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- 2021
- Working Paper
Dynamic Pricing Algorithms, Consumer Harm, and Regulatory Response
By: Alexander J. MacKay and Samuel Weinstein
Pricing algorithms are rapidly transforming markets, from ride-sharing apps, to air travel, to online retail. Regulators and scholars have watched this development with a wary eye. Their focus so far has been on the potential for pricing algorithms to facilitate...
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- Article
The Pitfalls of Pricing Algorithms: Be Mindful of How They Can Hurt Your Brand
By: Marco Bertini and Oded Koenigsberg
More and more companies are relying on pricing algorithms to maximize profits. The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning enables real-time price adjustments based on supply and demand, competitors’ activities, delivery schedules, and so forth. But...
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- Article
The Economic Consequences of Bankruptcy Reform
By: Tal Gross, Ray Kluender, Feng Liu, Matthew J. Notowidigdo and Jialan Wang
A more generous consumer bankruptcy system provides greater insurance against financial risks but may also raise the cost of credit. We study this trade-off using the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), which increased the costs of...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Risk Sensitivity or Social Signaling? Unmasking Behaviors with Video Analytics
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Kaiquan Xu and Kannan Srinivasan
In 2020, as the novel coronavirus spread globally, face masks were recommended in public settings to protect against and slow down the spread of the coronavirus. Why did people comply, or not, while shopping in 2020? Do these motivations relate to their shopping...
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- February 2021
- Supplement
Apple: Privacy vs. Safety (B)
By: Henry McGee, Nien-hê Hsieh and Christian Godwin
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. While Apple/Google’s...
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Keywords:
Iphone;
Encryption;
Data Privacy;
Customers;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Decision Making;
Ethics;
Values and Beliefs;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Government and Politics;
Health;
Health Pandemics;
Leadership;
Markets;
Safety;
Social Issues;
Technology;
Consumer Products Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
United States;
Europe
- January 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
Amazon Shopper Panel: Paying Customers for Their Data
By: Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli
This case introduces a new Amazon program that has consumers upload their receipts from transactions outside of Amazon, in exchange for money. Through the discussion, the case aims to explore issues in customers’ privacy in the digital age, the value of customers’ own...
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Keywords:
Data Analytics;
Data Privacy;
Data Management;
＂Marketing Analytics＂;
Marketing Communication;
Marketing Research;
Data-driven Management;
E-commerce;
E-Commerce Strategy;
Ethical Decision Making;
CRM;
Consumer Protection;
Targeted Advertising;
Targeted Policies;
Data Ownership;
Marketing;
Research;
Marketing Communications;
Analytics and Data Science;
Management;
Customer Relationship Management;
Ethics;
Retail Industry;
Technology Industry;
United States
- Article
Soul and Machine (Learning)
By: Davide Proserpio, John R. Hauser, Xiao Liu, Tomomichi Amano, Burnap Alex, Tong Guo, Dokyun (DK) Lee, Randall Lewis, Kanishka Misra, Eric Schwarz, Artem Timoshenko, Lilei Xu and Hema Yoganarasimhan
Machine learning is bringing us self-driving cars, medical diagnoses, and language translation, but how can machine learning help marketers improve marketing decisions? Machine learning models predict extremely well, are scalable to “big data,” and are a natural fit to...
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- January–February 2020
- Article
Consumer Reactions to Drip Pricing
By: Shelle Santana, Steven Dallas and Vicki Morwitz
This research examines how drip pricing—a strategy whereby a firm advertises only part of a product’s price upfront and then reveals additional mandatory or optional fees/surcharges as the consumer proceeds through the buying process—affects consumer choice and...
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Keywords:
Drip Pricing;
Pricing;
Consumer Protection;
Hidden Fees;
Price;
Consumer Behavior;
Perception
- 2020
- Working Paper
Consumer Protection in an Online World: An Analysis of Occupational Licensing
By: Chiara Farronato, Andrey Fradkin, Bradley Larsen and Erik Brynjolfsson
We study the effects of occupational licensing on consumer choices and market outcomes in a large online platform for residential home services. We exploit exogenous variation in the time at which licenses are displayed on the platform to identify the causal effects of...
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- June 2019
- Article
Debt Traps? Market Vendors and Moneylender Debt in India and the Philippines
By: Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan and Benjamin Roth
A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by refinancing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of...
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Keywords:
Borrowing and Debt;
Household;
Personal Finance;
Decision Making;
Behavior;
India;
Philippines
- July 2018 (Revised July 2018)
- Teaching Note
Argentina Power—Don’t Cry for Me Argentina
By: Nori Gerardo Lietz and Sayiddah Fatima McCree
Teaching Note for HBS No. 218-041. This case concerns a complex potential energy infrastructure investment in Argentina by a global conglomerate shortly after Mauricio Macri (“Macri”) became President of Argentina in 2015. The central issues are (i) why was a country...
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- May 2018 (Revised February 2019)
- Case
The Powers That Be (Internet Edition): Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Julia Kelley and Nathaniel Schwalb
As of early 2018, five U.S. technology companies—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft—were among the largest companies in the world. Similarly, three Chinese technology firms—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, or BAT—had emerged as global players due in part to the...
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- November 2017
- Case
The 'Wonder Drug' That Killed Babies
By: Joshua Lev Krieger, Tom Nicholas and Matthew Preble
In the early 1960s, a popular drug taken by patients worldwide for a range of maladies was found to cause severe birth defects and other health problems in babies born to mothers who had taken it during a certain stage of fetal development. As many as 10,000 children...
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Keywords:
Regulation;
Business and Government Relations;
Business and Community Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Product Marketing;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Business History;
Health;
Government Legislation;
Corporate Accountability;
Ethics;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Pharmaceutical Industry;
Public Administration Industry;
United States;
United Kingdom;
Australia;
Germany;
Europe
- January 2016
- Case
COFCO
By: David E. Bell and Natalie Kindred
In 2015, COFCO, China's state-owned agribusiness giant, was working to protect China's food security (a key national security priority) by extending its control of the global food system through overseas acquisitions. At the same time, COFCO sought to grow its market...
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Keywords:
China;
Consumer Products;
Commodities;
Commodity Trading;
Grain Trade;
Globalization;
Internationalization;
Mergers And Acquisitions;
Foreign Acquisitions;
COFCO;
Frank Ning;
Gaoning;
Nidera;
Noble;
Competition;
Branded Products;
Food;
Markets;
Marketing;
Business and Government Relations;
Agribusiness;
Animal-Based Agribusiness;
Plant-Based Agribusiness;
Policy;
Trade;
Goods and Commodities;
Food and Beverage Industry;
China
- May 2015 (Revised May 2017)
- Case
Colgate-Palmolive Company: Marketing Anti-Cavity Toothpaste
By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez
In October 2013, Colgate-Palmolive Company, the world's leading oral care company, was about to launch its new Colgate® Maximum Cavity Protection™ plus Sugar Acid Neutralizer™ toothpaste in Brazil. Oral care category accounted for 46 percent of Colgate's $17.4 billion...
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Keywords:
New Product Management;
Consumer Segmentation;
Global Marketing;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Healthcare;
Sustainability;
Health Care and Treatment;
Environmental Sustainability;
Marketing;
Segmentation;
Product Development;
Product Launch;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Product Positioning;
Consumer Products Industry;
Brazil;
United States
- March 2015
- Case
Statoil: Transparency on Payments to Governments
By: George Serafeim
The Statoil case describes the challenge of increasing transparency, in extractive industries, around host county government payments. The case describes Statoil's reasoning behind voluntarily disclosing host country government payments, and the events that led to this...
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Keywords:
Corruption;
Disclosure;
Disclosure Strategy;
Regulation;
Industry Self-regulation;
Corporate Governance;
Corporate Accountability;
Bribery;
Sustainability;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Government Legislation;
Cost vs Benefits;
Corporate Disclosure;
Mining;
Mining Industry;
United States
- June 2013
- Article
What Is Privacy Worth?
By: Alessandro Acquisti, Leslie K. John and George Loewenstein
Understanding the value that individuals assign to the protection of their personal data is of great importance for business, law, and public policy. We use a field experiment informed by behavioral economics and decision research to investigate individual privacy...
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- Article
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Financial Regulation for the Twenty-First Century
By: Leonard J. Kennedy, Patricia A. McCoy and Ethan S. Bernstein
After existing regulatory systems failed to prevent the recent financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a sweeping reform designed to alleviate the crisis and prevent its recurrence. Out of this Act, the Consumer...
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Keywords:
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau;
Dodd-Frank;
CFPB;
Financial Crisis;
Reform;
New Agency;
Market-based Approach;
Evidence-based Analysis;
Innovative Technologies And Transparency Policies;
BEST Practices;
Government and Politics;
Government Administration;
Finance;
Financial History;
Law;
Markets;
Organizations;
Organizational Design;
Business and Government Relations;
Balance and Stability;
Strategy;
Financial Services Industry;
Banking Industry;
United States
- February 2012 (Revised January 2013)
- Case
The New York Times Paywall
On March 28, 2011, The New York Times website became a restricted site where most of the content was protected behind a "paywall." Users who exceeded the limit of 20 free articles per month were required to pay for either a digital or print subscription. The newspaper...
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- 2012
- Article
Wider dem sauren Mund. Beiersdorfs U.S.-Geschaeft mit der Zahnpastamarke Pebeco
By: G. Jones and Christina Lubinski
This article examines the growth and ultimate demise of the toothpaste brand Pebeco, which was created by the German personal care company Beiersdorf in 1903. The brand was an enormous international success, becoming for a time the largest toothpaste brand in the...
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