Trust and the business school

In the June 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, Joel Podolny writes about the apparent lack of trust in U.S. business schools in "The Buck Stops (and Starts) at Business School". In order to regain trust, Podolny offers the following recommendations for business schools: foster greater integration; appoint teaching teams; encourage qualitative research; stop competing on rankings; and withdraw degrees for violating codes of conduct.

The June issue of HBR is focused on "trust" and includes several timely articles on related topics.

To locate this article in PDF format through the USF libraries, login to the "Business Source Premier" database and search on "Harvard Business Review" and Podolny. USFSP faculty and students can also set up alerts to receive an email notices of new issues (with citations and embedded links). Drop me a note if you'd like assistance in setting up an e-alert for HBR or other publications or topics.

Online music

The Pew Research Center is using the ten-year anniversary of its Internet & American Life Project as an opportunity to release retrospective reports on selected topics. "The State of Music Online: Ten Years after Napster" is an 18-page report that looks at the dramatic changes in the music industry:

"While the music industry has been on the front lines of the battle to convert freeloaders into paying customers, their efforts have been watched closely by other digitized industries—newspapers, book publishing and Hollywood among them—who are hoping to staunch their own bleeding before it’s too late. And if the music market is any indication of how consumer expectations will evolve elsewhere, the demands for free content will extend far beyond the mere cost of the product."

home ownership = happiness?

Research from a real estate professor at Wharton, Grace Bucchianeri, seems to question the conventional wisdom that home ownership leads to happiness. Knowledge@Wharton newsletter profiles her research in the article, "So you think owning a home will make you happy? Don't be too sure." The article provides a link to the 38-page working paper:

"The results show that after controlling for household income, housing quality, and health, homeowners are no happier than renters by any of the following definitions: life satisfaction, overall mood, overall feeling, general moment-to-moment emotions (i.e. affect) and affect at home but instead derive more pain from their house and home. Time use pattern analysis reveals that homeowners tend to spend less time on enjoyable activities. There is little evidence that homeowners are better citizens. Homeowners who live in ZIP code areas with higher rates of homeownership report more positive attitudes only if other owners are similar to them in socio-economic terms, lending some support to the idea of beneficial social interaction among owners."

Internet advertising revenues

According to the most recent IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, internet advertising revenues in the U.S. reached $23.4 billion in 2008, up 10.6% over 2007.

The 21-page report includes information by advertising format (e.g., display banners, search, classified ads, etc.) and by major industry category (e.g., retail, financial services, automotive, etc.).

The "Internet Advertising Revenue Report" was initiated by the IAB-Interactive Advertising Bureau in 1996 and is conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP on an ongoing basis.

Trends: Foreverism, Nowism...

The most recent briefing from Trendwatching.com is focused on a trend dubbed "Foreverism":

"...Encompasses the many ways that consumers and businesses are embracing conversations, relationships, and products that are never done. Driving its popularity is technology that allows them to find, follow, interact and collaborate forever with anyone & anything."

One example provided is the enormous and growing quantity of online profiles, links, stories, photos, friends of friends..... creating a "forever presence" of individuals online. You will never be more than one or two degrees away from anyone else... and now with Google Latitude you can also follow the physical location of friends as well....

Twitter is an example of the forever and ongoing conversations. Businesses can also use Twitter to communicate with consumers -- Trendwatching.com provides excerpts from some corporate Twitter accounts such as Ford, Whole Foods, Wells Fargo, Jet Blue Airways, and others.

To follow these trends, subscribe to receive free monthly email briefings from Trendwatching.com.

Consumer electronics: Converged v. Dedicated Products

In the paper, “Technology Convergence: When do consumers prefer converged products to dedicated products”, two professors at Singapore Management University found that while consumers still generally prefer dedicated products, all-in-one products such as the iPhone are increasingly popular. Convenience, rather than performance, is one of the key benefits for converged products. For high performance products, consumers generally look for dedicated products....

"If anything, the study has shown that the contest between converged and dedicated products lie mainly with consumer perceptions. Consumer electronics manufacturers could stand to benefit from innovative products, but perhaps more so, through innovative marketing."

"Do friends influence purchases in a social network?"

A working paper from the Harvard Business School examines the question, "Do friends influence purchases in a social network?" The short answer from researchers Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han, and Sunil Gupta is: it depends.

So, while in general a friend's purchases has a positive impact on the purchase probability of a user, there are great differences across different types of users. For example, "Highly connected users tend to reduce their purchases of items when they see their friends buying them." (In other words, if others are buying it, it's no longer cool...)

You can read the abstract and executive summary here, and then link to the full-text PDF of the working paper.