Online applications and services automate communications and transactions between firms and consumers, promising large efficiency gains. However, consumers have been slow to use these online technologies intensively, despite widespread adoption of the internet. Customers frequently undergo a...

This paper considers the joint creation and consumption of content on user generated content platforms (e.g., reviews or articles, chat, videos, etc.). On these platforms, users' utilities depend upon the participation of others; hence, users' expectations regarding the participation of others...

Social broadcasting networks such as Twitter in the U.S. and Weibo in China are transforming the way online word-of-mouth (WOM) is disseminated and consumed in the digital age. We investigate whether and how Twitter WOM affects movie sales by estimating a dynamic panel data model using publicly...

Sellers sometimes offer goods for sale under both a regular price and a discount for group purchase if the consumer group reaches some minimum size. This selling practice, which we term interpersonal bundling, has been popularized on the Internet by companies such as Groupon. We explain why...

New empirical models of consumer demand that incorporate social preferences, observational learning, word-of-mouth or network effects have the feature that the adoption of others in the reference group - the Òinstalled-baseÓ - has a causal effect on current adoption behavior. Estimation of...

Understanding the process of software adoption is of paramount importance to software start-ups. We study a monopolistic seller’s optimal consumer network structure formation (seeding, segmentation, sequencing, and pricing strategies) under network effects. We demonstrate the importance of...

The advance selling strategy is implemented when a firm offers consumers the opportunity to order its product in advance of the regular selling season. Advance selling reduces uncertainty for both the firm and the buyer and enables the firm to update its forecast of future demand. The...

This paper studies the competition between firms for influencers in a network. Firms spend effort to convince influencers to recommend their products. The analysis identifies the offensive and defensive roles of spending on influencers. The value of an influencer only depends on the in-degree...

We model consumer social networks as information collection media and examine two major issues: first, how consumers construct product fit signals based on product feedbacks collected from their social connections to assist with their purchase decisions, and second, how a retailer can benefit...

Public “Beta” launches have become a preferred route of entry into the markets for new software products and web site based services. While beta testing of novel products is nothing new, typically such tests were done by experts within firm boundaries. What makes public beta testing so...