Three Essays on Economics of Online Communities and Platforms PDF Download
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Author: Zike Cao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Online social networks in business
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Author: Zike Cao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Online social networks in business
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Author: Kevin Ducbao Tran
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Author: Shahryar Doosti
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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In this dissertation, I study the economics of online platforms. I explore economic consequences of the interaction between firms and users through online platforms. I investigate three aspects of such interactions through data-driven economic models: mobile economy, online crowd, and social media. I study the effect of platform design on demand and monetizing online traffic. First, I study the impact of emerging mobile ecosystem on users' interaction patterns. Specifically, I choose the online shopping platform in which users have two channels to purchase the products: PC and App. I investigate whether niche products are more likely to be seen and selected in mobile channel. I also look into customers' usage patterns to draw conclusions on how to increase sales of niche products. Second, I study the online crowdfunding and the effect of the campaign design on overall success. I build a structural model to estimate the demand for Kickstarter projects and make conclusions on the effect of reward scheme designs. Third, I explore the sponsored videos on Facebook. A sponsored content (e.g. video) features the sponsor's brand or product. I study the effect of the creator-sponsor association on viewership and user engagement for videos on Facebook. More specifically, I identify multiple aspects of creator-sponsor association and investigate their effect on the overall user engagement. I highlight the managerial implications of the findings in this dissertation.
Author: Ho Cheung Brian Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages :
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This dissertation consists of three essays studying three different kinds of online communities – namely online crowds – that help firms to solve business problems. The first essay investigates prediction markets, online market exchanges for predicting events such as election results and new product sales. We ask whether prediction markets provide consistent and fallacy-free forecasts. We find that prices in the Presidential Election markets are occasionally prone to fallacies, and the prices from these markets cannot always be interpreted as accurate and noiseless representations of probabilities for predicted events. Our results suggest that the information gathered from prediction markets must be interpreted with caution. The second essay examines the contributing behavior of online backers on reward-based crowdfunding (RBC) platforms. RBC platforms allow the public to pledge money to a project and receive a reward. This paper focuses on backers who pledge more money than is required to claim a reward. We find that backers tend to contribute less when the project has already received a high amount of funding. However, backers tend to contribute more when the project is supported by a high number of backers. In addition, we show that herding may occur among the backers who only pledge money without claiming any rewards. These results help us understand more about contributing behaviors among online backers on RBC platforms. Crowdsourcing is a way to outsource a business task to an online community. The third essay investigates how the feedback information on a crowdsourcing platform and the systematic bias of crowdsourcing workers can affect outcomes. Specifically, we examine the role of a systematic bias – namely the salience bias – in influencing crowdsourcing platform performance. Our results suggest that the salience bias influences the performance of contestants, including the winners of the contests. Furthermore, we show that the number of crowdsourcing contestants moderates the impact of the salience bias due to the parallel path effect and competition effect. These results provide important implications for crowdsourcing firms and platform designers.
Author: Yiyan Stella Li
Publisher: Open Dissertation Press
ISBN: 9781361422922
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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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
Author: Zemin Zhong
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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In three essays, I present my findings in three interrelated aspects of online platforms. In the first chapter, I empirically study the economics of consumer limited attention in online markets and how sellers react to this bias. The second chapter focus on studying consumer search in online platforms under targeted search technology. And in the third chapter I study the platform's search and revenue design problem. How do sellers react to consumer biases in online markets? In the first chapter I examine whether consumers are limited attentive to online ratings, and how sellers respond to it. Using 6.8 million transaction records on Taobao, I first demonstrate that consumers are limited attentive. The Taobao platform assigns each seller a summary symbol based on his/her rating score (net number of positive ratings) , and both the rating score and the symbol are made available to consumers. I show that the demand exhibits a discontinuous jump when a seller's rating score passes the threshold of a new summary symbol. More importantly, I find sellers appear to be responding by using different pricing strategies before and after reaching thresholds. As a seller's rating score gets closer to the next threshold, the seller's prices gets lower until the rating score reaches thresholds. Once the seller obtain a new summary symbol, the prices begin to increase. The kink in price levels is significant, suggesting sellers are responding to consumer limited attention. Major online platforms such as Amazon and eBay have invested significantly in search technologies to direct consumer searches to relevant products. These technologies lead to targeted search, implying consumers are visiting more relevant sellers first. For example, consumers may directly enter their desirable attributes into search queries, and the platform will retrieve relevant sellers accordingly. The platform may also let consumers refine the search outcomes by various criteria. This study characterizes the role of targeted search, and examines how targeted search affects market equilibrium and platform design. In the second chapter, I model targeted search in a differentiated market with many firms where consumers search sequentially for the best product match. One of the central results of the analysis is how targeted search affects equilibrium prices. I find its impact on price is not monotonic. When targeting is not too precise, targeted search lowers the equilibrium price. It makes sellers more similar and intensifies price competition, despite the fact that all consumers face sellers with better fit. However, once the targeting becomes sufficiently precise, the equilibrium price increases, because highly targeted search discourages active consumer search and gives sellers monopoly power. Using a unique dataset from Taobao, I find some suggestive evidence that is consistent with the model predictions. Within this setup, I endogenize the search design by allowing the platform to choose the precision of targeted search and the revenue model contract in the third chapter. I consider two major platform revenue models, commission and promoted slots, with consumer search. The platform, by providing targeted search with precision up to the aforementioned limit, can extract more consumer surplus through higher commission rates, because targeted search improves consumer surplus by lowering search cost, increasing fit, and lowering price. With targeted search up to the limit, the platform can also extract more surplus from sellers by offering promoted slots, because sellers can use promoted slots to better target consumers. However, once targeted search becomes too precise, the market will face a price hike, hurting the platform revenue in both models. Therefore, I find that in both revenue models, the platform may want to limit the precision of targeted search even if improving it is costless, with or without consumer entry.
Author: ZUYIN ZHENG
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 147
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In my dissertation, I study factors that affect the value-creating interactions between value producers and value consumers on two-sided platforms (e.g., Freelancer and Kickstarter). In the first essay, I study how bid price dispersion affects the value-creating interactions (i.e., contracting) between service providers (freelancers) and buyers in online labor markets. I find that bid price dispersion has a negative effect on buyers' offering a contract and service providers' tendency to accept the contract if offered one. I theorize that both service providers and buyers face uncertainty over price as to how much to charge or to pay for IT services and a higher bid price dispersion leads to higher uncertainty, and thus a lower contracting rate. In the second essay, I examine the role of the lottery in value-creating interactions (namely backings) in crowdfunding platforms. I find that the lottery, when designed as an option with a participation cost, decreases backers' average contribution and the total value created for a project, albeit it incentivizes more low-value interactions (i.e., more low-value backings). I theorize that the lottery, on the one hand, incentivizes low-value interactions that would otherwise not happen, but on the other hand, transforms high-value interactions into low-value interactions. In the third essay, I study the effect of backers' online identity concealment on the value-creating interactions (i.e., backings) in crowdfunding platforms. Contradictory to a common practice that crowdfunding platforms often maintain a public list of all backers' identity information, assuming a positive observational learning effect among peer backers, the empirical results demonstrate with backers' online identity concealed completely, campaigns on average gain more backings and money as well as become more likely to succeed. And this effect is larger for donors-those back a campaign without receiving any reward-than for rewardees-those back the campaign for the reward.
Author: Shuting Wang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
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.
Author: William H. Lehr
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475735758
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
Cyber Policy and Economics in an Internet Age is a collection of essays from some of the world's best-known experts on Internet public policy. It provides an accessible introduction to critical issues that policymakers, businesspeople, and the public will need to confront in coming years: universal access, appropriate content (pornography, free speech, cultural values), Internet broadcasting, intellectual property, Internet taxation, consumer protection, privacy, fair E-business competition, regulation of the Internet infrastructure, and more. This book is intended for the industry practitioner, analysts, and researchers. It would also be suitable for use in graduate and undergraduate courses, as well as by researchers.
Author: Camille Grange
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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