Idea posted: February 2016

Institutions: IMD    University of Kentucky Gatton College of Business and Economics    Claremont Graduate University Drucker School of Management   

If you’re a national or international company with marketing authority and practices spread across various locations, or if you have a diversified group of products or businesses that call for…

Idea posted: February 2016

Institutions: University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business    HEC Paris    University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School   

Does a Chief Marketing Officer help a company, or is this position a ‘C’ that doesn’t earn its place in the C-suite? In 2008, an influential research study by Pravin…

Idea posted: November 2015

Institutions: University of Chicago Booth School of Business    University of St. Gallen   

As reported in a 2013 Advertising Age article, Geico Insurance’s ubiquitous talking Gecko was launched as a trial balloon. There had been no prior marketing research, and certainly no intention…

Idea posted: August 2015

Institutions: Washington University Olin Business School    The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania    University of Toronto Rotman School of Management   

While material purchases are purchases of tangible products that one intends to keep, experiential purchases are purchases of products that must be experienced. Restaurant meals, movies, or vacations are examples…

Idea posted: August 2015

Institutions: University of Michigan Ross School of Business   

How well is your company performing? For many companies, the answer to this question comes through customer satisfaction surveys, which tell companies where they are successfully meeting customer expectations and…

Idea posted: August 2015

Institutions: Harvard Business School    Duke University Fuqua School of Business   

When people do good things, they reward themselves. This is the conclusion of a number of previous studies into the psychology of doing good deeds. Two researchers from Harvard Business…

Idea posted: August 2015

Institutions: Ivey Business School at Western University   

Companies struggle with two apparently contradictory goals. They want their brands to be central in their category — in other words, the brand of record, similar to the position held…

Idea posted: August 2015

Institutions: Columbia Business School    London Business School   

Customers can stop interacting with a company in one of two ways: they inform the company that they are leaving (such as when they cancel a subscription to a magazine)…

Idea posted: July 2015

Institutions: MIT Sloan School of Management    Tuck School of Business    Boston University Questrom School of Business   

There are a variety of product-related services that manufacturers offer their customers. New research pinpoints the following different categories of services: Complementary services help customers feel more comfortable buying the…