Everyone knows that success at work depends on being--and being seen as--both competent and likable. You need people to notice your growth and accomplishments while also enjoying your company. But if you draw attention to the value you've created, to ensure that managers and peers recognize it, you risk coming across as a shameless self-promoter. No one likes a braggart. In this article the author explains how to highlight your accomplishments at work without having it backfire. Drawing from a fascinating strain of laboratory research, she advises against several popular tactics such as "humblebragging" and "boomerÂasking" (asking a question in the hope it will be reciprocated so that you can bring up your own accomplishments). Instead, she advises, recognize situations where self-promotion is socially acceptable (such as job interviews) and consider using a mentor or other agent to boast on your behalf.
Fishbowl is a social media app that allows professionals to connect with other relevant professionals both within their company and across industry. Unlike many other social media apps, on which users typically present idealized portraits of themselves, on Fishbowl, people get real. Fishbowl prides itself in being a "safe space" that allows users to feel comfortable interacting with candor - whether to ask difficult questions in order to give and get advice, or just to vent or crack jokes. A key part of the user experience is the ability to post anonymously. But to ensure relevance of posts, when a user signs up, Fishbowl verifies their identity by requiring them to provide their full name, employer email address, LinkedIn account and contact list. Fishbowl has several hundred thousand users and is now looking for ways to monetize the platform. As such, founders Loren Appin and Matt Sunbulli face a mission-critical decision: should they integrate employers into the platform? Although formally integrating employers would provide a much-needed revenue stream, at the same time Appin and Sunbulli worry that doing so could destroy the user experience. Is formalizing employer relationships antithetical to the safe space they have created?
By the time Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Sidewalk Labs, began hosting a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session in January 2018, he had only nine months remaining to convince the people of Toronto, their government representatives, and presumably his parent company Alphabet, Inc., that Sidewalk Labs' plan to construct "the first truly 21st-century city" on the Canadian city's waterfront was a sound one. Along with much excitement and optimism, strains of concern had emerged since Doctoroff and partners first announced their intentions for a city "built from the internet up" in Toronto's Quayside district. As Doctoroff prepared for yet another milestone in a year of planning and community engagement, it was almost certain that of the many questions headed his way, digital privacy would be among them.
In August 2017, Commonwealth Bank of Australia was looking for ways to differentiate itself from competing banks, and was also trying to improve the financial wellbeing of its customers. One domain where this was particularly relevant was in its bank-issued credit card business, where customers routinely selected cards that although profitable for the bank could be a poor fit for customers' needs - leading to low satisfaction scores, cancellations, and occasionally, financial distress. To that end, the company's Behavioral Economics team had developed a provocative experiment dubbed "The Good and the Bad." Rather than just presenting the strengths of its various credit card offerings, they proposed also promoting each credit card's less-obvious drawbacks. Being transparent with customers might help them make better choices, but would those choices come at the expense of bank performance? Should a company choose to be in the sales prevention business?
Back to the Roots (BTTR) is a start-up with a social mission to "undo food"-to reconnect people to where their food comes from. In late 2017, Back to the Roots cofounders Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez were contemplating their next move. The company had an eclectic portfolio of products, including ready-to-grow products, which included gardens in a can, and ready-to-eat products, which included cereals, and was being courted by two major players in each category. With an award-winning cereal-based snack bar in their hands, the duo was debating whether they should delve further into the ready-to-eat category. But it was a competitive space. They wondered whether they were ready to launch yet another new product and, if so, what this move would mean for their ready-to-grow product line. Which path would enable them to best achieve their growth goals? This case provides a vehicle to teach a variety of marketing topics, including mission-driven marketing and branding, new product introduction, and product line extensions. First and foremost, the case allows students to contrast traditional marketing strategy with novel approaches that capitalize on recent shifts in consumer culture. In so doing, the case allows students to identify some of the risks and rewards of such a strategy. The case also prompts students to consider the benefits and risks of extending product lines, the strategic roles of new product introduction, and the importance of defining a firm's core business. The case can be used with undergraduates, MBA students, and executives. It can be used in survey marketing courses, as well as in more specialized courses, including marketing management, brand management, and entrepreneurial marketing.
Asking questions is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards. But few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed-or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive. That's a missed opportunity. The good news is that by asking questions, we naturally improve our emotional intelligence, which in turn makes us better questioners-a virtuous cycle. The authors draw on insights from behavioral science research to explore how the way we frame questions and choose to answer our counterparts can influence the outcome of conversations. They offer guidance for choosing the best type, tone, sequence, and framing of questions and for deciding what and how much information to share to reap the most benefit from our interactions, not just for ourselves but for our organizations.
Data gathered on the web has vastly enhanced the capabilities of marketers. With people regularly sharing personal details online and internet cookies tracking every click, companies can now gain unprecedented insight into individual consumers and target them with tailored ads. But when this practice feels invasive to people, it can prompt a strong backlash. Marketers today need to understand where to the draw the line. The good news is that psychologists already know a lot about what triggers privacy concerns off-line. These norms--and the authors' research--strongly suggest that firms steer clear of two ad-targeting techniques generally disliked by consumers: using information obtained on a third-party site rather than on the site on which an ad appears, which is akin to talking behind someone's back; and deducing information about people (such as a pregnancy) from analytics when they haven't declared it themselves. If marketers avoid those tactics, use data judiciously, focus on increasing trust and transparency, and offer people control over their personal data, their ads are much more likely to be accepted by consumers and help raise interest in engaging with a company and its products.
Campbell siblings Thomas and Sally are faced with selling their childhood home. They need to make several difficult consequential decisions, all the while navigating their contentious relationship. Did it make sense to hire a broker, or should they go it alone? How much was the home worth? What should the listing price be? Most importantly, what combination of answers would get them the best outcome? And along the way, as they gather information to answer these questions, several unforeseen events occur.
Campbell siblings Thomas and Sally are faced with selling their childhood home. They need to make several difficult consequential decisions, all the while navigating their contentious relationship. Did it make sense to hire a broker, or should they go it alone? How much was the home worth? What should the listing price be? Most importantly, what combination of answers would get them the best outcome? And along the way, as they gather information to answer these questions, several unforeseen events occur.
Campbell siblings Thomas and Sally are faced with selling their childhood home. They need to make several difficult consequential decisions, all the while navigating their contentious relationship. Did it make sense to hire a broker, or should they go it alone? How much was the home worth? What should the listing price be? Most importantly, what combination of answers would get them the best outcome? And along the way, as they gather information to answer these questions, several unforeseen events occur.
Brands spend billions of dollars a year on lavish efforts to establish and maintain a social media presence. But do those campaigns actually increase revenue? New research provides an answer to this question, which has vexed marketers ever since social media burst upon the scene. In a series of experiments, the researchers tested four increasingly interactive ways in which Facebook might affect customers' behavior. First, they explored whether liking a brand--passively following it--makes people more likely to purchase it. Second, they examined whether people's likes affect their friends' purchasing. Third, they looked at whether liking affects things other than purchasing (for example, whether it can persuade people to engage in healthful behaviors). And fourth, they tested whether boosting likes by paying to have branded content displayed in followers' news feeds increases the chances of meaningful behavior change. The results were clear: Merely liking a brand neither increases purchasing nor spurs friends to purchase more. Supporting likes with branded content, however, can prompt meaningful behavior change.
People, including negotiators, lie every day, so when you're trying to make a deal, it's important to defend against deception. The best strategy, says the author, is to focus not on detecting lies but on preventing them. She outlines five tactics that research has shown to be effective: (1) Encourage reciprocity. You can build trust and prompt other parties to disclose strategic information by sharing information yourself. (2) Ask the right questions. Negotiators often lie by omission, keeping mum about relevant facts, but if directly asked, they are more likely to respond honestly. (3) Watch for dodging. Don't let your counterparts sidestep your questions--write them down in advance, take notes on the answers, and make sure you get the information you're seeking. (4) Don't dwell on confidentiality. Studies show that the more you reassure others that you'll protect their privacy, the more guarded and apt to lie they become. So be nonchalant when discussing sensitive topics. (5) Cultivate leaks. People often reveal information unwittingly, so listen carefully for any slips and try indirect approaches to gaining information.
Core Curriculum Readings in Marketing cover fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. For classroom use in higher education, this Reading is accompanied by a Teaching Note, test bank, and exhibit slides. This Reading provides the basic knowledge a marketing manager needs in order to choose the right combination of research methods, as well as the best way to present research findings to stakeholders. Furthermore, this Reading shows how effective decision making hinges on marketing intelligence, which is defined as a deep and informed understanding of the relationship among the customer, the marketing environment, and the company's offerings.
The case describes a program that CVS Health recently implemented to improve medication adherence, an important problem from societal, public policy, and firm perspectives. A test of the program, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement, increased the proportion of adherent customers by 1.4 percentage points. Students are asked to quantify the system-wide economic benefit of this improvement and draw upon insights from behavioral science to examine approaches for boosting medication adherence.
stickK.com, a website that uses behavioral economics to help users achieve their goals, must choose between a direct-to-consumer or business-to-business model. The case includes a discussion of how principles of behavioral economics can be used to influence behavior, and how an understanding of behavioral economics can inform managerial decisions about product adoption and diffusion.
Whether your aim is to lose weight, save for retirement or quit smoking, most of us have a clear idea of the long-term goals that we would like to achieve for ourselves. Unfortunately, most of us also fail to implement the requisite course of action to produce these outcomes. Why don't we simply make the decisions necessary to make our goals a reality? The authors argue that Behavioral Economics can provide solutions to problems that predictably arise from individual behavior. Not only does it acknowledge that human behavior is often far from optimal, but it also identifies a variety of decision errors and biases that contribute to departures from optimality. The authors show that many of the same decision errors that produce self-destructive behavior in the first place can actually be used to people's individual and collective benefit.