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An Economic Analysis Of Consumer Learning On Entertainment Shopping Websites, Jin Li, Zhiling Guo, Geoffrey K.F. Tso

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online entertainment shopping, normally supported by the pay-to-bid auction mechanism, represents an innovative business model in e-commerce. Because the unique selling mechanism combines features of shopping and online auction, consumers expect both monetary return and entertainment value from their participation. We propose a dynamic structural model to analyze consumer behaviors on entertainment shopping websites. The model captures the consumer learning process, based both on individual participation experiences and also on observational learning of historical auction information. We estimate the model using a large data set from an online entertainment shopping website. Results show that consumers’ initial participation incentives mainly come …