Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

I am a marketing professor at Harvard Business School studying the value of data and artificial intelligence (AI) for firms and consumers. My research examines how businesses can leverage internal, customer, and market data to improve outcomes, using causal inference, experimentation, econometrics, and machine learning.

I am also a co-founder of the Customer Intelligence Lab at the Digital Data Design (D³) institute at Harvard Business School, where we conduct research with the goal of helping organizations use their valuable customer data effectively and responsibly.

Contact: aisraeli@hbs.edu | (617) 495-3062 | Morgan Hall 177, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA

Ayelet Israeli

Photo: Russ Campbell

Research

Working Papers

Protected Heterogeneity: A Variance-Based Framework for Fair Algorithmic Personalization [Link]

Noah M. Ahmadi, Eva Ascarza, and Ayelet Israeli (2025)

In Privacy We Trust: The Effect of Privacy Regulations on Data Sharing Behavior [Link]

Ozge Demirci, Ayelet Israeli, and Eva Ascarza (2025)

Pricing with Bandits in the Long-tail: The Role of Competitive Monitoring [Link]

Ayelet Israeli and Eric Anderson (2025)

Dynamic Personalization with Multiple Customer Signals: Multi-Response State Representation in Reinforcement Learning [Link]

Liangzong Ma, Ta-Wei Huang, Eva Ascarza, and Ayelet Israeli (2025)

Using LLMs for Market Research [Link]

James Brand, Ayelet Israeli, and Donald Ngwe (2025)

Incrementality Prediction: Synergizing Past Experiments for Intervention Personalization [Link]

Ta-Wei Huang, Eva Ascarza, and Ayelet Israeli (2025)

Publications

Marketing at the Speed of Culture [Link]

Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins, and Ryan Reynolds (2026)

Harvard Business Review, 104(1), pp. 96-105

Personalization and Targeting: How to Experiment, Learn and Optimize [Link]

Aurelie Lemmens, Jason Roos, Sebastian Gabel, Eva Ascarza, Hernan Bruno, Brett Gordon, Ayelet Israeli, Elea McDonnell Feit, Carl Mela, and Oded Netzer (2025)

International Journal of Research in Marketing, forthcoming

Canary Categories [Link]

Eric T. Anderson, Chaoqun Chen, Ayelet Israeli, and Duncan Simester (2024)

Journal of Marketing Research, 61(5), pp. 872-890

What Makes a Successful Celebrity Brand [Link]

Ayelet Israeli, Jill Avery, Leonard A. Schlesinger, and Matt Higgins (2024)

Harvard Business Review, 102(3), pp. 50-55

The Value of Descriptive Analytics: Evidence from Online Retailers [Link]

Ron Berman and Ayelet Israeli (2022)

Marketing Science, 41(6), 1074-1096

Finalist, 2022 John D. C. Little Award

Should your company sell on Amazon? Reach comes at a Price [Link]

Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins, and Sabir Semerkant (2022)

Harvard Business Review, 100(5), 38-46

Eliminating Unintended Bias in Personalized Policies Using Bias Eliminating Adapted Trees (BEAT) [Link]

Eva Ascarza and Ayelet Israeli (2022)

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(11), e2115293119

How Market Power Affects Dynamic Pricing: Evidence from Inventory Fluctuations at Car Dealerships [Link]

Ayelet Israeli, Fiona Scott Morton, Jorge Silva-Risso, and Florian Zettelmeyer (2022)

Management Science, 68(2), 895-916

Pricing Policies that Protect Your Brand [Link]

Ayelet Israeli and Eugene F. Zelek Jr. (2020)

Harvard Business Review, 92(2), pp. 76-83

Online MAP Enforcement: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment [Link]

Ayelet Israeli (2018)

Marketing Science, 37(5), 685-853

Finalist, 2019 Frank M. Bass Dissertation Paper Award

Finalist, 2018 Frank M. Bass Dissertation Paper Award

Repairing the Damage: The Effect of Price Knowledge and Gender on Auto-Repair Price Quotes [Link]

Meghan Busse, Ayelet Israeli, and Florian Zettelmeyer (2017)

Journal of Marketing Research, 54(1), 75-95

Minimum Advertised Pricing: Patterns of Violation in Competitive Retail Markets [Link]

Ayelet Israeli, Eric T. Anderson, and Anne T. Coughlan (2016)

Marketing Science, 35(4), 539-564 (lead article)

Online Publications

Most AI Initiatives Fail. This 5-Part Framework Can Help [Link]

Ayelet Israeli and Eva Ascarza

Harvard Business Review (November 20, 2025)

Using Gen AI for Early-Stage Market Research [Link]

James Brand, Ayelet Israeli, and Donald Ngwe

Harvard Business Review (July 18, 2025)

How to Seed Organic Marketing in a Video-First World [Link]

Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, and Matt Higgins

Harvard Business Review (February 22, 2023)

Beyond Pajamas: Sizing Up the Pandemic Shopper [Link]

Ayelet Israeli, Eva Ascarza, and Laura Castrillo

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (March 17, 2021)

REMOTE—A Framework for Teaching Online [Link]

Ayelet Israeli

Harvard Business Publishing, 2020

Encouraging Student Participation Online—and Assessing It Fairly: Techniques and Methods to Involve More Voices in Virtual Classes [Link]

Ayelet Israeli

Harvard Business Publishing, 2020