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- Faculty Publications (56)
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- All HBS Web (254)
- Faculty Publications (56)
- October 2021
- Article
Communicating Resource Scarcity and Interpersonal Connection
By: Grant E. Donnelly, Anne V. Wilson, Ashley V. Whillans and Michael I. Norton
Consumers often cite insufficient time or money as an excuse for rejecting social invitations. We explore the effectiveness of these excuses in preserving interpersonal relationships. Six studies—including perceptions of couples planning their wedding—demonstrate that...
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Keywords:
Time;
Interpersonal Relationships;
Communication;
Money;
Relationships;
Interpersonal Communication
Donnelly, Grant E., Anne V. Wilson, Ashley V. Whillans, and Michael I. Norton. "Communicating Resource Scarcity and Interpersonal Connection." Journal of Consumer Psychology 31, no. 4 (October 2021): 726–745.
- Research Summary
Price as a Stimulus to Think: The Case for Willful Overpricing
Consumers aware of a new benefit will often experience uncertainty about its personal relevance or usage value. This paper shows that the decision to deliberate further to resolve this uncertainty and reach a polarized judgment of personal relevance critically depends...
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- Research Summary
Evolution of the Global Beauty Industry
This research examines the global beauty industry, which includes cosmetics, deodorants, fragrances, hair care, oral hygiene and skin care. Today global sales of cosmetics and toiletries are in excess of U.S. $380 billion. This research examines the growth of this... View Details
- 21 Jan 2009
- First Look
First Look: January 21, 2009
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/06-007.pdf Sweatshop Labor Is Wrong Unless the Jeans Are Cute: Motivated Moral Disengagement Authors:Neeru Paharia and Rohit Deshpandé Abstract While many consumers say they care about issues such as...
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Martha Lagace
- April 2020
- Article
The Impostor Syndrome from Luxury Consumption
By: Dafna Goor, Nailya Ordabayeva, Anat Keinan and Sandrine Crener
The present research proposes that luxury consumption can be a double-edged sword: while luxury consumption yields status benefits, it can also make consumers feel inauthentic, because consumers perceive it as an undue privilege. As a result, paradoxically, luxury...
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Goor, Dafna, Nailya Ordabayeva, Anat Keinan, and Sandrine Crener. "The Impostor Syndrome from Luxury Consumption." Journal of Consumer Research 46, no. 6 (April 2020): 1031–1051.
- 14 May 2008
- Research & Ideas
Getting Down to the Business of Creativity
a three-year study of 238 professionals from seven companies in the high-tech, consumer products, and chemicals industries. Without revealing the focus of their study, they asked the subjects (all of whom were working on projects...
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- 5 Sep 2013
- Conference Presentation
The Color of Taste: Selling Food in Clear Packages in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States
By: Ai Hisano
This paper examines the role of color in the marketing and retailing of food products by focusing on the increasingly popular presentation of food in clear packages in the early-twentieth-century United States. In the 1910s, a candy company began using cellophane to...
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Hisano, Ai. "The Color of Taste: Selling Food in Clear Packages in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States." Paper presented at the CHORD Conference, Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution (CHORD), Leeds, UK, September 5, 2013.
- 20 May 2019
- Research & Ideas
Activist CEOs Are Rising Up—and Their Customers Are Listening
When former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced earlier this year he was thinking about running for president of the United States, it wasn’t a new idea. Past CEOs seeking the White House have included Carly Fiorina, Ross Perot, Herman Cain, Steve Forbes, Mitt...
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by Michael Blanding
- September 2011
- Article
The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value
By: Ryan W. Buell and Michael I. Norton
A ubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that due to what we term the labor illusion, when...
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Keywords:
Internet and the Web;
Perception;
Valuation;
Service Delivery;
Consumer Behavior;
Performance Effectiveness;
Customer Satisfaction;
Service Industry
Buell, Ryan W., and Michael I. Norton. "The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value." Management Science 57, no. 9 (September 2011): 1564–1579.
- 28 Jun 2004
- Research & Ideas
How to Avoid a Price Increase
that consumers may perceive the practice of downsizing to be dishonest. This perception is made worse by manufacturers who try to hide the downsizing by retaining the same size container or outside...
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by Manda Salls
- 17 Aug 2021
- Research & Ideas
Can Autonomous Vehicles Drive with Common Sense?
machines have to make in the spur of the moment are at the heart of the discomfort consumers feel about autonomous cars, says De Freitas. It’s akin to the famous philosophical “trolley problem” in which a subject must decide to let a...
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- 19 Mar 2014
- Research & Ideas
A Brand Manager’s Guide to Losing Control
Thanks (or no thanks) to social media, brand managers have lost the power to control the perception of their products through carefully orchestrated advertising campaigns. These days, consumers are in...
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- 2022
- Working Paper
A Preference for Revision Absent Objective Improvement
By: Ximena Garcia-Rada, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien and Michael I. Norton
From downloading never-ending updates to tracking ever-newer releases, consumers today are surrounded by revised offerings that purport to have improved upon what was previously available. Although revising things often makes them better, the current research reveals...
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Keywords:
Product Change;
Versioning;
Expectancy Effects;
Heuristics;
Intuitive Processing;
Product Marketing;
Change;
Perception;
Consumer Behavior
Garcia-Rada, Ximena, Leslie K. John, Ed O’Brien, and Michael I. Norton. "A Preference for Revision Absent Objective Improvement." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-087, February 2019. (Revised February 2022. Revise and resubmit, Journal of Marketing Research.)
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Complexity of Economic Decisions
By: Xavier Gabaix and Thomas Graeber
We propose a theory of the complexity of economic decisions. Leveraging a macroeconomic framework of production functions, we conceptualize the mind as a cognitive economy, where a task’s complexity is determined by its composition of cognitive operations. Complexity...
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Gabaix, Xavier, and Thomas Graeber. "The Complexity of Economic Decisions." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-049, February 2024.
- January 2023
- Article
Calculators for Women: When Identity-Based Appeals Backfire
By: Tami Kim, Kate Barasz, Michael I. Norton and Leslie K. John
From “Chick Beer” to “Dryer Sheets for Men,” identity-based labeling is frequently deployed by marketers to appeal to specific target markets. Yet such identity appeals can backfire, alienating the very consumers they aim to attract. We theorize and empirically...
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Keywords:
Categorization Threat;
Stereotypes;
Identity;
Labels;
Gender;
Perception;
Consumer Behavior
Kim, Tami, Kate Barasz, Michael I. Norton, and Leslie K. John. "Calculators for Women: When Identity-Based Appeals Backfire." Special Issue on Racism and Discrimination in the Marketplace edited by Samantha N. N. Cross and Stephanie Dellande. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 8, no. 1 (January 2023): 72–82.
- 29 Apr 2013
- Working Paper Summaries
Exclusive Preferential Placement as Search Diversion: Evidence from Flight Search
- 16 Sep 2008
- First Look
First Look: September 16, 2008
those recalls were perceived by consumers and responded to by Mattel, as well as what effect they had on the toy industry, consumer safety, and manufacturing in China in general. Purchase this case:...
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- July–August 2021
- Article
Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government
By: Ryan W. Buell, Ethan Porter and Michael I. Norton
Problem definition: As trust in government reaches historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs.
Academic/practical relevance: We propose that in co-productive settings like government services, peoples’ trust and...
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Keywords:
Government Services;
Behavioral Operations;
Operational Transparency;
Government Administration;
Service Operations;
Programs;
Perception;
Attitudes;
Behavior;
Trust
Buell, Ryan W., Ethan Porter, and Michael I. Norton. "Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government." Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 23, no. 4 (July–August 2021): 781–802.
- Article
Motivated Inferences of Price and Quality in Healthcare Decisions
By: Emily Prinsloo, Kate Barasz and Peter A. Ubel
Policy makers have increasingly advocated for healthcare price transparency, whereby prices are made salient before services are rendered. While such policies may empower consumers, they also bring price to the forefront of healthcare choices as never before, with yet...
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Keywords:
Healthcare;
Price Transparency;
Health Care and Treatment;
Price;
Quality;
Perception;
Consumer Behavior;
Decisions;
Insurance
Prinsloo, Emily, Kate Barasz, and Peter A. Ubel. "Motivated Inferences of Price and Quality in Healthcare Decisions." Special Issue on Healthcare and Medical Decision Making edited by Dipankar Chakravarti, Jian Ni, Meng Zhu. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 7, no. 2 (April 2022): 186–197.
- 13 Jun 2005
- Research & Ideas
Rescuing Products with Stealth Positioning
companies that use stealth positioning adopt a covert approach. They conceal the true nature of their products by affiliating them with a different category. This is a powerful strategy for marketers when a category is in some way tainted. View Details
Keywords:
by Youngme Moon