e-commerce

Evolution of Internet Retailing and Buy vs. Make Decisions

Funded Research Proposal

We have obtained data from Digital Commerce 360 which publishes pertinent statistics on top 1000 internet retail sites. One interesting aspect of this data is detailed information regarding outsourcing/insourcing decisions including web hosting, search engine optimization services, product delivery etc. This is a pretty unique data spanning hundreds of companies and a last decade. We wish to use this data to analyze outsourcing decisions of internet retailers and how these choices affect their performance. The data shows variation across time and industries, and it is supplemented with many quantitative metrics for internet retailers including number of visitors, conversion rate and basket size etc. We believe this unique data will allow us to gain unique insights into make vs buy decisions by internet retailers.…Read More

Digital Redlining and the Distributional Effects of AI-enabled Promotional Targeting

Funded Research Proposal

In recent years, firms have started to incorporate new techniques from artificial intelligence into their decision making processes. However, these techniques come with a novel set of reputational and legal risks relating to algorithmic bias and digital discrimination. …Read More

How Do Product Attributes and Reviews Moderate the Impact of Recommender Systems through Purchase Stages?

Published Research

We investigate the impact of several different recommender algorithms (e.g., Amazon.com’s “Consumers who bought this item also bought”), commonly used in ecommerce and online services, on sales volume and diversity, using field experiment data on movie sales from a top retailer in North America. …Read More

A Meta-Analytic Investigation of p-hacking in E-commerce Experimentation

Working Papers

Randomized controlled trials—often called A/B tests in industrial settings—are an increasingly important element in the management many organizations. Such experiments are meant to bring the benefits of scientific rigor and statistical measurement to the domain of managerial decision making. …Read More

Race to E-Commerce: The Role of Firm Owners in Technology Adoption

Funded Research Proposal

This study aims to understand how firm ownership and governance influence the adoption of disruptive technologies in the early stages of the technology cycle. There is a growing recognition that owners have different goals and motivations that in turn, shape the strategic direction of the firms they control.…Read More

To Boost Online Sales, Focus on Close-Knit Communities

David Bell

Word-of-mouth testimonials from consumers are effective in driving online sales. But these signals are even more powerful in communities where people have closer ties and trust each other, according to new research by Wharton marketing professor David Bell and Jae Lee. …Read More

Agency Selling or Reselling? Channel Structures in Electronic Retailing

Published Research

In recent years, online retailers (also called e-tailers) have started allowing manufacturers direct access to their customers while charging a fee for providing this access, a format commonly referred to as agency selling. In this paper, we use a stylized theoretical model to answer a key question that e-tailers are facing: When should they use an agency selling format instead of using the more conventional reselling format?…Read More

The (Pro) Consumer Genome: The Rise of Customer Agents in the Personal Data Market

MBA Research Fellowship paper

Commerce – the activities related to the buying and selling of goods and services — relies on an effective exchange of personal data. In its simplest form, the seller solicits personal information from the buyer (what she likes, what she doesn’t, what she’s looking to spend) and the buyer responds with data that either helps or hurts the chances of transacting a deal. If the information swap is successful, a sale may result. And so the sharing of data greases the wheels of trade.…Read More

Price Effects in Online Product Reviews: An Analytical Model and Empirical Analysis

Published Research

Consumer reviews may reflect not only perceived quality but also the difference between quality and price (perceived value). In markets where product prices change frequently, these price-influenced reviews may be biased as a signal of product quality when used by consumers possessing no knowledge of historical prices.…Read More