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Marketing

Etiquette as a Luxury Brand-Building Tool

D. Dubois, E. Cousteau

How the luxury and prestige industries create immersive experiences to attract and deeply connect with their clients.

Marketing

Mine Your Language

Abhishek Borah

How text mining can unearth novel, absorbing and valuable findings.

Marketing

To Counter Misinformation, Strengthen Human Connection

David Dubois

How boosting social bonds can reduce belief in conspiracy theories and the spreading of dangerous lies.

Marketing

The Three Next-Generation Marketing Skills You Need

W. Ulaga, C. Senn

Companies must secure “killer marketing and sales skills” in a dynamic landscape where commercial competencies rapidly become obsolete.

Marketing

Ten Ways AI Is Transforming Marketing

H. Mann, J. Niessing

Firms will soon be able to decode the unsaid when interacting with consumers – in fact, some already do.

Marketing

How Negative Reviews Affect Online Consumers

P. Albuquerque, M. Varga

Negative reviews influence consumer decisions depending on the type of product, as well as the nature and placement of these reviews.

Marketing

The Positive Effect of Multiple Narrating Voices

Amitava Chattopadhyay

Using two or more narrators in ads can increase consumer attention and boost persuasion.

Strategy

How to Destigmatise Repulsive Products

S. Harrison, S. Nurmohamed

Entrepreneurs can leverage “dirty creativity” to pitch unusual products that consumers may find objectionable.

Marketing

INSEAD Insights: September 2023 Research Picks

Lily Fang

Recent findings on online marketplace dynamics, new market creation, trust in AI, diversity in corporate boards and consumer choices.

Marketing

How Tech Transforms Luxury Brands’ Value Proposition

David Dubois

Luxury brands are increasingly leveraging technology to reduce uncertainty and enrich experience throughout the customer journey.

Marketing

How Luxury Consumers Can Seem More Authentic

S. Jung, A. J. Yap, C. Chen

Consumers can mitigate the negative social consequences of wearing luxury items by publicly revealing their passion for the products or brands.
1 comment

Marketing

Customer Engagement in a Circular Economy

W. Ulaga, C. Senn

Embracing circular business models unlocks opportunities for companies to engage with customers, optimise resource utilisation and ensure a sustainable future.

Responsibility

From Super-Sized to Superior Gratification

Pierre Chandon

Why we need to focus on eating as pleasure if we want to start eating healthier.

Responsibility

Thoughtful Consumption for Well-Being and Sustainability

H. Plassmann, S. Rangan, E. Hansmeyer

Understanding consumer behaviour is key to making fashion more sustainable.

Operations

How Large Mergers Can Benefit Smaller Players

Xabier Barriola

Joint ventures between dominant incumbents can create opportunities for smaller firms to enter the market and capture market share.

Marketing

Five Ways to Optimise Your Subscription Model

W. Ulaga, M. Mansard

With more global distributors launching subscription models, retailers and consumer-packaged goods manufacturers must level up their offerings to stand out from the crowd.

Marketing

Cutting Through the Metaverse Hype

P. Zemsky, C. Poole, N. Bokil, C. Smith

The barriers to mainstream metaverse adoption and the key opportunities and challenges it presents.

Marketing

How Slow-Motion Video Ads Make Products More Luxurious

S. Jung, D. Dubois

Slowing down the speed of video ads can boost consumers' desires for the featured product or brand.

Marketing

When Feeling Good Feels Morally Wrong

S. Lin, T. Reich, T. Kreps

After witnessing human suffering, people believe it is more appropriate to prolong negative emotions than repair their mood.

Marketing

Putting a Price on Private Data

G. Tomaino, K. Wertenbroch, D. Walters

People value their private data higher in cash than in digital goods or services.
2 comments

Marketing

Healthy Eating Interventions That Work

P. Chandon, K. L. Haws, P. J. Liu

Mutually beneficial solutions for the food industry, health and the environment.

Career

The Problem With Being Too Easy-going

A. Barasch, K. Woolley, P. J. Liu

Failure to express your preferences in everyday situations can make you seem less likeable and even slightly less human.

Marketing

How to Get More Value from Less Food

Pierre Chandon

Marketing focused on the multisensory properties of food can encourage people to eat less and experience more pleasure.

Responsibility

Americans Underestimate the Impact of Voter Suppression

G. Tomaino, Z. Carmon, A. Mazar, W. Wood

Voting suppression is on the rise, but many Americans fail to anticipate the harm of seemingly minor voting restrictions.
4 comments

Marketing

NFTs as a Force for Good: The Savvy Salamanders

A. Rane, P. Kireyev

How a group of MBA students built a community of crypto pioneers and a unique approach to fundraising. 

Marketing

Online Feedback Requests Are Effective, Even if Ignored

M. Rubin, D. Perez, G. Oestreicher-Singer, L. Zalmanson

Requesting feedback from online users can influence their behaviour, even when the requests go unanswered.

Marketing

A “Human” Understanding of the World Through AI

David Midgley 

Information search could be made less biased and more holistic through the lens of empathy.

Marketing

How to Shoot for the Holy Grail of Social Media Marketing

Abhishek Borah

Quality, consistent and simple messaging is what will bring in sales. The rest is just noise.
2 comments

Marketing

Healthy in the Wrong Way: When Food Marketers Don’t Listen

P. Chandon, R. Cadario

The meaning of “healthy” is constantly evolving, and food marketers are not always meeting consumers’ expectations.

Marketing

Consumer Streaks Are Motivating – The Key Is Keeping Them Alive

A. Barasch, J. Silverman

People often go out of their way to repeat a behaviour if it is logged and highlighted to them.
1 comment

Strategy

Why the Customer Isn’t Always Right

Alixandra Barasch

Consumer behaviour on food-logging tools reveals initial expectations don’t match actual experience.

Operations

Mind the Inventory Risk: Price Paradox Under Competition

A. Ovchinnikov, H. Pun, G. Raz

In competitive environments, operational innovation could well be the answer to inventory risk.

Marketing

Unlock the Full Value of Your Business Relationships

Christoph Senn

A fruitful relationship starts with asking the right – and sometimes difficult – questions.

Responsibility

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. They May Just Have More Willpower

Amit Bhattacharjee

We instinctively see people with stronger self-control as more virtuous and more capable of realising good intentions.

Career

The Pitfalls of Flaunting Your Social Status

A. Barasch, S. Srna, D. Small

Ditch the luxury logos if you want to be seen as a cooperative team player.
1 comment

Economics & Finance

Where a Firm’s Value Truly Lies

F. Belo, M. A. Vitorino

A new approach to uncovering the sum of all the parts of a modern firm.

Marketing

Why Facebook Is Rebranding Itself as Meta

Klaus Wertenbroch

Is the tech company dodging bad publicity or creating a gatekeeper economy?
2 comments

Marketing

Why Investors’ Memories May Be Bad for Their Wealth

D. Walters, P. Fernbach

How positive bias can lead overconfident investors to inflate the size of their wins and forget their losses.

Marketing

Marketing Automation: Utopia or Dystopia?

Klaus Wertenbroch

Firms must take consumer psychology into account and resist the temptation to maximise short-term profits at the cost of consumers.

Marketing

We All Want to Be Good – Then Life Happens

Stephanie Lin

Starting with the best of intentions, people overestimate their ability to follow through.

Marketing

How Social Media Makes for Happier Families

David Dubois

There is a hydraulic relationship between domestic happiness and exposure to social media content opposite to our views.

Marketing

How Tech Can Make You Happier, Fitter and More Popular

Alixandra Barasch

Three rules to optimise the influence of your smartphone on your well-being.

Marketing

The Neuroscience of Eating

B. Kessler, H. Plassmann

An entire biological ecosystem – encompassing complex connections between our gut and brain – underpins our daily food choices.
2 comments

Marketing

How Executives Should – and Shouldn’t – Engage With Customers

C. Senn, N. Capon

When done the right way, customer engagement can turn into a lucrative opportunity.
2 comments

Marketing

Weight Loss Surgery Reduces Susceptibility to Food Marketing

H. Plassman, P. Chandon

Behavioural and neuroscience research by INSEAD and Sorbonne Université suggest bariatric surgery does a lot more than just help patients lose weight.

Marketing

The Digital Transformation of the “Mad Men” Model

D. Dubois, J. Teoh

The ad agency business needs to reinvent itself and embrace the two key challenges of the coming decade.
1 comment

Marketing

Why Putting Your Phone Away Isn’t the Answer

Alixandra Barasch

Interaction on social media during an event increases our enjoyment in the moment and beyond.
1 comment

Marketing

Making the Shift to Digital Sales in B2B

Joerg Niessing & Fred Geyer

The old methods of demand generation won’t work in the always-online era.

Marketing

The Tension-Filled World of Luxury Consumption

David Dubois

Recent research highlights how luxury consumers are pulled in different, often contradicting directions.

Marketing

How to Appease Your Customers After Your Algorithm Rejects Them

K. Wertenbroch, P. Kireyev, G. Tomaino

No one likes to hear “computer says no”. But there may be more ways to be transparent about algorithm-driven rejections than you think.

Marketing

Comparison Shopping in the Age of Information Overload

Daniel Walters

When consumers try to estimate a product specification, their best guess depends on whether they believe that they forgot this information or that they were never exposed to it.

Marketing

Making the Commute of the Future Happen

G. Tomaino, Z. Carmon

Mobility as a service (MaaS) is an attractive form of public transportation that offers a variety of benefits. Enticing consumers to abandon their private cars, however, will be tricky.

Marketing

Beyond Covid-19: Remodelling the Future of Fashion

D. Dubois, D. Teo

The industry is set to become less cyclical, less vicarious and more transparent.
1 comment

Marketing

How Luxury Is Reinventing Itself

A. J. Yap, L. Lim, C. Y. Chen

Luxury brands must secure a place in the hearts and minds of their customers, their partners and the public.

Marketing

Building Digital Resilience Around the Customer

J. Niessing, D. Dubois, A. Bejjani

Resilient businesses use digital technologies, data and analytics to create long-term customer value.

Marketing

What Drives Consumers to Share Online Content

Abhishek Borah

How to craft social media posts that drive both clicks and profits.

Marketing

Happiness Is a (Small) Piece of Cake

Pierre Chandon

Children inaccurately expect larger portions of a snack to be more enjoyable. A sensory imagery intervention can help them select healthier portion sizes.

Marketing

To Succeed With Neuromarketing, What Do You Need to Know?

H. Plassmann, A. Ling

Much of the classic market research advice applies to consumer neuroscience as well – but the emerging field also features unique challenges.

Marketing

What’s Up Front? The True Influence of Nutrition Labels in Real Life

Paulo Albuquerque & Pierre Chandon

A major randomized controlled trial finds that nutrition labels help healthier foods but do not hurt junk foods, leading to a much smaller boost than in lab studies.

Marketing

How Corporates Can Leverage Start-ups Against COVID-19

Joerg Niessing

Top start-ups may be a critical resource for recovery, providing quick solutions where they’re needed most.
1 comment

Marketing

Consumer Autonomy Violations and the Coming AI Backlash

Z Carmon, R Schrift, K Wertenbroch & H Yang

The profoundly beneficial impact of AI-based systems may be blunted in the 2020s, if Big Tech isn’t careful.

Marketing

Discovering the Hidden Drivers of Decision Making

A time-tested technique from academic research can help practitioners better understand their stakeholders.

Marketing

The Neuroscience Behind What the Crowd Thinks

Leonie Koban

Information about how others feel about pain has an outsized effect on our own response to it.
1 comment

Marketing

How Many Bad Customer Reviews Is Too Many? One

Paulo Albuquerque & Marton Varga

Sellers should focus less on cultivating a forest of positive reviews, and more on the state of each tree.

Marketing

Strategising Customisation and Privacy in the Digital Age

D. Dubois, J. Teoh

Five golden rules to effectively balance personalisation and customer protection.

Marketing

Employees as Social Media Influencers

Pawel Korzynski

How organisations can get workers to post more company-related content willingly.
4 comments

Marketing

Three Cornerstones of Global Retail Innovation

V. (Paddy) Padmanabhan

INSEAD experts and industry executives drill down to the basic human needs driving changes in retail.

Marketing

The Growing Power of Marketers in the Business World

Abhishek Borah

Within the field, marketing communications are on an uptrend, while channel management is declining.
1 comment

Marketing

Why Companies Should Seek Higher Damages for Counterfeiting

Z Carmon, M Amar, D Ariely, H Yang

Bogus items can psychologically “infect” the real items they’re copied from.
2 comments

Marketing

Which Healthy Eating Nudges Work Best?

Pierre Chandon

Our framework shows how to guide consumers to choose healthier food options.
2 comments

Marketing

An Unexpected Product Benefit Can Be a Powerful Marketing Tool

A. Chattopadhyay, J.C. Kim, M. Wadhwa, W. Wang

Framing a product feature as an unexpected benefit may stoke consumer desire.

Marketing

A Non-Scientist’s Guide to the Neuromarketing Toolkit

Hilke Plassmann & Aiqing Ling

Marketers need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the six main tools of neuromarketing.

Marketing

Driving B2B Digital Transformation Through Customer-centricity

Three steps to go beyond classic segmentation and unpack relationships with customers.
2 comments

Marketing

What (Not) to Do in the Crosshairs of Digital Disruption

The downfall of iconic Swiss travel agency Kuoni exemplifies the grave options available to companies with pre-internet business models.
1 comment

Marketing

Revolution in B2B Retail: From Perfume to Platform Economy

David Dubois

In the digital age where consumers and brands are connected like never before, B2B retailers need to embrace new business models and pivot into platforms.

Marketing

Coffee Pods: Tied Goods and the Pursuit of Profit

Maria Ana Vitorino

How licensing and price competition can lead to win-win agreements.

Marketing

Four Ways Foods Claim to Be “Healthy"

Pierre Chandon

Front-of-package claims influence perceptions, despite no link to actual nutritional quality.

Marketing

Rekindling an Old Flame on a Zero-Based Budget

How 3G Capital made Burger King cool again.
1 comment

Marketing

Turn Free Services into Paid Opportunities to Grow Your Business

Wolfgang Ulaga & Stefan Michel

Instead of blindly giving away complementary services, B2B companies should make a strategic decision on whether to kill it, bill it or keep it free.
2 comments

Marketing

The Little-Known Quirk in the Way Our Brain Evaluates Goals

A. Chattopadhyay, A. Stamatogiannakis, D. Chakravarti

Contrary to popular belief, pursuing a modest positive change is sometimes perceived as easier than maintaining the status quo.

Marketing

How Brands Can Stay Relevant in the Digital Age

The brands that mean the most to consumers aren’t always the ones you’d expect.
2 comments

Marketing

The Bright Side of Busyness

A. Chattopadhyay, M. Wadwa, J. C. Kim

Subtly reminding people how busy they are can nudge them to make virtuous choices.

Marketing

How Managers Can Curb Overconfidence

Daniel Walters

Taking the time to consider unknowns helps executives make better decisions.
1 comment

Marketing

How Luxury Brands Can Combat Pop-Up Fatigue

Modern-day temporary retail blurs the line between shopping and marketing – thus demanding a strategy of its own.

Marketing

How Political Ideology Shapes Luxury Spending

D. Dubois, J. C. Kim, B. Park

Conservatives are more likely to buy luxury when they believe it can help them maintain their social position.

Marketing

Why Meeting Customers’ Expectations Isn’t Enough

Happy customers may come back, but only customers who are thrilled will recommend your product.
1 comment

Marketing

How Testosterone Influences Men’s Preferences for Luxury Products

H. Plassmann, D. Dubois, G. Nave

A man’s testosterone level can tell you the type of products he may gravitate towards.

Marketing

Does Your Brain Structure Influence Your Food Choices?

Neuroanatomy may help explain why some people are better than others at resisting food temptations.
1 comment

Career

How to Hire a Rock Star Chief Marketing Officer

The ten qualities you should look for when interviewing potential CMOs for your start-up.

Marketing

How Marketing Can Help Tech Start-Ups Survive

Fewer start-ups would fail if marketers had a bigger say in the 4 Ps of the marketing mix.
2 comments

Marketing

Selling Kids on Healthy Eating

Marketers and parents both have a role to play in combating the global childhood obesity crisis.

Marketing

Start-Ups: Stop Wasting Your Marketing Budget

Having the best product won’t help your start-up without a focus on segmentation, targeting and positioning.

Marketing

Where Is Consumer Research Going Next?

Consumer behaviour may be influenced by a host of neurobiological factors that science is just beginning to understand.
2 comments

Marketing

How to Build a Brand Pyramid

A vital tool that will help you define the very essence of your brand.
4 comments

Marketing

Think You’re Immune to Advertising? Think Again

Benjamin Kessler & Steven Sweldens

With literally thousands of ads hitting us every day, it’s impossible to avoid being influenced.
2 comments

Marketing

How Academics Can Rebuild Trust in Science

The tools for overcoming declining trust in science lie in science itself.

Marketing

Leveraging Digital to Optimise the Customer Experience

A broad array of new digital tools and trends can help you re-imagine the customer journey.
4 comments

Marketing

Kickstarter Backers Like Novelty or Usefulness, Not Both

Amitava Chattopadhyay

To attract the most crowdfunding, a product should be framed as either new or useful.

Marketing

Marketers Should Leverage, Not Fight, Consumer Habits

Wendy Wood

Old habits are a powerful yet overlooked driver of consumer resistance to new products.

Marketing

The Four Types of Big Data That Matter for CMOs

David Dubois & Gilles Haumont

C-level executives lack a clear typology of the digital data that can help marketing strategists unlock value.
1 comment

Marketing

How Marketing Can Trick Our Brains

Hilke Plassmann & Liane Schmidt

Marketing cues can influence the neurobiology underlying our feelings and behaviour.
1 comment

Strategy

Amazon-Whole Foods Is Not About to Wipe Out Supermarkets

P. Padmanabhan & D. Lecossois

Amazon will gain access to new capabilities in retail, but the challenge to traditional supermarkets will come from elsewhere.

Marketing

How Your Firm Can Reignite Sales Growth

Connecting with a fundamental consumer concern can give your brand purpose and create a platform for long-term profitable growth.

Marketing

Two New Commandments of Customer Engagement

Mark Hunter, Luk Van Wassenhove & Maria Besiou

Fields as disparate as journalism and technology have a common route to success in the digital era.

Marketing

Drunk on Vodka and Marketing

Branding and advertising energy drinks as elixirs of sexual prowess and risk taking makes for a dangerous mixer with alcohol.
2 comments

Marketing

Consumers Who Lack Control Seek Functional Products

Andy J. Yap & Charlene Y. Chen

Framing a product as functional can appeal to those who feel a loss of control.

Marketing

Responding to “Fake News” in the Post-Truth Era

Accusations that have no basis in reality can be surprisingly damaging. But there are some ways to weaken them.
1 comment

Marketing

Using History to Motivate Change

Creative and entrepreneurial employees thrive on a sense of the organisational past.

Marketing

Why It’s So Hard to Reverse Food Supersizing

Understanding size perceptions can help make consumers more receptive to both downsizing and supersizing.

Marketing

Lessons in Digital Transformation from the Hotel Industry

Integrating content creation, curation and dissemination skills into business operations is a must to meet the challenges brought by e-disruptions.

Marketing

For a Healthy Holiday and a Merry New Year, Listen to Epicurus

Overeating is typical during the holiday season, but you can enjoy yourself more by eating less.

Marketing

Disrupting a Traditional Industry by Breaking its Rules

Joerg Niessing

An INSEAD alumnus takes on the global beverage business.
1 comment

Marketing

When Advertising is Just a Waste of Money

The tipping point when the unrestrained repetition of ads goes from informative to downright irritating.
1 comment

Responsibility

Customer Orientation Drives Environmental Innovation

Firms adopting environmental management practices are customer-oriented.
1 comment

Marketing

Why More Businesses Should Consider Flat Pricing

Flat pricing can represent a win-win for customers and firms.

Marketing

Why Forcing Market Change Is Good Strategy

Apple is forcing change on the market again and that’s no bad thing.
10 comments

Marketing

Growing a Brand in a Stigmatised Industry

The recreational cannabis industry holds lessons for building brands in an industry with negative associations.
1 comment

Marketing

Attractive Salespeople Don’t Always Boost Sales

Attractive sales people may actually decrease shoppers’ purchase intentions.
1 comment

Strategy

Mobilising Online Communities to Your Cause

Vinika Rao & Parminder Singh

Social media can amplify a message or start a movement, but there are fundamental rules for success.
3 comments

Marketing

Welcome to the Social Media Shopping Mall

The future of e-commerce belongs to social apps like China’s WeChat. Here’s how brands can start preparing.

Marketing

The Limits of Social Media Engagement

When brands reach a certain number of followers, engagement starts to drop.
3 comments

Marketing

The Fight for a Smaller Slice of the Pie

The digital economy is setting new rules for cornering market share.
2 comments

Marketing

Making Digital Marketing Strategy Work

Joerg Niessing & David Dubois

Three fundamental principles are at the core of successful digital marketing campaigns.
9 comments

Marketing

Ad Hoc Promotions Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty

Jasjit Singh & Serguei Netessine

Short-term promotions disconnected from your overall strategy will not give your business a lasting lift.
1 comment

Marketing

Getting Emerging Market Brands to the World Stage

Transferability of core brand propositions, deep understanding of local markets and the ability to celebrate their origins and legacy are key factors that will influence the success of emerging market brands on the global stage.

Marketing

The Considerations for Launching an Innovation

Contrary to popular belief, innovations don’t sell themselves. Successful adoption depends on how brands position themselves and how much they listen to their customers.

Marketing

Manipulating Consumers is Not Marketing

Consumers increasingly view marketing as manipulation. It is important to dispel this notion and the profession should take steps to do so.
5 comments

Marketing

Finding New Possibilities in Online Data

Analytic techniques developed by academics can help marketing professionals extract useful insights from customer data.

Marketing

Do Happy Customers Lead to Happy Shareholders?

Customer satisfaction has an impact on firm value if, and only if, marketing managers make the right investments.

Marketing

Close Friends Could Darken Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Customers in tight-knit groups are more likely to be negative about products or services to protect each other, but when consumers in large, disparate groups interact, they are more positive to boost their social position.
3 comments

Marketing

When Customers Panic

Even loose association with a similar firm embroiled in scandal or facing difficulty can mean ruin for a healthy company. But there are measures to protect your business against guilt by association.

Marketing

Brain Imaging Triggers Marketing Breakthroughs

The holy grail of marketing—a universal predictor of customer behaviour—may be closer than ever, thanks to recent advances in the field of neuromarketing.

Strategy

How Communicator and Audience Power Shape Persuasion

Powerful people aren’t always the best choice for persuading others. Less powerful audiences require warmth and connection.
1 comment

Marketing

Successful Digital Transformation Starts With the Customer

Joerg Niessing & Hilke Plassmann

Customer-centricity made it possible for a telco firm to revolutionise the banking industry in Serbia.
4 comments

Marketing

Five Strategic Imperatives for Digital Brand Building

A lack of skills and a lack of confidence in metrics hold organisations back from achieving brand building success in digital realms.
1 comment

Marketing

How to Get People to Pay for Smaller Portions

Pierre Chandon

Customers will pay more for smaller portions if they’re enticed by taste.

Marketing

How Your Logo Shapes Consumer Judgments

The shape of your logo affects how consumers perceive your organisation, its products and even its behaviour.
1 comment

Marketing

Being Too Agile Could Kill Your Brand

Startups and incumbents alike should think twice before giving into the temptation to “reboot” their brand.

Marketing

To Succeed at Crowdsourcing, Forget the Crowd

Henning Piezunka

The vast majority of crowdsourcing efforts fall flat, because companies don’t do enough to cultivate individual contributors.

Marketing

Content Marketing Runs on Inspiration

Tata Consultancy Services’ omni-channel promotion for the Amsterdam Marathon surpassed its business goals by going way beyond conventional marketing.
1 comment

Marketing

How to Frame Goals to Increase Motivation

What motivates individuals to achieve goals differs depending on their cultural background.

Marketing

Five Best Practices of Global Brand Management

Successful global brand management is a balancing act between local level aspirations and international strategic vision.
2 comments

Marketing

Five Steps to Great Digital Customer Experiences

In an omni-channel marketing universe, brands trying to be all things to all customers will get lost in the shuffle.
5 comments

Marketing

Five Considerations for Managing Brands in M&As

In a merger or acquisition, brands sometimes become one, but often remain separate. How should leaders decide which way to go?

Marketing

What Brands Need to Survive in a Digital World

Before you start making heavy investments in digital, make sure your brand adheres to these three basic principles.
4 comments

Marketing

Brand Building Is Everyone’s Responsibility

Boards should guide branding, but they should also be making it the job of everyone in the organisation.

Marketing

Building a Customer-Centric Mindset

Organisations that want to become customer-centric must shift their focus from tools towards people in the organisation in order to get employees thinking like their customers.
1 comment

Marketing

The Characteristics of Effective Brands

Winning brands thrive because they’re aligned with strategic objectives and adapt over time.
1 comment

Marketing

Brain Scans Show What’s Wrong With Conventional Marketing

Identifying what makes some people more responsive than others to marketing actions leads to more effective campaigns.

Marketing

Four Steps Boards Should Take to Build Global Brands

The board has a much more critical role to play in successful branding than ever before. It needs to act as the catalyst, supporter, enhancer and implementer of brand building strategies.
2 comments

Marketing

So, You Think Your Customers Understand Percentages?

Pierre Chandon

Most consumers incorrectly believe that a 50 percent cost discount is worth the same as a 50 percent benefit bonus, or that a 30 percent cost increase is as bad as a 30 percent benefit decrease. They’re better off choosing the percentage cost change and we should help them.

Marketing

The Eight Most Common Big Data Myths

The hype surrounding “Big Data” does businesses a disservice by making it all look much too easy.
13 comments

Marketing

How Focusing on the Pleasure of Eating Can Reduce Obesity

To increase public health and food company margins, food marketers must realise size and pleasure are not correlated—at least when it comes to food.
2 comments

Marketing

Why Brands Are So Important

Without a strong brand-building philosophy, many developing companies may never truly emerge to global prominence.

Marketing

Resurrecting a Falling Brand

The revival of McDonald’s will be a detailed, painful, disciplined and comprehensive journey but an essential one.

Marketing

How Much Choice Should Consumers Have?

The retail sector bends over backwards to give the consumer an inordinate number of product choices, and yet, does the consumer want so much variety?

Marketing

The Rebirth of the Chief Marketing Officer

Contrary to popular belief, the role of CMO is not dead, but it has been utterly transformed. The successful and effective CMO of tomorrow differs from the one of yesterday in two fundamental ways.
1 comment

Marketing

Luxury Brands, Take Note: High-Status Consumers Aren’t Snobs

Many elite buyers are drawn to products commonly associated with the hoi polloi.
1 comment

Marketing

Overcoming Obesity: Can Big Food Help?

Pierre Chandon

It is possible to improve public health and keep big food profitable.
3 comments

Marketing

The “Social Media New Deal” for Luxury Brands

David Dubois

The rise of social media has put more power in the hands of a diversity of stakeholders who now shape for a large part of what is viewed as luxury. As a result, luxury brands have to learn how to negotiate their identity by striking new deals with these stakeholders at three levels: the brand image, the brand content and the brand ambassadors.
1 comment

Marketing

Boards Should Guide Branding

Intangible assets, such as brands, drive value creation. It’s time more companies brought them into the boardroom.

Marketing

Where Are All the Global Asian Brands?

Emerging market companies have grabbed market share by doing things faster and cheaper. But their next phase of value creation will come from building their brands.
3 comments

Marketing

What Apple Pay Means for China

The launch of Apple Pay is tipped to make a profound impact on the payments industry in the United States and potentially Europe, but can it compete in China?
1 comment

Marketing

Content Marketing is About Trust, Not Just Reach

Viral videos or hashtag campaigns won’t convert customers unless they build trust and confidence with their audience.
2 comments

Marketing

Navigating the Geopolitics of the New Luxury Consumer

Newly rich Russian and Chinese consumers have kept the luxury sector buoyant in recent years. Will these markets continue to be the lands of opportunity for luxury brands as the world turns against Russia and the Chinese leaders enforce their anti-corruption campaign?

Marketing

The New Rules of Pharma Marketing

Marcel Corstjens

Basing marketing strategies on relationships with doctors won’t suffice anymore. Sea changes in the pharmaceutical industry are prompting a total rewrite of the marketing playbook.
1 comment

Marketing

Managing Digital Consumer Influence in Luxury

The democratisation of the Internet has led to the emergence of influencers who sometimes have more followers, reach and influence than brands themselves. How can luxury brands manage and engage with such influencers?
1 comment

Marketing

Social Media and the Marketing Mix Model

Listening tools can help companies determine social media ROI in terms of real financial impact. But this only works if consumer sentiment is part of a more holistic marketing mix model.
16 comments

Marketing

The Challenge of Creating Digital Content for Luxury Brands

Digital media has given luxury customers more power than ever before to shape the image of the brands they follow. How can these brands translate their heritage and historical image into content that will resonate with the hyperconnected consumer of today?
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Marketing

Marketing Lessons for Coke from Peru’s Big Cola

An emerging cola brand from Peru schools the giants on how to achieve big growth.
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Marketing

Building a Luxury Brand Image in a Digital World

Luxury managers often see digital media as a threat, worrying that mass appeal will take power away from the brand. But digital channels offer powerful connections with customers and closer integration with their ecosystems.
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Marketing

Logos Mean More than You Think

It is shocking that companies do not seem to recognise the profound influence logos can have.
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Marketing

When Warhol Meets the Web: How A/B Testing Revolutionises Product Development and Maximises Impact

Testing two products or marketing offers with different sections of your customer base can yield a winning approach.
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Marketing

Putting a Price Tag on Brands

A universally accepted standard for brand valuation is an urgent need in a business world increasingly driven by intangibles.
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Marketing

The Fine Lines of Brand Localisation

Just as executives adapt their management styles to suit new market cultures, brands must do the same, while staying true to their identity.
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Marketing

Power Shapes Who and What Consumers Value

The buying behaviour of the rich and the poor is determined by the power they feel they have.

Marketing

The Danger of Siloed Social Media

Many companies treat social media as a separate entity to their branding and marketing channels. Those able to integrate it with their brand and marketing strategy are the standouts.
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Marketing

The Next Phase of China’s Luxury Consumption

Luxury consumers in China are moving from show-offs to appreciators of the finer things. Brands will have to make their products less conspicuous to capture them.
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Marketing

The Future of Social Media ROI: From Likes to Relational Metrics

Measuring the success of social media interactions cannot be done using traditional ROI metrics. The nature of the communication channels involved requires a brand new approach.
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Marketing

Decrypting The Secrets of Business Triumph

Business practitioners study them, students debate them and companies examine them. The most-popular case studies of the last 40 years show some timeless business challenges and how to overcome them.

Marketing

Oscar Selfies: Another Side to the Fun

Both "the selfie that broke Twitter" and the device that captured it are brilliant examples of powerful alliances.
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Marketing

Extending the Life of Coca-Cola

Adding a healthier Coke to a line of brands already positioned to be “better for you” could be a winning formula.
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Marketing

Content Strategy is King in Social Media

Building true social media engagement means creating a content strategy to hook the audience, not just being on social media.
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Marketing

Multi-Homing on Social Networks

Facebook is not going to become irrelevant just because its users also browse other social networks

Marketing

Food Marketers on a Diet

P. Chandon, C.Howells

How the food business could improve its health by getting its customers in better shape.
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Marketing

Big Data vs. Don Draper

Big consulting firms with Big Data are trying to muscle in on the advertising business. But do they have the creativity to compete with agencies?

Marketing

Warnings About Risky Side-Effects Can Boost Sales

It seems reasonable to assume that warning consumers of a product’s potential dangers would scare them into rethinking their purchase. Disturbingly, the opposite can be true.
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Marketing

Turning Expectations Into Customer Satisfaction

Hilke Plassmann

Expectations can determine the perception of your product. Setting that expectation and spreading it is the next step, but beware of trickery.
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Marketing

Sports Defeat Can Make You Fat

Pierre Chandon

Watching your favourite sports team suffer defeat can turn you into an unhealthy eater, unless you step back and remember what’s important to you.

Entrepreneurship

In-Store Cameras: From Security Aids to Sales Tools

Data from loyalty cards, store transactions and social media is helping bricks and mortar retailers understand the who, what and when of sales, but when it comes to what’s happening inside the store, information is pretty thin on the ground. Until in-store cameras came along.
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Economics & Finance

Just who are the Very Rich Consumers?

They are famous yet elusive, jet-setters though low-profile. And thus far, a mystery…
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Marketing

Is Feminine Perfection Still Good for Sales?

Contrary to popular opinion, those bikini-clad young models draped over the show-room Ferrari might be doing your sales more harm than good these days.

Marketing

Marketing Advice for the NSA

As the media’s and the public’s short attention span inevitably shifts from coverage of the NSA’s activities to the next Kardashian story, you’ll be turning your attention from crisis-management to the long game. You’ll be re-examining your strategy, methods, and tactics for achieving total information awareness. In this, you could learn from companies in the private sector.

Marketing

Global advertising spend in 2013

Roughly half way through the year, estimates seem to draw a coherent picture about the size and the various components of the total 2013 advertising spending in the world. Total spend is some half a trillion dollars. About a third of this comes from the US and most of the growth is from the emerging economies.

Marketing

Contradictions about Facebook

Lots of data and commentary came out about Facebook these past few days. One set concerns the membership base. Here, the worry is about peaking membership numbers and an aging user base. Not only seem older users be more interested in Facebook than before but younger ones appear to disengage with it.

Marketing

What’s in a Brand?

Tradition, culture, craftsmanship all contribute to the brand you buy. But how much more are you willing to pay for that label?
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Marketing

Clicks vs. Bricks: The Battle for the High Street

Nigel Roberts

Could social media and e-commerce provide the road to salvation for beleaguered High Street retailers? In Britain, shopkeepers figure you can beat them – but how?

Marketing

Video on demand: some news

Video on demand is the hottest topic in media nowadays. Many see it as the next technology ready to disrupt further an otherwise already disrupted traditional media landscape.

Marketing

Evolution of Video Game Industry

This is a really cool chart that appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek (Dec. 10-16, 2012). It shows the share of new game releases for the different game platforms (PC, XBox, Playstation, iPad and their various sequels) for every year between 1975-2012. The chart is complex but closer examination reveals a few fascinating facts

Marketing

Google News in Europe

It seems that European legislators really want to go after Google, especially Google News. Recently, Germany has introduced a proposal that would force Google to pay a fee when showing a snippet of a news story among the results. This move comes after the similar French proposal mentioned by Miklos in a previous post.

Marketing

A Christmas Story: Sugar Soars, Profits Drop

One German confectioner is saying “Bah, humbug!” to the Christmas cookie business, weary of high sugar prices, low profit margins, and tough sales competition.
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Marketing

Traditional media and user-generated content

Traditional media outlets started to regulaly publish content form the web. CNN’s so-called “distraction page” is shown below…

Marketing

Labelling, Packaging and Other Eating Enticements

Pierre Chandon

Food marketers have taken the blame for seducing consumers into over-eating. But expert researchers claim it doesn’t have to always be this way…

Marketing

Hobson’s choice on Tuesday

One of the things that marketing does really well is to make small differences loom large. To believe the ads, the difference between Tide and Sunlight laundry detergents, between Coke and Pepsi colas, Nike and Adidas athletic shoes, and Shell and Exxon gasoline, are so vast and so consequential that you should make your decisions to buy one or the other very very carefully.

Economics & Finance

Google and France (and Europe)

Today, the French government announced that it will introduce legislation requiring Google to pay a fee to French media sites for listing their content pages. Google promptly responded that in this case it will stop listing French media sites in his search queries. CNN’s report on the conflict can be read here: http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/21/technology/google-french-links/index.html?iid=obinsite.

Economics & Finance

Merger Control and Practice in the BRIC Countries vs. the EU and the US: The Timing

Karel Cool

By Philippe Ombregt, Karel Cool, Nicolas Harlé Mergers or acquisitions are often the preferred way to enter rapidly growing geographies such as the BRIC countries. Also, domestic companies in these geographies frequently use M&A’s to challenge foreign entrants or to become a player with global ambitions. Without surprise, the number of M&A’s in the BRIC countries exploded during the last decade. We documented in a first article “Merger control and practice in the BRIC countries vs. the EU and the US: The facts”, that the number of M&A’s in the BRIC countries increased more than twenty-fold between 2001 and 2011, from 346 to 7654. This is equivalent to about half the number of M&A’s in the EU or the US in 2011; it stood at roughly a twentieth in 2001.

Strategy

French Flair, Asian Ambition

When Reinold Geiger put his money into L'Occitane en Provence, he thought he’d be a hands-off investor. Looking back he realises it takes a tough man to build a successful skin care company.

Marketing

Apple, directionless?

The Apple Maps App fiasco is having an interesting effect on the company’s brand and its loyal fan following. The inevitable “this would not have happened had Steve still been here” conclusion is all over the internet.

Marketing

“No really, my market is different!”

Speak to enough brand managers of a global brand in countries around the world and you’ll soon come to expect the all too common refrain: “…but my market is different.” Ask them to elaborate, and you’ll get the low down on how consumer habits in their market are different, their consumers’ purchase behaviour is different, preferences and tastes are different, how the media and the retail trade are different, and how their consumers and customers require unique, tailored, and delicate handling.

Marketing

Honesty’s price: CNN and Media bias

A recent article in The Economist (Sept 21, 2012), “Unbiased and unloved” reports the stagnation of CNN’s viewership relative to its competitors. According to data from Nielsen, from 1998-2012, CNN’s daily viewership in the US has been relatively flat averaging 0.5 million viewers while its competitors, Fox News and MSNBC show steady growth. More painfully even, in the last few months, there is a decline for CNN while its competitors benefit – as expected – from the election period. Fox News has over a million daily users while MSNBC has just passed CNN at over 0.4 million.

Marketing

Virtual Worlds dying – but slowly

Out of curiosity I have done some online search about virtual worlds. I have also visited INSEAD’s Second Life (SL) location and while there, I was wondering around SL’s mainland, something I have not done for 3 years now (!). To my astonishment there was more life on Second Life than I expected. I had a particularly interesting time in a rock club where the music was exceptionally good and the DJ had a great line…. The club had a good dozen people dancing, quite some turnover and good looking avatars and all of this at around 9 am EST on a Tuesday. The SL mainland was certainly more active than 3-4 years ago when the virtual world fell off the Internet publicity cliff and sunk into the unknown.

Marketing

Facebook’s stock price

Today’s 8pm News on French TV reviewed the evolution of Facebook’s stock price – an interesting move from a rather ‘business unfriendly’ medium. Or was it, maybe, jealousy the motivating factor? “See those 20-year billionaires in the US; their success is all bogus….”

Marketing

Olympics on new and traditional media

There is an interesting conflict between new and traditional media when it comes to global sport events, the biggest of which being the summer Olympic games. Old media buys broadcasting rights and airs events punctuated by advertising. As long as events are aired in real time there is no problem.

Marketing

Pink shades for everyone!

Economic slowdowns, recessions, and even depressions are made worse than they should be because of psychological effects. In the expectation of an economic downturn businesses hold off on investments, consumers delay big ticket spending, and save rather than spend. The more talk there is of recession, the more a recession is likely. Recession becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Economics & Finance

The year of the austerity Olympics

The 2012 Summer Games cost £9 billion. What kind of stimulus will that bring to the U.K. economy? And what will remain after the medals have been awarded and the cheering stops?

Marketing

What happened to disintermediation?

With the rise of the web in the 1990s came predictions of disintermediation. In a world where the upstream players (the makers of products and services) could reach end customers directly through the internet, there was no longer a raison d’être for intermediaries.

Marketing

Is Wikipedia biased?

A very interesting study about Wikipedia appeared in the recent issue of the American Economic Review (Greenstein and Zhu, 2012). The article tries to establish if Wikipedia is biased in a political sense? Are articles more left or right leaning? The question is interesting because Wikipedia is the prototypical medium built entirely on user-generated content. But Wikipedia is not just a social network where personal information constitutes the overwhelming majority of uploaded content. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia meant to summarize the collective knowledge of mankind.

Marketing

Oracles again

There is a good article in The Economist, June 9th, 2012 about expert advice. The article provides evidence that such advice remains very highly on demand despite clear evidence that it’s quality is bad. One of the key reasons mentioned is that people need psychological reassurance: “we believe in experts the same way our anchestors believed in oracles; we want to believe in a controllable world and we have a flawed understanding of the laws of chance.” ends the article with a quote from a recent author (Philip Tetlock: Expert political advice).

Marketing

End of social?

With the Facebook IPO muddle, will money stop flowing to social media? Will the social media space stop consolidating (no more Instagram-like deals?) because the social media giants’ acquisition currency, their stock, has been devalued? Will the best entrepreneurs reconsider their social media ideas; put them on the back burner; be unable to fund them? Has the social media marketing fad passed?

Marketing

Why Marketers get no respect

Put on your thick skin, your Kevlar vest — this blog post is not for the faint of heart. The problem is not just that consumers find marketers unsavory, it is also that even within the company marketers get no respect.

Marketing

Google’s Knowledge Graph

Google has just announced that it will completely reshape the presentation of its search results. Instead of listing websites where people can find the answer to their queries, it will present data, links, pictures, etc. from its own databases, some 500 million “items”. The redesign is said to represent the biggest change in search for the last five years, not just conceptually but also in terms of business impact.

Marketing

A brief history of Louis Vuitton and Hermès

Established in 1854, Louis Vuitton designed and introduced flat-bottom luggage trunks made with trianon canvas.

Economics & Finance

Why are Chinese consumers crazy for Apple?

Chinese consumers are hungry for foreign brands but for Apple products, in particular, the demand is insatiable. What explains China’s love affair with Apple?
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Economics & Finance

Consumer spending in China

Retailers have looked at the Chinese consumer as the saviour of economic growth. But as recession hovers on the horizon, will these consumers be putting away their pocketbooks?

Marketing

Brand mimicry

The monarch and the pipevine swallowtail are the Hermès and Louis Vuitton of the butterfly world – other butterflies imitate them. Non-toxic butterflies, through genetic mutation over generations, come to resemble toxic species so that predators are fooled into leaving them alone. The viceroy butterfly, for example, shares the monarch’s colors, and appears at the same time of year in similar habitats.

Economics & Finance

New or improved: What consumers really want

Do companies require radical innovations to woo consumers? New research suggests…no!
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Marketing

SEC considers civil case against Egan-Jones, an independent CRA

Egan-Jones is a relatively young, independent credit rating agency (CRA), one of few such institutions where investors pay for the agency’s services not the institutions whose securities are being rated.

Marketing

The rich, the lazy, the busy, the ignorant, and the vain

Done well, market segmentation can do so much. It can uncover entirely new markets (see Blue Ocean Strategy), provide new ways of serving existing markets and rejuvenate entire categories and industries (remember Swatch watches?), out-maneuver competitors (Nike segments the market into very small niches so competitors are contained), and offer segment developers first-rights to the new market (The Walkman had a 50% market share at a 20% price premium for a couple of decades).

Marketing

Why we segment

At the heart of everything that marketers do resides a notion so fundamental, so basic, it is the engine that makes the free market tick. This notion is, of course, that every customer is different. Few have said it better than Monty Python in Life of Brian

Marketing

Social publishers: a new paradigm for online media

Many of my recent readings of the business press give the impression that a consensus seems to emerge among professional content providers (also called “content mills”) – online newspapers (e.g. Huffington Post, The Business Insider), online tabloids (e.g. BuzzFeed) or blogs.

Marketing

Freedom and the Internet

The Jasmine Revolution that has affected many of the Arab countries showed how big a role the Internet in general and social networks in particular can play in promoting political freedom.

Marketing

Markets or shareholders?

There is a fine line between professing free-market capitalism and teaching the subversion of those markets that is crossed in business-school classrooms every day.

Marketing

Selling soap to Nigeria: One Indian conglomerate goes beyond

India is the darling of investors looking to benefit from the rapid growth of emerging markets. But well-established Indian companies are looking for growth, too, and they are finding it in the developing world.

Marketing

Credit Rating Agencies

Last week has been rich in news about Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs). Both the Financial Times (March 23, 2012) and The Economist (March 17, 2012) had articles on CRAs commenting on how the industry is being reshaped after the scandals triggered by the global credit and fiscal crises. I have followed this industry for over a decade now but I keep being surprised how little progress has been achieved in fixing it.

Economics & Finance

Benefit from the networks of your lost employees

Andrew Shipilov

Is losing employees bad for your firm? An intuitive answer would be a straight “yes” because by losing employees, your organisation seemingly loses not only its human capital (i.e. their skills and tacit knowledge accumulated over the years) but also its social capital (i.e. all the internal and external connections your employees have made over their career inside your firm). In other words, conventional wisdom suggests that by losing employees, companies lose both brains and address books. This idea is out of date.

Marketing

Would You Buy an iPhone Because Apple “Creates” American Jobs?

A couple of days ago Apple released some numbers of how many jobs it creates in the United States. And that number is close to half a million. Apart from the 47,000 jobs “at Apple”, there are about 250 thousand engineering, sales, logistics and service jobs that created by the mere existence of Apple. Plus Apple claims that it creates 200 thousand jobs that can be ascribed to the “iOS app economy”. Check here for the data and Apple’s view.

Marketing

Marketing is context

In 2007 The Washington Post carried an astonishing article describing a social experiment the newspaper had conducted. The Post had asked Joshua Bell to play in the Washington metro during the morning rush hour. As the newspaper describes it, “No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made….in a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”

Entrepreneurship

How Disposable Tissue Turned into the New Art Form

Any marketer understands the importance of product differentiation. One CEO with an interest in art went one step further and developed a luxury fashion item in the least likely of market sectors: toilet paper.

Marketing

Are Telecom service providers social networks?

My recent interaction with Telecom service providers has been frustrating – to say the least. Telecoms face the very typical situation of declining industry life cycle. Their revenue model is “fee for service” and the service is becoming a commodity. They are under intense pressure to become more efficient in their traditional business, which makes it hard for them to concentrate on revolutionary change in their business models. In essence they spend all their energy on process innovation instead of business model innovation.

Entrepreneurship

INSEAD wins top global case study award

Marketing Case Study of Portugal’s Renova Black Toilet Paper is #1

Marketing

A modest diagnosis of India’s infrastructure woes

I just got back from Hong Kong, and on the way back I stopped in India, as I usually do.

Marketing

Facebook’s value again

My colleague, Hernan Bruno did a great job (see https://blog.insead.edu/2012/02/what-does-a-100bn-valuation-for-facebook-mean/) estimating Facebook’s value from data broadly available on the company as well as sensible assumptions about growth, retention, discount rates and other relevant parameters.

Marketing

What does a $100bn valuation for Facebook mean?

If you follow financial or technology news, you’ve probably already read plenty of stories about Facebook going public. You know about all the Facebook millionaire (or billionaire!) employees, its financials, its mission to “connect” the world, and the unusual degree of control that Mark Zuckerberg will hold. My colleague Miklos Sarvary has two very good posts on the INSEAD blog here and here, putting Facebook’s dominance and valuation into the general context of social media and advertising.

Marketing

Marketing lessons from the financial crisis

The saying “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan” goes back at least as far as Tacitus (around 100 B.C.). So calling the financial crisis of 2008 a financial crisis, has the benefit of finding at least one father for that failure: the field of finance, and its real-world embodiment, Wall Street.

Marketing

Facebook on The Economist’s frontpage

It is quite remarquable to see Facebook on the front page of The Economist. As usual there is some good data presented on Facebook’s crazy growth over the last 5 years. The simple explanation provided for this success is ‘network effects’, which are well-known for creating market dominance by only one leading firm (the so-called ‘winner-take-all’ outcome). We have seen this before with Microsoft dominating the OS market or Intel winning on the market of microprocessors.

Marketing

GAFA, the new face of marketing

It is a misconception that the dominant businesses of Silicon Valley are technology companies. Sure, when you think of the venerable old names such as Intel and HP, semiconductor chips and hardware based on those chips come to mind. But just as the 1980s saw the Valley shift to software, and in the 1990s the Valley rode the internet boom, the present century has so far been about consumers and marketing.

Marketing

Are business school rankings good for you?

Whether you’re a prospective student, a recruiter, or a donor, use business school rankings with caution.
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Marketing

The value of Facebook

There is a short entry in today’s Financial Times about Facebook and the uncertainty surrounding its IPO. Essentially, people worry that Facebook may not have that much upside potential.

Marketing

Media Bias and Advertising

Media bias is a very interesting topic. Much recent research tries to figure out what causes media bias (slanting) and what is responsible for large differences across countries. There are many theories, some obvious (e.g. the media is owned by a mogul with strong political interests – such as the case of Silvio Berlusconi or Rupert Murdoch), some more subtle (e.g. the idea that people do not consume media to discover the truth but rather they look for confirmation of their existing political biases – see Chapter 4 of my book).

Marketing

Social media: What next?

By now, most will acknowledge social media is here to stay. What can we expect and how do companies stay ahead? A digital strategist and former social media manager of The New York Times shares her views.

Marketing

Partnership between INSEAD and THE KLU

Luk Van Wassenhove

Cereal, not just cell phones. Logistics is not only about the transport of electronic gadgets and other consumer goods from the emerging markets to the affluent West; it’s also about the lifeblood of millions of people receiving humanitarian aid in the most poverty and war-stricken areas around the globe.

Marketing

Kuehne & Nagel

The Kuehne family started shipping goods throughout Germany more than 125 years ago. Today, Kuehne and Nagel is one of the world’s largest logistics firms, a key element in the global economy. They did it by focusing on staff development.

Marketing

Academic literature on new media

Recently a colleague of mine has asked me what would be the key academic papers on the topic of “new media”. It took me a few hours to think through the request not because I didn’t remember the papers but rather because I had a hard time to categorize them around themes that are relevant for the topic. Finally, I have settled for the following list of papers and categories. No wonder, the list is heavily biased towards my research. Sorry for this.

Strategy

Technology über alles

The death of Apple’s Steve Jobs has made the world reflect on how technology – not a little of that because of Jobs – has changed the way we spend our time: online, with music, just “being connected” with the world at large. It’s also an opportunity to take a look at Apple’s “seeds” and what those companies are doing today, thanks in no small part to the refocusing of the industry to which Jobs and his company contributed.

Marketing

Fair Trade?

Hardly a week goes by without yet another milestone for “ethically labeled” products. You know, the products that are labeled “Fair Trade,” “Organic,” “Green,” and so on. Here’s a recent report, for example, that says that 10,000 products are now sold with a Fair Trade certification in the U.S., and that sales of such products are up 63% in the last QUARTER! In markets such as the United Kingdom, more than one of every five cups of coffee sold is fair trade labeled.

Marketing

Is food marketing making us fat?

Grace Segran

Are we to blame for the obesity epidemic? Or the people who sell the food to us? New research shows that packaging and position, not just advertising, are at least part of the problem.

Marketing

Controlling the urge

Does the ability to control one urge extend over the ability to control other urges? For example, the urge to control a full bladder? New research by INSEAD visiting professor of marketing Mirjam Tuk proves it can – and not only that: the decisions you make when under the “urge to purge” are actually better than those made under “normal” circumstances.

Marketing

What the heck is a brand anyway?

We use the term “brand” with such frequency, such alacrity, and such assurance, you’d almost think we know what it means.

Marketing

A thirst for social media

The maker of one of the world’s leading brands is targeting tech-savvy younger consumers. It’s not your usual marketing campaign.

Marketing

Should Facebook consider breaking itself up?

At some point in the future regulators may look at the industry and argue that dominant social networks are “natural monopolies” with too great a concentration of market power. But long before that hypothetical eventuality, is it smart strategy forFacebook to break itself up?

Economics & Finance

China and luxury: A rekindled romance

Luxury is all about dreams. It represents the best. So says Marketing Professor Li Fei of Tsinghua University, China, in a recent interview for the Chinese media. He shares his thoughts with INSEAD Knowledge on the recent boom in this lucrative sector and in a country which shunned luxury and ostentation for almost all of the last century.

Marketing

Fast fashion meets luxury labels

Take a stroll down London’s Old Bond Street or Milan’s Via Montenapoleone and you will see the latest offerings of Chanel and Gucci: exquisite creations of the finest material and craftsmanship. Hop over to Oxford Street or Corso Vittorio Emanuele, and you will discover the window displays of H&M and Zara are exhibiting pretty much the same designs – albeit with lower quality materials, questionable craftsmanship, and significantly lower prices. Guess which is flush with cash? INSEAD Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Frederic Godart, has some surprising predictions as to which way this lucrative market is heading.

Strategy

Keeping spirits up in a downturn

Grace Segran reports from London on the current state of the spirits industry.

Marketing

Indo-vation: tapping the Indian market

Two decades of trials have placed L'Oreal high in the Indian beauty market. But with still low penetration levels and cut-throat competition, where are the company's next opportunities

Marketing

The price of perception

How much is Tiger Woods worth to an advertiser? What is the value of Facebook or Bebo? The answers are all different, but they all come down to perception. We find out more from INSEAD Professors Annet Aris and Steven Sweldens.

Economics & Finance

Sustainable practices: engaging consumers and suppliers

Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) is one firm that knows very well that its environmental and economic impact extends well beyond its factory gates. This starts with the ingredients it needs for its products to the natural resources required to make the packaging, "extending all the way to the people who buy and consume our drinks and handle the packaging," says CCE Europe's Communications Director, Shanna Wendt (YMP Sep '05).

Marketing

Is there hope for the newspaper industry?

The future may be looking decidedly bleak for the newspaper industry in the US, but for Joshua Benton, Director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, there is still cause for optimism.

Marketing

Just a pretty face(book)? Social media tries to come of age

Emails are old hat; SMSs passe. Tweeting, blogging, and posting on “walls” are no longer the domain of the under-30s. They have become a staple of the way most people in the world communicate today, of the way Fortune 100 companies reach out to customers old and new.

Economics & Finance

Advice to direct marketers: let the people do the talking

The explosion of social networking sites has been a boon for direct marketers. For the hundreds of millions of users of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and so on, they are fun ways to communicate with their friends and make more friends. But for marketers they are huge databases of consumer information.

Marketing

Leapfrogging over the Joneses

Measures to reduce conspicuous consumption by lower income earners in order to encourage them to boost their savings and spend more on healthcare, education and other essentials could backfire, according to recent research by INSEAD PhD candidate Nailya Ordabayeva and Associate Professor of Marketing Pierre Chandon.