to put their managers first — behavior control (BC) systems. In this article, they list the characteristics of OC and BC systems, describe the potential fallout from conflicts within these systems, and explain how you can tell which control system is appropriate for your firm. In most    How Surveys Influence Customers   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Dholakia, Paul M.; Morwitz, Vicki G. Publication Date: 05/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Surveying contented customers just once can increase profitability over the course of a year, surprising new research finds. That may be tempting news to marketers, but beware: Surveying unhappy customers could have the opposite effect. HBS Number: F0205A Subjects: Customer retention; Marketing strategy; Research methodology Academic Discipline: Marketing    How to Acquire Customers on the Web   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Hoffman, Donna L.; Novak, Thomas P. Most retailers on the Web spend more to acquire customers than they will ever get back in revenue from them. Many think that sky-high spending on marketing is necessary to stake out their share of Internet space. But is it really? How HBS Number: R00305 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/00 Subjects: Advertising; Customer relations; Electronic commerce; Internet marketing; Marketing mixes; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy; New economy; Retailing; World Wide Web    How to Coach Your Employees   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Craumer, Martha Publication Date: 12/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: Managerial coaching is a way to get the most out of your people by showing them that you respect and value them. Rather than trying to improve an employee's weaknesses, overlook those weaknesses and instead focus on what he or she does well naturally. The result is not a group of people who think and act alike but, instead, a group of individuals with specific talents. This article offers tips on initiating and developing a coaching relationship with your employees. HBS Number: C0112D Subjects: Coaching; Employee development; Management of professionals Academic Discipline: Marketing    How to Customize for the Real World   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Billington, Jim Publication Date: 04/01/1997 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: Theoretically, information technology should allow businesses to mass customize products and services for their customers at a reasonable cost. In truth, experts think you can mass customize effectively for only about 20% of your customers. The key to success is making sure that this 20% represents the buyers who are the most loyal and offer the biggest opportunity for future profit. Four different types of customization are described: 1) collaborative customization--dialogues with individual customers to help them articulate their needs as the basis for designing and manufacturing customized products, 2) adaptive customization--standard but customizable product that users can alter to suit their wishes, 3) cosmetic customization--changing only the presentation of the product for specific customers, and 4) transparent customization--providing individual customers with tailored goods or services without their necessarily realizing it. The article further elaborates how to align a company's products and processes with customer needs. HBS Number: U9704A Subjects: Customization; Innovation; Marketing strategy; Mass merchandising; Product design; Product development; Product management Academic Discipline: Marketing    How to Delight Your Customers   Add     24 pp.  Article Author(s): Berman, Barry Publication Date: 11/01/2005 Product Type: CMR Article Publisher: California Management Review HBS Number: CMR328 Subjects: Consumer behavior; Customer satisfaction; Customer service; Marketing strategy; Psychology Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: While many researchers have made contributions to the now extensive literature on service quality, there is much less research on what constitutes delight in service quality and how organizations can delight customers. Examines the differences between customer satisfaction and customer delight, notably the benefits of delighting rather than merely satisfying customers. Describes how to delight customers and outlines how to implement a successful customer delight program as well as how to measure customer delight. Also discusses the potential pitfalls of doing so.    How to Fight a Price War   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Rao, Akshay R.; Bergen, Mark E.; Davis, Scott Price wars are a fact of life, whether we're talking about the fast-paced world of knowledge products, the marketing of Internet appliances, or the staid, traditional sales of aluminum castings. If you're a manager and you're not in ba HBS Number: R00208 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/00 Subjects: Competition; Marketing strategy; Pricing; Pricing strategy    How to Fight a Price War (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Rao, Akshay R.; Bergen, Mark E.; Davis, Scott HBR OnPoint Articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, a HBS Number: 472X Type: HBR OnPoint Article Publication Date: 9/1/00 Subjects: Competition; Marketing strategy; Pricing; Pricing strategy    How to Lie with Formatting   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Clayton, John Publication Date: 03/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: We know that statistics can be used to deceive, but how aware are we of design's ability to bend the truth? An annual report's stunning photos and elegant layout can camouflage weak content. Text and background may be in such vivid, clashing colors that processing the words is difficult, or they may be so close in color that they're hard to distinguish. Excessive color use can lead to a sensory overload that distracts readers from focusing on the message. English speakers typically scan a spread in a Z pattern; a particularly arresting image in the lower right-hand corner may be there to encourage readers to skip what's placed in the middle of the spread. These are but some of the design strategies employed to highlight favorable news and downplay bad. When you read, pay attention to what the design does--and doesn't--want you to see. HBS Number: C0203B Subjects: Annual reports; Ethics; Management communication Academic Discipline: Marketing    How to Make a Picture Worth a Thousand Words   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Clayton, John Publication Date: 10/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: For your next big report, don't forget that there is an art to choosing the right graphic, just as there is to choosing the right words. By conveying your message both verbally and visually, you increase your chances of it being received and remembered--and responded to. Learn how you can devise a visual strategy for your next important report. HBS Number: C0210B Subjects: Communication; Communication strategy; Writing Academic Discipline: Marketing    How to Make Your Case in 30 Seconds or Less   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Wreden, Nick Publication Date: 01/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: If you ran into Warren Buffet on the street, would you know what to say? Having an "elevator speech" ready to go at a moment's notice will enable you to make the most of once-in-a-lifetime communication opportunities. The elevator pitch gets its name from the 30-second opportunity to tell--and sell--your story during a short elevator ride. Thirty seconds is also the typical amount of time you get to capture someone's attention. The purpose of an elevator speech is not to close a deal, but to pique your listener's attention enough to agree to move to the next level of commitment. And it's not just for funding requests--job interviews, networking events, PR opportunities, presentations to executives, and sales all demand the ability to deliver a quick and concise explanation of your case. Here, we present eight tips for being prepared with a winning pitch. HBS Number: C0201E Subjects: Management communication; Personal strategy & style; Presentations Academic Discipline: Marketing    How to Market in a Downturn   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Quelch, John A.; Jocz, Katherine E. Publication Date: 04/01/2009 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0904D Subjects: Recessions; Consumer behavior; Marketing strategy; Market segmentation Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Because no two recessions are exactly alike, marketers find themselves in poorly charted waters every time one occurs. But guidance is available, say Quelch and Jocz, who have studied marketing successes (by Smucker, Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch, and others) as well as failures throughout past recessions and identified patterns in consumer and company behavior that strongly affect performance. Understanding consumers' changing psychology and habits, the authors argue, will enable firms to hone their strategies so they can both survive the current downturn and prosper afterward. Consumers in a recession can be divided into four groups: The slam-on-the-brakes segment, which feels the hardest hit, reduces all types of spending. Pained-but-patient consumers, who constitute the largest segment, also economize in each area, though less aggressively. Comfortably well-off individuals consume at near-prerecession levels but become a little more selective (and less conspicuous) about their purchases. Live-for-today consumers pretty much carry on as usual, responding to the recession mainly by extending their timetables for making major purchases. People may switch segments if their economic situations change for the worse. All groups prioritize consumption by sorting products and services into the following categories: essentials (central to survival or well-being), treats (justifiable), postponables (can be put off), and expendables (unnecessary or unjus    How to Pay Your Sales Force   Add   View  14 pp.  Article Steinbrink, John P. A survey of 380 companies in 34 industries throughout the United States and Canada examined the three basic kinds of compensation plans and found: 1) Salary plans pay fixed rates of compensation and are appropriate when measurements of performance are difficult to ascertain. 2) Commission plans pay salespeople in direct proportion to their sales and are appropriate for maximizing incentives or for predicting sales costs in direct relationship to sales volume. 3) A combination plan includes all variations of salary plans plus other monetary incentive plans. This plan is more complex to administer; however, it allows for greater incentive and flexibility. HBS Number: 78410 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 7/1/78 Subjects: Incentives; Sales compensation; Sales management    How to Segment Industrial Markets   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Shapiro, Benson P.; Bonoma, Thomas V. The difficulty of segmenting industrial markets has dissuaded companies from trying, despite the benefits they lose in terms of market analysis and selection. The problem is to identify the most useful variables. One way to do this is to arrange the five general segmentation criteria of demographics, operating variables, customer purchasing approaches, situational factors, and personal buyer characteristics, into a nested hierarchy. The segmentation criteria of the largest, outermost nest are general characteristics about industries and companies. Innermost nests are specific, subtle, and hard-to-assess traits. HBS Number: 84312 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 5/1/84 Subjects: Industrial markets; Market segmentation    How to Use Clip Art   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Clayton, John Publication Date: 12/01/2000 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: Is clip art a useful visual communication tool--or just a hokey gimmick? Most graphic designers and communications experts shy away from clip art, saying clip art is crude and too vague to be useful. But there are some people, such as Robert E. Horn, author of "Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century," who consider clip art to be the key to communicating visually in the future. Horn points to the widespread use of pictograms and icons, and predicts that as clip art improves in quality and becomes easier to get, it will become an essential part of business communication rather than an annoying distraction. HBS Number: C0012C Subjects: Communication; Writing Academic Discipline: Marketing    How Valuable Is Word of Mouth?   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Kumar, Vishesh; Petersen, J. Andrew; Leone, Robert P. Publication Date: 10/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0710J Subjects: Customer referrals; Marketing management; Marketing planning; Sales & marketing Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: The customers who buy the most from you are probably not your best marketers. What's more, your best marketers may be worth far more to your company than your most enthusiastic consumers. Those are the conclusions of professors Kumar and Petersen at the University of Connecticut and professor Leone at Ohio State University, who analyzed thousands of customers in research focused on a telecommunications company and a financial services firm. In this article, the authors present a straightforward tool that can be used to calculate both customer lifetime value (CLV), the worth of your customers' purchases, and customer referral value (CRV), the value of their referrals. Knowing both enables you to segment your customers into four constituent parts: those that buy a lot but are poor marketers (which they term Affluents); those that don't buy much but are very strong salespeople for your firm (Advocates); those that do both well (Champions); and those that do neither well (Misers). In a series of one-year experiments, the authors demonstrated the effectiveness of this segmentation approach. Offering purchasing incentives to Advocates, referral incentives to Affluents, and both to Misers, they were able to move significant proportions of all three into the Champions category. Both companies reaped returns on their marketing investments greater than 12-fold — more than double the normal marketing ROI for their industries. The power of this tool is its ability to help marketers decide where to focus their efforts. Rather than waste funds encouraging big spenders to spend slightly more while overlooking    How You Slice It: Smarter Segmentation for Your Sales Force   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Author(s): Waaser, Ernest; Dahneke, Marshall; Pekkarinen, Michael; Weissel, Michael Publication Date: 03/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Three years ago, 70-year-old Hill-Rom Inc. was in a position familiar to many mature businesses: The company was strong but needed to be stronger. It was a top producer of hospital beds and specialty mattresses — its core product lines. It also had competitive, complementary lines of stretchers, furniture, and architectural equipment. Its customer base was extensive and had a respected sales force and solid profit margins. But by the time Ernest Waaser took over as chief executive in early 2001, revenue growth had been slowing, and competition was on the rise. To secure Hill-Rom's place in the market, Waaser focused first on the sales organization. The CEO took several steps to restructure the sales force. The company changed its customer segments to reflect customers' demands and financial status better, ultimately targeting two main groups: key and prime customers. It then changed the overall structure of the sales organization so it could tailor its approach to these two segments; key customers received more specialized service than prime customers. Finally, Hill-Rom adjusted the sales force after the company took an in-depth look at historical data on products and services and sales completed. Reasons for staffing changes were carefully communicated to the sales force. Because of Hill-Rom's initiatives, the cost of sales is down, short-term revenue growth is up, the outlook for long-term revenue growth looks bright, sales and profit margins are up, and customer satisfaction has increased. HBS Number: R0403H Subjects: Customer relations; Customer retention; Market segmentation; Restructuring; Sales organization Academic Discipline: Marketing    Humanize Your Selling Strategy   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Mackay, Harvey B. Mackay Envelope Corp. of Minneapolis has gained steadily in sales and market share by stressing salesmanship and focusing on the individual customers. Through building personal relationships and through research, Mackay develops elaborate files on customers and potential customers - not only business data but also information on each contact's education, family, particular interests, and life-style. The goal is to focus on the individual across the table. Such attention to detail requires well-trained, alert salespeople. Harvey Mackay himself spends evenings with candidates and their spouses and tests them with long telephone conversations. Once hired, they routinely take Dale Carnegie and Toastmasters courses. The company rewards top performers for collaborative work as well as for landing big contracts. HBS Number: 88208 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/88 Subjects: Employee training; Market share; Sales management; Sales strategy    I Am My Own Database   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Watson, Richard T. Publication Date: 11/01/2004 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: By allowing consumers to control data about their purchases and preferences, says business and technology professor Richard T. Watson, companies can get a better sense of what their customers want to buy. HBS Number: F0411A Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumer marketing; Customer relations; Information technology; Marketing strategy; Value of information Academic Discipline: Marketing    If Brands Are Built over Years, Why Are They Managed over Quarters?   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Lodish, Leonard M.; Mela, Carl F. Publication Date: 07/01/2007 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0707H Subjects: Attitudes; Brand equity; Brand management; Consumers; Long term planning; Market analysis; Marketing plans; Sales strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Brands are on the wane. Many consumer goods companies blame the big-box discount retailers, but the Wharton School's Leonard Lodish and the Fuqua School's Carl Mela have a different explanation. Their research suggests that companies have damaged their brands by investing too much in short-term price promotions and too little in long-term brand building. To rescue their brands and increase profitability, corporate managers must arm themselves with long-term measures of brand performance and use them to make smarter marketing decisions. Several factors explain the shortsightedness of brand management: the increased availability of weekly, or even hourly, scanner data, which show a clear link between discounts and immediate boosts in sales; the relative difficulty of measuring the effects of advertising, new product development, and distribution — all of which can contribute to a brand's long-term health; the short tenure of most brand managers; and the near-term orientation of Wall Street analysts. Although discounts do increase sales in the short term, they ultimately lower profit margins. If a product is often discounted, consumers learn to buy it only when it's on sale. Moreover, when one firm increases its discounts, others usually follow suit, lowering everyone's margins. Executives can monitor a brand's long-term performance by watching a dashboard of measures. Only after examining such measures, for example, did managers at Clorox discover that the company's heavy discounting and decreased advertising had caused a steady decline in overall bleach sales and profit mar    If You Want to Lead, Blog   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Schwartz, Jonathan Publication Date: 11/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article Product Description: Sun Microsystems President and COO Jonathan Schwartz explains how blogging has enhanced public perception of his company and fostered loyalty within. HBS Number: F0511J Subjects: Blogs; Communication in organizations; Communication strategy; Corporate image; Employee morale; Perception Academic Discipline: Marketing    Imperative to Reinvent Brands   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Dru, Jean-Marie; Biolos, Jim Publication Date: 02/01/1997 Product Type: Harvard Management Update Article Product Description: Presents an interview with BDDP Group Chairman Jean-Marie Dru. Mr. Dru believes that although the number of brands on the market has increased 10 times in recent years, brands remain one of the company's most valuable assets. What has changed is how you manage a brand. Customers come to an individual brand because of what that brand knows, much more than its name or the specific product benefits. Brands should constantly change to keep in touch with their customers' needs, through a process Mr. Dru calls "disruption," where the conventions about a brand, whether held by customers, the company, or any other actors in the marketing mix, are identified and challenged by creating out-of-the-box ideas. The goal is to identify and demonstrate how a brand will enhance your customers' experience as it relates to your product or service. In using the World Wide Web in promotion, a successful brand must create a culture or community, and a knowledge base about a particular topic, related to one's product. The brand will become the channel that customers come to for this particular knowledge, experience, and need. HBS Number: U9702E Geographic Setting: Industry Setting: Subjects: Brand equity; Brand management; Brands; Interviews; Marketing management; Product management Academic Discipline: Marketing    Impromptu Speaking   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Wiles, Cheryl Publication Date: 12/01/2001 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: A lot can go wrong when speaking spontaneously before an audience. What if you get off message? How will you remember everything you want to say? How will you deal with trick questions that are meant to embarrass you, or worse, lead you to make a mistake? Here's a little-known secret: The key to impromptu speaking is preparation. Impromptu speaking is about packaging information that you've already thought through. Here are some tips for being prepared to sound off, defend a stance, or make a pitch at a moment's notice. HBS Number: C0112C Subjects: Personal strategy & style; Presentations Academic Discipline: Marketing    Improve Distribution with Your Promotional Mix   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Shapiro, Benson P. Marketers of industrial and consumer goods can improve the management of their complex distribution channels by using various promotional techniques known as the "promotional mix". Marketers can use sales promotion to move merchandise through the distribution pipeline by carefully organizing the channels of distribution, selling through and not to distributors and dealers, and determining product objectives. This concept has a focused scope that is highly cost-effective and applicable to a wide range of products and situations. HBS Number: 77211 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/77 Subjects: Distribution channels; Distribution planning; Marketing strategy; Sales promotions    In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers   Add   View  16 pp.  Article Author(s): Lay, Philip; Moore, Geoffrey; Hewlin, Todd Publication Date: 03/01/2009 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0903C Subjects: Recessions; Sales strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Even as discretionary budgets are drying up, some B2B vendors have found a way to reach their customers' resource owners and motivate them to buy. They do this by identifying a thorny issue in the customer's company or industry and developing an original, compelling point of view about it. They pitch this point of view to a carefully chosen line executive in one crucial meeting and then prove its worth with a short diagnostic study. This is the essence of what the authors, all managing directors at TCG Advisors, call provocation-based selling. Sybase, a data management and mobility company, was successful with this approach in the summer of 2008, as it tried to pry business out of financial services clients that were severely cutting their operating costs. Instead of probing for what those clients thought they might need, Sybase salespeople pointed out what they should be worried about: an industrywide failure to manage risk comprehensively. By revealing the scale of the threat and the opportunity, Sybase was able to sell its Risk Analytics Platform, a new tool for integrating risk management. Provocation-based selling doesn't align with the customer's outlook; it provides a new angle on the situation. It doesn't identify and respond to the customer's “pain points”; it outlines a problem the customer hasn't yet put a name to. Framing a provocation creates a readiness to listen, and a diagnostic study converts the dialogue into a contract. The provocation-based sales cycle is resource intensive but appreciably shorter than that for solution-based selling — and it leads to significant business opportunities.    In E-Commerce, More Is More   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Eisingerich, Andreas B. ; Kretschmer, Tobias Publication Date: 03/01/2008 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0803B Subjects: Consumer marketing; Customer relationship management; Customer retention; Customer satisfaction Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Most managers believe that filling their websites with a broad array of information diverts attention from their company's core offerings. A new global study, however, has revealed just the opposite: that such information increases customer engagement. The research also shows that exploiting consumers' desire for engagement is the strongest predictor of superior shareholder value for e-commerce companies.    Industrial Distributors - When, Who, and How?   Add   View  6 pp.  Article Hlavacek, James D.; McCuistion, Tommy J. Companies increasingly rely on industrial distributors to sell their products. Products suitable for distributors usually: 1) have a large potential customer base, 2) are stockable, 3) are sold in small quantities, 4) are bought by people who are at low levels in their organizations, and 5) require rapid delivery and service. Companies should select distributors that serve the market segment, not just the geographic area, and are suited to where the product is in its life cycle. HBS Number: 83210 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/83 Subjects: Distribution channels; Marketing strategy; Product management; Sales management    Industrial Marketing with a Flair   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Van Leer, R. Karl A case history illustrates how a supplier cut into the sales of his competitors' identical products by devising a new promotional strategy. Advertising expenditures should be directed toward helping the customer to sell his end products. Successful implementation requires: selection of the right product, product manager, and customer; careful marketing research; and an adequate budget based on new account and volume goals. By spending time and money to help customers sell finished products, managers effectively market even the most prosaic industrial commodities. HBS Number: 76611 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/76 Subjects: Bids; Industrial markets; Marketing strategy; Purchasing; Sales promotions    Industrial Pricing to Meet Consumer Needs   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Shapiro, Benson P.; Jackson, Barbara B. Industrial marketers should set prices according to their customers' perceptions of product benefits and costs. Because price defines a product market, price should be seen as one of the product's several critical performance attributes. Industrial marketers must manage product planning and pricing simultaneously, taking maximum advantage of the company's cost structure and building on the company's competitive competence. HBS Number: 78609 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/78 Subjects: Industrial markets; Pricing; Product management; Product planning & policy    Industrial Selling: Beyond Price and Persistence   Add   View  8 pp.  Article Reichard, Clifton J. Buyers need to be sold first on the selling company and on the salesperson before a sale can be made, says this industrial sales executive. He introduces a planned sales approach that can cover a period of years and he details creative selling techniques that have succeeded for his group. The author believes companies should be customer-driven and all areas should get behind the sales effort. HBS Number: 85212 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 3/1/85 Subjects: Industrial markets; Packaging; Sales management    Integrated Marketing as Management of Holistic Consumer Experience   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Author(s): Tsai, Shu-Pei Publication Date: 09/15/2005 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana University HBS Number: BH171 Subjects: Brand management; Consumers; Strategic management; Synergy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: In a bid to combine the two major perspectives (strategic communications and strategic brand management) of integrated marketing communications (IMC), this article proposes a holistic consumer experience management framework. According to the framework, the key mission of IMC is to manage effectively the mediated impression of and direct encounter with the brand so that synergism ensues among all the interrelated elements of IMC, including research and development, manufacturing, price formulation, channel arrangement, consumer service management, marketing message construction, and communication program execution. As such, IMC is capable of enhancing the holistic consumer experience and creating a holistic brand value structure, which can unite the consumer's sensory, emotional, social, and intellectual experiences in a new and positive way.    International Marketing Research: A Global Project Management Perspective   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Author(s): Young, Robert B.; Javalgi, Rajshekhar G. Publication Date: 03/15/2007 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana University HBS Number: BH225 Subjects: Competitive advantage; International marketing; Market research Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: As organizations continue to pursue more global strategies, the need to be able to understand consumers in far away places is increasing. Marketing research is the primary mechanism through which companies understand their current, as well as potential, customers. As companies contemplate the global marketplace, they must consider how domestic market research differs when conducted in international markets. In an effort to help internal client side marketing, research managers design and implement improved international research studies. Briefly discusses the context for international market research and provides a framework for conducting international market research projects. Additionally, presents several factors that should be considered by marketers who engage in global market research studies. These factors represent the variety of challenges that must be addressed in order to conduct research across national borders. Particular attention is paid to the nuances related to primary data collection and questionnaire construction.    Iron Lady’s Sterling Rhetoric   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Morgan, Nick Publication Date: 04/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: Although she's now largely out of the political spotlight, Margaret Thatcher has a lot to teach anyone who seeks to move, inspire, and persuade an audience. Step by step, this article examines the rhetorical strategies employed by Thatcher in three of her greatest speeches. HBS Number: C0204C Subjects: Management communication; Presentations Academic Discipline: Marketing    Is Your Audience Ready to Hear You?   Add   View  5 pp.  Article Author(s): Robbins, Stever Publication Date: 02/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: There are some situations in which people are primed to receive messages: when there's uncertainty about which direction to take, when something personal is at stake, when they are accountable for a certain outcome, and when there is a crisis. At all other times, you need to wage a battle against all the other information out there vying for your listeners' attention. Some tips to help you succeed: Use the personal touch whenever possible, frame your message in terms of your listeners' potential, tie your message to your listeners' concerns, and speak to them with language they are comfortable with. HBS Number: C0202A Subjects: Management communication; Presentations Academic Discipline: Marketing    Is Your Brand at Risk?   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Maruca, Regina Fazio Companies facing attacks from competitors with copycat products often find they have little legal recourse. Two researchers suggest preemptive measures for protecting brand identity. HBS Number: F99602 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 11/1/99 Subjects: Brand equity; Brands; Intellectual property; Legal aspects of business; Product differentiation    Is Your Company Ready for One-to-One Marketing?   Add   View  20 pp.  Article Author(s): Peppers, Don; Rogers, Martha; Dorf, Bob Publication Date: 02/01/2001 Product Type: HBR OnPoint Article HBS Number: 8954 Subjects: Consumer marketing; Customer relations; Customization; Marketing implementation; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: This is an enhanced edition of the HBR reprint 99107, originally published in January/February 1999. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview and an annotated bibliography. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights. The idea of one-to-one marketing (also called “relationship marketing”) is simple: accommodating a customer based on your knowledge of that customer, as well as the customer's input. This Manager's Tool Kit, by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, partners, and Bob Dorf, president, of Peppers and Rogers Group, a management consulting firm in Stamford, Connecticut, provides guidance for those who may be interested in implementing their program. One-to-one marketing promises to increase the value of your customer base by establishing a learning relationship with each customer. The customer tells you of some need, and you customize your product or service to meet it. Although the theory behind one-to-one marketing is simple, implementation is complex. Too many companies mistakenly understand it as an excuse to badger customers with excessive telemarketing and direct mail campaigns. The authors describe four key steps: identifying your customers, differentiating among them, interacting with them, and customizing your product or service to meet each customer's needs. And they provide activities and exercises, to be administered to employees and customers, that will help you identify your company's readiness to launch a one-to-one initiative. This tool kit will help you determine wh    Is Your Company Ready for One-to-One Marketing?   Add   View  12 pp.  Article Peppers, Don; Rogers, Martha; Dorf, Bob The idea of one-to-one marketing (also called "relationship marketing") is simple: accommodating a customer based on your knowledge of that customer, as well as the customer's input. This Manager's Tool Kit, by Don Peppers and Martha R HBS Number: 99107 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 1/1/99 Geographic Setting: : Subjects: Consumer marketing; Customer relations; Customization; Marketing implementation; Marketing planning; Marketing strategy    Job Matching for Better Sales Performance   Add   View  7 pp.  Article Greenberg, Herbert M.; Greenberg, Jeanne The prevalent hiring tenets for salespeople are myths. A survey of 18,000 individuals and a control group of equal size shows that age, sex, race, experience, and educational criteria are irrelevant in deciding who will make the best salespeople. What is significant is matching a candidate's personality dynamics with the job. The survey indicates that the job-matching approach is far superior to standard ways of hiring. HBS Number: 80505 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/80 Subjects: Recruitment; Sales agents; Sales management    Just My Type   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Henderson, Pamela W. Publication Date: 04/01/2005 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: F0504J Subjects: Advertising; Brands; Communication; Consumer marketing; Consumers Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Your choice of typeface tells customers whether your brand is attractive, innovative, dishonest, or unpleasant.    Key Options in Market Selection and Product Planning   Add   View  10 pp.  Article Corey, E. Raymond The success of Crown Cork and Seal in the beer can and aerosol container markets is attributable to their concentration on specialized design and manufacturing for those two specific high growth markets. While competitors diversified and lost container market shares to former customers engaged in self manufacture, Crown Cork's careful market strategy paid off. Market choice demands a long range commitment in terms of customer base, competition and required resources. Horizontal and vertical product-market choices allow a company to concentrate marketing where it has an advantage over competitors. Choice of product/market position at the beginning or the end of the market depends on company commitment to manufacturing, quality control and service. HBS Number: 75502 Type: Harvard Business Review Article Publication Date: 9/1/75 Subjects: Industrial markets; Market research; Marketing strategy; Product planning & policy    Kicking the Tires of Corporate Reputation   Add   View  4 pp.  Article Author(s): Sandberg, Kirsten D. Publication Date: 01/01/2002 Product Type: Harvard Management Communication Letter Article Product Description: Can corporate rankings give you a real understanding of what a company is like on the inside? Corporate reputation is the consensus of perceptions about how a firm will behave in any given situation, based on what people know about it, including financial performance. But reputation is not about likeability--messages must have real content backed by real performance. This article covers how to use stock price as an indicator of reputation and cautions companies always to remember their core ideology by reinforcing and rewarding behavior that supports the core. HBS Number: C0201B Subjects: Corporate image; Public relations; Publicity; Valuation Academic Discipline: Marketing    Kill a Brand, Keep a Customer   Add   View  11 pp.  Article Author(s): Kumar, Nirmalya Publication Date: 12/01/2003 Product Type: Harvard Business Review Article HBS Number: R0312G Subjects: Brand management; Customer retention; Divestiture; Growth strategy; Market segmentation; Profitability Academic Discipline: Marketing Product Description: Most brands don't make much money. Year after year, businesses generate 80% to 90% of their profits from less than 20% of their brands. Yet most companies tend to ignore loss-making brands, unaware of the hidden costs they incur. That's because executives believe it's easy to erase a brand; they have only to stop investing in it, they assume, and it will die a natural death. But they're wrong. When companies drop brands clumsily, they antagonize loyal customers: Research shows that seven times out of eight, when firms merge two brands, the market share of the new brand never reaches the combined share of the two original ones. It doesn't have to be that way. Smart companies use a four-step process to kill brands methodically. First, CEOs make the case for rationalization by getting groups of senior executives to conduct joint audits of the brand portfolio. Next, executives need to decide how many brands will be retained, which they do either by setting broad parameters that all brands must meet or by identifying the brands they need to cater to all the customer segments in their markets. Third, executives must dispose of the brands they've decided to drop, deciding in each case whether it is appropriate to merge, sell, milk, or just eliminate the brand outright. Finally, it's critical that executives invest the resources they've freed to grow the brands they've retained.    King Is Dead   Add   View  6 pp.  Article Muskin, Jerold B. Consumers rule with divine right in the marketplace. However, the "customer" in business-to-business relationships has no such right. Asserting and enforcing such a right makes the customer-king a villain, because it yields inferior pe HBS Number: BH006 Type: Business Horizons Article Publication Date: 9/15/98 Subjects: Customer relations; Marketing management; Marketing strategy Publisher: Publisher:Business Horizons/Indiana University