Online price comparison agents (shopbots) allow consumers to instantaneously receive price and other information from many online retailers. Online consumer clickstream data from ComScore Inc. demonstrate that consumers are increasingly using shopbots to conduct search. This phenomenon raises...

Crowdfunding aims to collect small investments from a large number of backers to support a project by fundraisers. Although uncertainty has been an important issue in the reward-based crowdfunding literature, there is limited research on how backers respond to probabilistic uncertain rewards....

The Internet has presumably created a level playing field that allows any service provider across the globe to compete for contracts on online outsourcing platforms for IT services. In this paper, we empirically examine (a) how country (language, time zone, cultural) differences and the...

The familiar ’five-star’ ratings and reviews system makes it easy for consumers to use product evaluations across competing platforms to choose the product or service that is most likely to match their preferences. However, the ability to easily shop around for ratings and reviews raises a...

The role of online gig platforms in local labor markets has recently been debated with two competing predictions: online gig platforms either complement local employment by matching service demand and supply and creating job opportunities, or substitute local employment by obsoleting workers...

The healthcare market faces severe information asymmetry — patients struggle to evaluate the clinical quality of hospitals and make choices accordingly. To inform patients of hospital selection, crowdsourced review platforms (e.g., Yelp) have begun to display hospitals’ clinical quality...