Download or read book Three Essays on the Effects of Information in Online Markets written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation contains three essays on the effects of information in online markets. The first essay examines an online market for digital music and how consumers may learn from one another when making their decisions. In markets where a product is of unknown quality and consumers observe information about the previous actions of others, models of observational learning often predict herding behavior. The possible consequences of this herding behavior include consumers ignoring a high quality product and consumers spending resources on a low quality product (i.e., bad herds). In this essay, I estimate the probability of the former (bad herd on a high quality product) in an online digital music market named Amie Street Music. In addition, I examine the effect of moving from a fixed pricing scheme (iTunes, Amazon) to a demand-based pricing scheme (Amie Street) on the probability of a bad herd, expected consumer costs and expected long run revenue. I find that there is a 2% probability that consumers ignore a high quality song in the Amie Street market, compared to a 100% probability with a fixed price as low as 30 cents. Using bid data from 8,000 Chevrolet Corvettes sold on eBay, the second essay empirically tests Akerlof's (1970) hypothesis that the used car market is characterized by low quality and informational problems. The hypothesis states that the used market has a higher proportion of low quality cars than the new market and buyers account for the difference by discounting their value for a used car relative to a new car. This is tested by comparing bids on new and late model used 'Vettes. The paper finds little evidence of a premium for new 'Vettes. Two other tests are performed and results of these tests also show little evidence of information problems on eBay Motors. Finally, in the third essay, I test whether bidders shade their bids for Chevrolet Corvettes in response to changes in the supply of other Corvettes up for auction. The results suggest that bidders are shading their bids, even when the other cars up for auction are not perfect substitutes.

Download or read book Three Essays in Financial Markets The Bright Side of Financial Derivatives Options Trading and Firm Innovation written by Iván Blanco and published by Ed. Universidad de Cantabria. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do financial derivatives enhance or impede innovation? We aim to answer this question by examining the relationship between equity options markets and standard measures of firm innovation. Our baseline results show that firms with more options trading activity generate more patents and patent citations per dollar of R&D invested. We then investigate how more active options markets affect firms' innovation strategy. Our results suggest that firms with greater trading activity pursue a more creative, diverse and risky innovation strategy. We discuss potential underlying mechanisms and show that options appear to mitigate managerial career concerns that would induce managers to take actions that boost short-term performance measures. Finally, using several econometric specifications that try to account for the potential endogeneity of options trading, we argue that the positive effect of options trading on firm innovation is causal.

Download or read book Three Essays on Internet Platform Usage and Trade written by Emine Elcin Koten and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decade the key driver of e-commerce growth has been the expansion of internet access. Studies indicate that the internet is transforming both the production and the consumption of goods and services in the domestic and international markets. Internet platform usage has significantly decreased the barriers for firms to communicate with foreign clients and suppliers on their international market participation. Using the internet platform for marketing intelligence enables firms to access information about the external environment at a faster rate and lower cost. The internet has the potential to reduce market-specific fixed entry costs because suppliers can more easily find information about new markets and can also advertise to numerous buyers at once (Freud and Weinbold 2004). However, only few studies have studied the linkage between firm's internet platform usage and its foreign market participation. Thus, this dissertation adds to the limited literature by examining how using the internet platform can affect firm's participation in global markets. The first two essays study the impact that internet platform usage (e-mail use, website use, and online sales use) types have on firms' export and intermediate input import propensity and intensity, respectively, by using the Enterprise Survey dataset from the World Bank for Turkey. The main contribution of these essays to the literature is that I developed theoretical models to explain how using the internet platform increases exports and intermediate input imports. Even though exporting and importing decisions may be related, I believe that the underlying consideration by firms are fundamentally different. Hence, in the first essay, I use a theoretical framework introduced by Melitz (2003) to identify the export difference between a firm that uses the internet platform and a firm that does not. Similar to the selection effect in the first essay, I create another model in the second essay by following Antras and Helpman (2004) in which costs to access foreign markets decrease due to internet platform usage. I also add in both essays that fixed cost of internet adoption is firm-specific due to heterogeneity in the firm's ability to access the internet. Therefore, fixed costs may vary across firms due to differences in geographical access to telecommunication infrastructure. In the first essay, results show that all three types of internet platform usage have a positive impact on both the likelihood of exports and export intensity. These results are robust after including instrumental variables (internet connection and internet outages) to control for the endogeneity in the telecommunication costs. In the second essay, similar results are received for the impact of the internet platform usage on intermediate input imports propensity and intensity. Results indicate that e-mail use, website use, and online sales use by firms increases their probability of importing inputs, with online sales use having the largest impact on import propensity and import intensity. Similarly, once instrumental variables are included to solve the endogeneity issue, estimates received are robust after controlling for self-selection bias. In addition, in both essays, a series of robustness checks shows that the results do not change much under alternative model specifications such as subset classification, Rauch classification and TiVA classification.In many countries there has been a growing interest in the gender aspect of international trade policies. Therefore, the third essay contributes to the gender in international trade literature by examining the potential channels through which internet platform usage can improve women's participation in export markets. However, there is no other study that empirically examines the relevance of internet platform usage for increasing women's participation in international trade in developing countries. Hence, in the third paper, I suggest that the internet platform usage will lower the discrimination barriers for women when entering the foreign markets and make accessing global markets easier for women-headed firms. Hence, women-headed firms which use the internet platform will have a higher propensity to export than other firms. Finally, results in the third essay show that the impact of internet platform usage differ for women-headed firms likelihood to export and export intensity. While e-mail use, website use, and online sales use have a positive impact on women-headed firms export propensity compared to men-headed firms, online sales use has the same positive impact on both men- and women-headed firms export propensity. In addition, results also indicate that the impact of the internet platform usage types is higher on women-headed firms export intensity than men-headed firms export intensity. When the endogeneity problem is solved, however, results illustrate that only online sales use has a lower impact on women-headed firms both export propensity and export intensity compared to the impact on men-headed firms exports. Robustness and sensitivity checks confirm only some of the findings.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economic Impact of Online Word of Mouth in Online Software Market written by Wenqi Zhou and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on B2B E market Firms written by Qizhi Dai and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Information Effects in Online and Digital Shopping written by Tianzhou Duan and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is comprised of three essays studying the effects of presenting various types of information to consumers in online and digital good shopping scenarios. The first essay considers how the choice of business model affects trial rates for mobile apps. Developers can offer consumers free and paid apps via several purchase methods, including in-app purchases. A series of four experiments show that consumers' dislike for firms that charge for mobile apps causes them to prefer free apps from developers who do not offer premium versions. In addition, consumers who are more likely to buy the premium version are also more likely to prefer in-app purchases. The current research demonstrates that the existence of premium versions and the purchase methods used can affect consumer choices toward the free versions of those apps. The second essay investigates how the distribution of a set of product ratings affects trust in those ratings. Online shopping allows consumers to view user ratings for products before purchasing. Since these ratings are provided by the seller, trust becomes a concern. Four experiments demonstrate that the mean and variance of a set of ratings can influence trustworthiness and ultimately purchase intention. Positive ratings are the least trusted, and increasing variance up to a point can improve credibility. The implication is that mostly positive ratings may be trusted more and cause higher rates of purchase than completely positive ratings. The third essay reveals the differences in the effects of knowing about a future or past missed deal on choice of which product to purchase. The popularity of Internet deal websites allows shoppers to discover both past and upcoming sales. Two experiments show that missing a past or future deal for a product can cause consumers to switch to a substitute product. However, future missed deals are weaker than past missed deals at causing this brand switching, especially if the brands are not strong. This is explained by the greater devaluation caused by missing a past deal than a future deal.

Download or read book Three Essays on Economics of Online Platforms written by Jiadi Chen and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three papers related to the economics of online platforms: one on e-commerce shipping, one on sports event attendance, and another on online concert ticket platforms.In the first chapter, we estimate online customer preferences on product price and promised delivery time using transactional level data set from JD.com. We find that promised delivery time has a significant impact on customers’ purchasing decisions. In addition, we find that, on average, female shoppers are more price-sensitive while male customers are more delivery time-sensitive. The gender difference in the delivery time preference continues to exist even after controlling for shoppers’ purchasing power and shopping behavior. The average willingness-to-pay (WTP) for one-day-faster shipping is less than 7 Yuan for female customers but close to 11 Yuan for male customers.In the second chapter, we apply a regression discontinuity design to estimate the local average treatment effect of a win on the attendance of subsequent games in professional basketball. Using National Basketball Association data from seasons 1980-81 to 2017-18, we find that home team fan bases react to recent outcomes, with an increase in attendance of approximately 425 attendants (2.69% of average attendance in close games) following a close win relative to a close loss. The increment is one-eighth of a recent estimate of the superstar effect. We do not find an attendance effect when the visiting team has a recent victory, which rules out externalities. The positive fan base response to narrow home wins relative to narrow losses suggests that recent luck is rewarded in sporting attendance. We discuss possible mechanisms anddocument a gradual decline in the attendance response that coincides with the rise of alternative means for viewing games and secondary markets for tickets.In the last chapter, we look into the online platform for concert ticket markets. Ticketmaster began listing both primary event tickets and secondary tickets on its marketplace in 2013. Ticketmaster charges a preset service fee for the primary market and a fixed percentage of resale prices for both sellers and buyers. This paper develops a theoretical model to demonstrate how this pricing structure functions as a two-part tariff on ticket scalpers and improves revenue for the platform. Both platform and consumers benefit from an active resale market in some cases, even though the equilibrium may not be socially optimal.

Download or read book Three Essays on Information and Markets written by Chengjun Li and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book THREE ESSAYS ON RISKS OF ONLINE PLATFORM INFORMATION SYSTEMS written by Shuting Wang and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past decade, a fundamental research topic in the information systems (IS) discipline has been to examine the value of online platforms on businesses, society, and consumers, notably in the form of improved efficiency in information sharing, consumer engagement, and increased sales. However, the risks rooted in online platforms may cannibalize the value created, which have received limited attention in the literature and practice. In my dissertation, I attempt to fill this gap in the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the risks of online platforms from the angle of these three main entities in the ecosystem with three separate yet related essays. The first essay focuses on the risks for businesses that leverage social media platforms, and assesses how their posting on social media fan pages affects consumers' decision to purchase and unfollow from the firms. The second essay focuses on the risks of fake news on social media and how social media platforms may use identity verification to reduce online anonymity and combat this increasingly critical social problem. The third essay focuses on estimating the risks of using monetary incentives to motivate consumers to write online product reviews, and examines how such strategy may affect product sales. Our studies have theoretical and practical implications for designing effective online platform information systems.

Download or read book Three Essays on Market Equilibrium Under Asymmetric Information written by Jungyoll T. Yun and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Consumer Behavior in Virtual Community written by Yiyan Stella Li and published by Open Dissertation Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "Three Essays on Consumer Behavior in Virtual Community: EWOM, Online Trust, and Dynamic Impacts on Brand Selection" by Yiyan, Stella, Li, 李藝燕, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled Three Essays on Consumer Behavior in Virtual Community: eWOM, Online Trust, and Dynamic Impacts on Brand Selection submitted by Stella Yiyan Li for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in June 2007 As increasing numbers of people log into Virtual Communities (VCs) to meet new friends and solve problems, VCs have become an important social phenomenon that attracts research attention from different disciplines. Existing consumer research focuses on the individual motives behind participation in VCs and how brand-based VCs affect consumers' brand loyalty, but neglects the roles of the other important form of VCs, the product-based VCs. Moreover, the dynamic influences remain open to questions. By incorporating social capital theory and emerging theories relevant to VC research, this thesis aims to advance knowledge about the dynamic influences of product-based VCs on consumer behaviour in terms of eWord-of Mouth (eWOM), trust formation, and brand selection. The first study examines eWOM in VCs. WOM is a highly respected form of marketing information. However, because it is difficult to study WOM in the face-to-face context, researchers have limited understanding of its sources of effectiveness or its effects beyond product and brand communications. By conducting a netnography of beauty product enthusiasts in China in order to understand eWOM, the findings of this iistudy reveal four categories of responses: (1) sources of social capital, (2) brand choice facilitation, (3) persuasion knowledge development, and (4) consumer reflexivity. The thesis also proposes a model and offers a set of postulates to guide future research directions. The second study tests the antecedents and consequences of trust formation in VCs. IS research investigates the domains of interpersonal and system trust using streams of research based on different paradigms. Considering the continuous proliferation of VCs, this thesis proposes an integrative model that combines both trust components. Drawing insights from social capital theory, this study extends the research context to a VC sponsored by a commercial portal. Furthermore, it postulates that (1) structured VC contents and members' cognitive and relational motivations are antecedents to both trust components; (2) interpersonal trust is distinct from, and an important driver of, system trust; and (3) both trust components stimulate member online loyalty which enhances value for the sponsoring portal. Tests of the model's hypotheses using an online survey of 899 VC members support propositions in this study and offer both research and managerial implications. The third study examines the dynamic influences of VCs on brand selection. Various studies prove that brand-based VCs strengthen participants' brand loyalty. What remains unclear is how product-based VCs affect consumers' brand selection and how those impacts evolve over time. Using a longitudinal study of 277 members from the same VC, I demonstrate that individual motives (informational and social) and susceptibility to VC normative influence not only enhance consumers' loyalty toward a favourite brand but also increase variety-seeking intentions and consideration set size in iiibrand selection. Informational motives play dominant roles in enhancing variety-seeking intenti

Download or read book Three Essays on Information and Markets microform written by Chengjun Li and published by National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada. This book was released on 1999 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Social and Economic Effects of User Generated Content written by Ermira Zifla and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I investigate how online social interactions and user-generated content affect sellers and consumers in online platforms. I conduct three empirical studies to understand the effect of user-generated content in three different types of online platforms: (1) an e-commerce marketplace, (2) an online reviews platform, and (3) an online health community. In study one, I examine how social features (e.g., following others, sharing others' products) within an electronic commerce marketplace affect status and sales for sellers. This essay contributes to the literature on electronic commerce by deepening the understanding of online social processes among sellers. In study two, I explore how humorous appropriation of an online review platform affects purchase intention and consumer engagement. Utilizing both controlled experiments and analysis of real-world reviews, I demonstrate that humorous appropriation attenuates the effect of review valence on purchase intentions and increases consumer engagement. In study three, I investigate how community ratings are related to patient treatment evaluations and compliance in an online health community. I find that community ratings are positively associated with treatment evaluations and compliance. Moreover, I find that community size and ratings variance moderate the effect of community ratings on treatment evaluations and compliance. Taken together, these essays contribute to the literature on Information Systems by augmenting the understanding of the effects of different types of user-generated content on social (status, engagement, and evaluations) and economic outcomes (purchase intentions and sales). The studies also offer insights for strategic decisions regarding user-generated content in online platforms.

Download or read book The Economics of Online Markets and ICT Networks written by Russel Cooper and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the economics of platform structure and firm competition within and between online markets. It also details modern theoretical treatments of regulatory intervention in online markets and the consideration of forward-looking experimental analysis of demand for yet to be provided services. The volume is divided into three parts: innovation and competition in online markets; regulation, pricing and evaluation with real options; and empirical approaches to market analysis.

Download or read book Online Shopping Intentions written by Anne Fota and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-13 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the drivers and barriers that motivate or inhibit consumers to participate in e-commerce are investigated, differentiating between the e-commerce subareas of cross-border e-commerce, voice-commerce, conversational-commerce and rental-commerce. This specification is both scientifically and practically relevant, as the different subareas of e-commerce serve different consumer needs and motivations, resulting in a diverse set of antecedents to form consumers' online shopping intentions. Both the respective literature reviews as well as the empirical results of six conducted research studies illustrate the relevance and ubiquity of the four subareas of e-commerce in consumers' everyday online shopping. On the one hand, the results represent an important basis for marketing and consumer research to support a better understanding of the behavioral psychological motives of consumers and better evaluate correlations in shopping behavior. On the other hand, practitioners benefit from the newly gained insights, as online retailers in particular can use them to better adapt their offers to consumer needs and optimize consumers’ online shopping experience.

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Information written by Parimal Kanti Bag and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Trust Geography and Price in Online Market written by Lihua Han and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation studies the trust, geography and the price pattern in the online market, utilizing a new random sample dataset provided by Taobao which is the dominant online retail market in China. The first chapter examines the impact of online trust on the geography of online trade flow and finds that the online trust mitigates the distance and border effect at province level. The second chapter investigates the impact of warranties on the return to seller reputation, and finds that the buyer protection program significantly reduces the price premium caused by seller reputation. The third chapter looks at the impact of physical distance on the price discount, and finds that there is existing price discrimination by distance in online market. The first chapter is titled "Trust and the Geography of Online Trade: Evidence from China," a paper co-authored with Zhongmin Wang. This paper investigates the impact of trust on the impact of geography on the transaction volume in online market. We find that distance has a significantly negative effect on online trade flow and there is a strong home bias. Building buyers' trust of sellers is vital for developing online platform. Our paper presents evidence that trust affects the geography of online trades, reducing both the distance and border effect in the gravity model. Our evidence comes from the largest online retail market in China and we proxy buyers' trust of sellers not only by sellers' feedback ratings but also by the type of buyer protection programs. We find strong evidence that both the distance effect and the province-border effect are smaller for sellers with higher feedback ratings or sellers offering better buyer protection program. The second chapter is titled "Do Warranties Reduce the Return to Seller Reputation in Online Market? Evidence from Taobao." This paper employs instrument variable method to estimate the impact of buyer protection program on the price premium caused by seller reputation. There is moral hazard, adverse selection and even market failure due to information asymmetry in online market. The seller reputation mechanism is developed to signal the quality and disclose seller's credibility. The buyer protection program is implemented to police this market while there is dispute. But it is optional for sellers on Taobao can choose to participate in any programs, which results in the endogeneity problem. I instrument program by using the share of warranties used by other sellers with same seller category. The findings indicate that the both seller reputation and buyer protection program positively related to transaction price, but the introduction of buyer protection program reduces the return to seller reputation significantly. The third chapter is titled "The Price Discrimination in Online Market: The Effect of Geographical Distance." This paper estimates the impact of the geographic distance on the price discount in the online market. I use a simple duopoly model with product differentiation to understand the distance effect on price discrimination. The more information the sellers have about the buyers, the more surplus sellers are able to extract from buyers. Taobao facilitates the sellers to learn about buyer from the unique pre-purchasing chatting and buyer's profile. The results indicate that distance positively reduces transaction price and sellers are more likely to offer a better price for expensive or repeated purchased product to a distant buyer. The distance contributes to greater discount for a sophisticated buyer than novice.