Yale Center for Customer Insights
The Center's goal is to promote new insights based on partnerships that involve academic researchers from multi-disciplines and decision makers in the public and private sectors. The Center aims to engage and provide a forum for faculty, Ph.D. students, selected MBA students, visiting scholars, business associates and supporters, to make important contributions on a wide range of topics that relate to customers.

Recent Papers
For a full list of faculty research, click here.

Recruiting Less-Loyal Customers for Word-of-Mouth Campaigns
May Be Most Effective According to Study
As consumers become more impervious to traditional marketing tactics, companies are increasingly turning to word of mouth (WOM) campaigns to engineer conversations--or buzz--among customers. Researchers at the Yale School of Management and Harvard Business School have conducted the first study that examines the effectiveness of firm-sponsored WOM with a surprising result: consumers with no loyalty to the firm or product create more powerful WOM than loyal customers.
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Shop Till You SHOP?!
Study Shows Shoppers Don't "Drop" -- They Just Keep On Shopping
A new study of shopping behavior by researchers at the Yale School of Management and Duke University explains why some consumers may buy more than they intend.
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Do Changes in Customer Satisfaction Lead to Changes in Performance in Food Retailing?
It is commonly believed but rarely tested that changes in customer satisfaction result in changes in firm performance. In “Do Changes in Customer Satisfaction Lead to Changes in Performance in Food Retailing?”, Wittink and his coauthors at Cornell’s Department of Applied Economics and Management find that changes in customer satisfaction are positively related to changes in revenues.
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The Brand Switching Fraction of Promotion Effects: Unit Sales versus Elasticity Decompositions
Research on household scanner data shows that the vast majority of the sales promotion elasticity is attributable to a secondary demand elasticity (brand switching). Specifically, across multiple product categories, on average about three fourths of the sales elasticity with respect to a temporary price cut for a brand is due to the brand choice elasticity, leaving about one fourth for the primary demand elasticity (purchase timing and quantity). This result is commonly, but wrongly, interpreted to imply that if a brand gains 100 units in sales, other brands loose 75 units.
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