Publications

Jon Soderstrom and Yale faced a significant ethical and public relations dilemma concerning the patent of the HIV/AIDS drug ZERIT (stavudine). The problem arose from Yale's licensing of the patent to Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), which controlled the drug's market distribution and pricing. Activists and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) argued that the licensing agreement prevented the production of low-cost generics, thus restricting access to the lifesaving medication in developing countries like South Africa, where the HIV/AIDS epidemic was rampant. Yale's exclusive licensing deal conflicted with the urgent human need for affordable treatment, leading to intense campus protests and negative media attention.

The controversy raised broader questions about the role and responsibilities of academic research institutions. Critics contended that the financial ties between universities and for-profit corporations, such as BMS, could compromise the societal mission of academic research. This situation led to debates on whether the pursuit of patent revenues might overshadow the ethical imperatives to make essential medications accessible to those in need. The affair challenged Yale's policies on the commercialization of research and its commitment to societal benefit through innovation. Additionally, it stirred discussions about the proper balance between intellectual property rights, financial incentives for research and development, and global health equity.

Designers faced with the task of developing a new product model of a brand must balance
several considerations. The design must be novel and express attributes important to the
customers, while also recognizable as a representative of the brand. This balancing is left
to the intuition of the designers, who must anticipate how customers will perceive the new
design. Oftentimes, the design freedom used to meet a product attribute can compromise
the recognition of the product as a member of the brand. In this paper, an experiment is
conducted for measuring changes in ten styling attributes common to both design freedom
and brand recognition for automotive designs from four brands, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, and
Lexus, using customer responses to two- and three-dimensional vehicle designs created
and presented interactively through a crowdsourced web application. Results show that
while brand recognition is highly dependent on the manufacturer, two brands have strong
negative relationship between design freedom and brand recognition, suggesting that these
two manufacturers face a significant challenge when evolving their respective brand styling.
This study is a first effort toward quantifying and predicting tradeoffs between design
freedom and brand recognition, contributing to existing efforts that augment human
intuition during strategic design decisions.

The supply chain for coffee involves multiple steps from cultivation to market. Farmers decide the coffee plant variant and the terroir, influencing the final flavor. After harvesting, the coffee cherry is milled to separate the husk, resulting in green beans, which are primarily exported to consuming countries for roasting. This roasting, blending, and packaging add significant value, mostly retained in consuming countries. Therefore, the supply chain creates challenges for equity, as growers receive minimal returns—typically just one to five percent of the final retail price. Efforts for greater equity face barriers like fluctuating commodity prices, lack of access to consumer markets, and climate change impacts on yields. Additionally, consolidation and trends towards single-portion coffee formats benefit roasters more than farmers, hampering the equitable distribution of profits.  However, the growth of the specialty coffee market presents opportunities for reform, including fostering direct trade relationships, promoting transparency in trading practices, encouraging sustainable farming methods, and developing origin-based branding.  What might be done to encourage these trends toward equity across the supply chain?

We illustrate an approach to measure demand externalities from co-location by estimating household level changes in grocery spending at a supermarket among households that also buy gas at a co-located gas station, relative to those who do not. Controlling for observable and unobserved selection in the use of gas station, we find significant demand externalities; on average a household that buys gas has 7.7% to 9.3% increase in spending on groceries. Accounting for differences in gross margins, the profit from the grocery spillovers is 130% to 150% the profit from gasoline sales. The spillovers are moderated by store loyalty, with the gas station serving to cement the loyalty of store-loyal households. The grocery spillover effects are significant for traditional grocery products, but 23% larger for convenience stores. Thus co-location of a new category impacts both inter-format competition with respect to convenience stores (selling the new category) and intra-format competition with respect to other supermarkets (selling the existing categories).

Do store brands aid store loyalty by enhancing store differentiation or merely draw price-sensitive customers with little or no store loyalty? This paper seeks to answer this question by empirically investigating the relationship between store brand loyalty and store loyalty. First, we find a robust, monotonic, positive relationship between store brand loyalty and store loyalty by using multiple loyalty metrics and data from multiple retailers and by controlling for alternative factors that can influence store loyalty. Second, we take advantage of a natural experiment involving a store closure and find that the attrition in chain loyalty is lower for households with greater store brand loyalty prior to store closure. Together, our results are consistent with evidence for the store differentiation role of store brands.