Many video ads are designed to go 'viral,' so that the total number of views they receive depends on customers sharing the ads with their friends. This paper explores the relationship between number of views and how persuasive the ad is at convincing consumers to purchase or to adopt a favorable...

Digital technologies lead consumers to instantaneously engage with companies online following TV advertising. As a result, companies increasingly aim to coordinate TV advertising with consumer online behavior. This has led companies and researchers to examine the effect of TV ads on online...

Customers with more education may get better service after complaining, because they are better placed to advocate for themselves. It is unclear how digitization of the consumer complaint process will change this situation. To investigate this, we analyze 364,189 customer complaints to the city...

Online rating systems can lead, on occasion, to reviews that are unfair or un-representative of the true quality provided. On the one hand, receiving an unfairly low rating once, might induce someone a platform supplier to exert more effort and receive a better rating the next time. On the other...

There is plenty of hype around big data, but does it simply offer operational advantages, or can it provide firms with sustainable competitive advantage? To answer this question, we look at big data using a classic framework called the 'resource-based view of the firm,' which states that, for...

Online rating systems can lead, on occasion, to reviews that are unfair or unrepresentative of the true quality provided. On the one hand, receiving an unfairly low rating once, might induce participants to exert more effort and receive a better rating the next time. On the other hand, it might...

In a globalized digital economy, it is not clear whether it is better to use globally- or domestically-oriented images in marketing communications, or how the optimal strategy would be affected by economic inequality. We explore this using field experiment data from Facebook in India. In these...

The use of testimonials from existing customers has always been an important technique in traditional marketing communications. However, it is not clear whether attempts by firms to promote customer testimonials in social media will be equally effective. First, often the reach of a firm on...

This paper investigates how the destabilizing of a social network may increase the scope of network externalities, using data on sales of a video-calling system made by a business-to- usiness manufacturer to banking employees and subsequent usage by these customers. The terrorist attacks of 2001...

We explore substitution patterns across advertising platforms. Using data on the advertising prices paid by lawyers for 139 Google search terms in 195 locations, we exploit a natural experiment in “ambulance-chaser” regulations across states. When lawyers cannot contact clients by mail,...