The widespread growth of e-commerce has resulted in the proliferation of online search infomediaries (OSIs), who provide consumers with information about products and services sold by different firms (Parents), while also referring interested consumers to the Parents' website. Very often, both...

Question-Answer (Q&A) forums are gaining popularity as a user-engagement tool to drive traffic on multi-service portals. In a platform market model, demand-side users seek answers from the supply-side users, since such answers can indicate value offered, reduce buyer uncertainty and offer social...

Different mechanisms through which easier access to physical stores could affect customers’ online purchase behavior are not well understood in the literature. We use customer-level data of a large apparel retailer to estimate the treatment effect of store openings on the online purchase...

Return policies are ubiquitous, and customer-friendly returns policies benefit retailers through greater customer demand. However, offering such policies also increases the cost of returns handling, impacting retailers' profitability negatively. Therefore, firms need to design optimal returns...