E-Commerce Commons^™

Running And Chasing: The Competition Between Paid Search Marketing And Search Engine Optimization, Kai Li, Mei Lin, Zhangxi Lin, Bo Xing

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As search engine is leading the revenue growth in online marketing field, the competition of search engine marketing between paid search marketing (PSM) by search engine providers (SEPs), and search engine optimization (SEO) provided by search engine optimization firms, is white-hot. While PSM is simply for advertisers to buy the top ranks in sponsored links, SEO tries to optimize advertisers' websites by free-riding search engine's organic searching results. This study aims to investigate this competition by analytical modeling regarding organic search quality. We focus on sustainability conditions of SEO firms, investment analysis of SEO firms, and profit analysis of SEP. …

Ratings Lead You To The Product, Reviews Help You Clinch It? The Dynamics And Impact Of Online Review Sentiments On Products Sales, Nan Hu, Noi Sian Koh, Srinivas K. Reddy

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

It is generally assumed that ratings are a numeric representation of text sentiments and their valences are consistent. This however may not always be true. Using a panel of data on over 4000 books from Amazon.com, we develop a multiple equation model to examine the inter-relationships between ratings, sentiments, and sales. We find that ratings do not have a significant direct impact on sales but have an indirect impact through sentiments. Sentiments, however, have a direct significant impact on sales. Our findings also indicate that the two most accessible types of reviews - most helpful and most recent - play …

The Influence Of Online Word-Of-Mouth On Long Tail Formation, Bin Gu, Qian Tang, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The long tail phenomenon has been attributed to both supply side and demand side economies. While the cause on the supply side is well-known, research on the demand side has largely focused on the awareness effect of online information that helps consumers discover new and often niche products. This study expands the demand side factors by showing that online information also influences the long tail phenomenon through the informative effect, which affects consumers' evaluation of product quality. We examine the informative effect in the context of online WOM. Two sets of theories suggest opposite directions for the implication of the …

Mining Fraudulent Patterns In Online Advertising, Richard J. Oentaryo, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Advances in web technologies have rendered onlineadvertising as an effective means for small and large businesses to target different market segments on the fly. Online advertising is a huge industry. According to Gartner Inc., worldwide online advertising revenue is projected tohit $11.4 billion in 2013, up from $9.6 billion in 2012. Global revenue will also reach $24.5 billion in 2016, with online advertising creating opportunities for app developers, advertising networks, and service providersin various regions. An online advertising ecosystem is typically coordinated by an advertising commissioner, acting as a broker between advertisers and content publishers. An advertiser plans a budget, …

The User’S Communication Patterns On A Mobile Social Network Site, Youngsoo Kim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of Modular Product Architectures And The Emergence Of Platform Ecosystems, C. Jason Woodard, Eric K. Clemons

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While a large body of research has examined the advantages and disadvantages of modularity in product design, studies of modularization have tended to focus on settings in which a product’s architecture is determined by a single designer or designers within a single organization. In this paper, we ask whether modularity can arise in a decentralized setting where high-value designs are rewarded but designers’ ability to coordinate with each other and anticipate the consequences of their actions is limited—in short, whether modularity can evolve. To answer this question, we developed an agent-based model in which boundedly rational firms combine components into …

When Do Consumers Purchase Online?: Based On Inter-Purchase Time, Youngsoo Kim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study is motivated by the premise that online consumers can make a purchase at any time of day if they have even a tiny time slot along with Internet access. To identify the increased shopping time flexibility, we first characterize the patterns of online purchase timing in comparison to those in the offline market. The results show (1) the breakdown of purchase timing regularity and (2) the change of weekly spike purchase occurrence. Second, we build online inter-purchase time model and estimate it with the data collected from one of the premier online vendors in Korea. We verify new …

Diffusion Of Mobile Payment Systems Among Microentrepreneurs In Kenya And Tanzania, Dionne Nickerson

Annual Celebration of Student Scholarship and Creativity

The rapid rise of Kenya's mobile payment system, M-PESA , has grasped the attention of policy makers and private enterprise alike. In just six years M-PESA has transformed how money flows throughout Kenya, and similar systems are gaining traction elsewhere in Africa. This project examines the impact of mobile payment system adoption on the economic advancement of Kenyan and Tanzanian microentrepreneurs. This work will further the understanding of mobile payment systems’ contribution to the economic growth of microenterprises, which may have implications for poverty reduction in these two nations.

Queuepay.Com: Building A System For Cardholders' Transaction Security, Jose Ramon Gonzalez

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was to apply the skills learned in the MBA program to help develop a solution to a problem that costs billions of dollars every year in fraudulent related losses arising from the use of payment cards such as debit cards, credit cards, charge cards or prepaid cards. The project analyzes the industry of payment cards, the emergence of the problem, and builds a prototype that addresses the problem. Queuepay.com is designed to provide services to its cardholders that will significantly reduce the risk of fraud.

The Informavore Shopper: Analysis Of Information Foraging, System Design, And Purchasing Behavior In Online Retail Stores, Jeff Min Teck Hong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Global online retail sales are on the rise and are predicted to experience a double digit growth annually over the next three years. Given little marginal cost involved in adding new products and brands to their catalogues, online retailers tend to increase product and brand offerings to increase sales by selling products that could not have been sold due to space constraints in physical stores. Frank Urbanowski, Director of MIT Press, attributed the 12% increase in sales of backlist titles directly to increased accessibility to these titles through the Internet. For consumers, the ability to buy products that they would …

Valuation Of Participation In Social Gaming, Kwansoo Kim, Byungjoon Yoo, Robert J. Kauffman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study examines the value of the time that a user spends to participate in a social game. We focus on how a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) vendor can establish prices to encourage participation and retain its players. We estimate value through an application of the hedonic pricing model and analyze a data set for an MMORPG in Korea. The results permit us to estimate the value of game-playing time in monetary terms. Based on our empirical results, we propose an economic model and conduct numerical simulation to show how a game vendor can apply differential pricing in …

Use Of Rss Feeds To Push The Online Content To Users, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Many websites use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to actively push their online content to users rather than waiting for users to pull the content passively. In this paper, I construct a theoretical game model to study the profitability of an RSS-PUSH delivery mechanism. The model assumes a general profit structure for websites and heterogeneous users. To access valuable online content, users incur a variety of costs. They choose either to visit the website in the conventional way (the PULL model) or, if it is supported by the website, to use RSS (the PUSH model). Interestingly, I show that although …

Reputation As Public Policy For Internet Security: A Field Study, Qian Tang, Leigh L. Linden, John S. Quarterman, Andrew Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cybersecurity is a national priority in this big data era. Because of the lack of incentives and the existence of negative externality, companies often underinvest in addressing security risks and accidents, despite government and industry recommendations. In the present article, we propose a method that utilizes reputation through information disclosure to motivate companies to behave pro-socially, improving their Internet security. Using outbound spam as a proxy for Internet security, we conducted a quasiexperimental field study for eight countries through SpamRankings.net. This outgoingspam-based study shows that information disclosure on outgoing spam can help reduce outgoing spam, approximately by 16 percent. This …

Comparative Analysis Of Dispersion Parameter Estimates In Loglinear Modeling: Applied To E-Commerce Sales And Customer Data, Scott Davis

Statistics

When loglinear models are applied to count data the issue of over-dispersion often arises. Moment and maximum likelihood estimation methods in accounting for over-dispersion are widely used because they allow for model checking tools such as Chi-square, F, and likelihood ratio tests. Here is a comparison between R functions that each uses one method; glm.nb uses MLE, and glm.poisson.disp uses MME. The Index of Dissimilarity and visual model selection (ECDF plots) are also incorporated. These are applied to sales data using product and customer information compiled over the last five years that was generously provided by an e-commerce company.

A Computational Analysis Of Bundle Trading Markets Design For Distributed Resource Allocation, Zhiling Guo, Gary J. Koehler, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online auction markets play increasingly important roles for resource allocations in distributed systems. This paper builds upon a market-based framework presented by Guo et al. (Guo, Z., G. J. Koehler, A. B. Whinston. 2007. A market-based optimization algorithm for distributed systems. Management Sci. 53(8) 1345–1458), where a distributed system optimization problem is solved by self-interested agents iteratively trading bundled resources in a double auction market run by a dealer. We extend this approach to a dynamic, asynchronous Internet market environment and investigate how various market design factors including dealer inventory policies, market communication patterns, and agent learning strategies affect the …

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Poverty, Technology, Microfinance And Development, Robert J. Kauffman, Frederick J. Riggins

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A consistent expectation on the part of public policy-makers, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has been that information and communications technologies (ICTs) will be a driver of economic growth and social development for the people away from poverty in the nations that harness them effectively. As this process proceeds around the world in the presence of dramatic technical progress, poverty nevertheless continues to be a difficult and grinding social problem to combat. In spite of the promised changes, the reality is that today there are greater population pressures, continuing inertial forces for economic stagnation, unstable social conditions and regional strife, …

Niche-Seeking In Influence Maximization With Adversary, Long Foong Liow, Shih-Fen Cheng, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In hotly contested product categories dominated by a few powerful firms, it is quite common for weaker or late entrants to focus only on particular segments of the whole market. The rationale for such strategy is intuitive: to avoid direct confrontation with heavy-weight firms, and to concentrate in segments where these weaker firms have comparative advantages. In marketing, this is what people called “go niche or go home". The niche-building strategy may rely on “homophily", which implies that consumers in a particular market segment might possess certain set of attributes that cause them to appreciate certain products better (in other …

(Hidden) Social Influences In Switching Mobile Service Platforms, Virpi K. Tuunainen, Tuure Tuunanen, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

During the past few years, the mobile industry has gone through a radical change from business focusing on excellence in device manufacturing and supply chain management to ecosystems around successful focal players, such as Apple and Google, controlling these service platforms. In order to compete in this environment, these firms need to understand what makes a consumer switch between these mobile service platforms. To that end, we conducted an inductive qualitative study with university students from Finland and USA as subjects (142 altogether), delving into how and why consumers switch mobile phones, and what are the factors affecting their decisions. …

Message From General Chair And Program Co-Chairs [Of Icec '12, 14th Annual International Conference On Electronic Commerce, Held In Singapore, 7-8 August 2012], Robert J. Kauffman, Martin Bichler, Hoong Chuin Lau, Christopher Yang, Yinping Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Singapore, a major hub in the Asia Pacific region well known for its multi-racial and multicultural society, is proud to host the 14th International Conference on Electronic Commerce. Singapore Management University (SMU), the School of Information Systems (SIS) and the Living Analytics Research Center (LARC) are also delighted to be able to support the delivery of this event.

Bidder Behaviors In Repeated B2b Procurement Auctions, Jong Han Park, Jae Kyu Lee, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

B2B auctions play a key role in a firm's procurement process. Even though it is known that repetition is a key characteristic of procurement auctions, traditional auctioneers typically have not put in place a suitable mechanism that supports repetitive auctions effectively. In this paper, we empirically investigate what has taken place in repeated procurement auctions based on real world data from a major outsourcing company of MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) items in Korea. From this empirical study, we discovered the followings. First, we discovered that the repeated bidders contribute majority of all bids, and that the number of new …

Investment Timing For Mobile Payment Systems, Robert J. Kauffman, Jun Liu, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The recent launch of Google Wallet has brought the issue of technology solutions in the mobile payment (m-payment) area to the forefront. In deciding whether and when to adopt m-payment technology, senior managers in banks are naturally concerned about uncertainties regarding future market conditions, technology standards, and consumer and merchant responses, especially their willingness to adopt. This study applies economic theory and modeling for decision-making under uncertainty to bank investments in mobile payment technology. We assess the projected benefits and costs of investment as a continuous-time stochastic process to determine optimal investment timing. We find that the value of waiting …

The Pricing Model Of Cloud Computing Services, Jianhui Huang, Dan Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cloud computing service providers offer computing resource as a utility and software as a service over network. Many believe that Cloud computing is making an industry-wise paradigm shift for IT use. Besides its technique issues, the business feature of Cloud computing attracts our interests. Specifically the practice of Amazon EC2 introduces an interesting pricing scheme. Amazon provides users with virtual computing instances as a combination of interruptible service (i.e., spot instance) and uninterruptible service (i.e., on-demand and reserved instance). Spot instance is charged at a per use price which is dynamically changing over time; users of spot instance face the …

Consumer Micro-Behavior And Tv Viewership Patterns: Data Analytics For The Two-Way Set-Top Box, Ray M. Chang, Robert J. Kauffman, Insoo Son

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Consumer behavior patterns related to home digital media use are changing due to technological innovations. We examine them in the presence of two-way cable television (CATV) settop boxes. They permit viewers to change channels, switch to the Internet, and order paid programming, among other functions. We focus on micro-level data that are generated from consumer CATV viewing behavior. We capture clickstreams of channel-changing behavior when consumer use a remote control handset to interact with the set-top box in their home. We explore a variety of data analytics results that characterize patterns of consumer channel-switching behavior, as a basis for suggesting …

Vertical Differentiation And A Comparison Of Online Advertising Models, Mei Lin, Xuqing Ke, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Designing business models that take into consideration the role of advertising support is critical to the success of online services. In this paper, we address the challenges of these business model strategies and compare different ad revenue models. We use game theory to model vertical differentiation in both monopoly and duopoly settings, in which online service providers may offer an ad-free service, an ad-supported service, or a combination of these services. Offering both ad-free and ad-supported services is the optimal strategy for a monopolist because ad revenues compensate for the cannibalistic effect of vertical differentiation. In a duopoly equilibrium, exactly …

Invasive Species And E-Commerce, Invasive Species Advisory Committee

National Invasive Species Council

ISSUE

Internet commerce (hereafter e-commerce) is a growing and vital part of the United States economy. Total e-commerce sales in the United States for 2011 totaled $194 billion, an increase of 16% over 2010. From 2002 to 2011, the proportion of reported e-commerce sales in the U. S. grew from about 1.4% to 5.5% of total retail sales (United States Census Bureau News 2012). Globally, e-commerce is expected to increase at a rate of 13.5% annually, amounting to $1.4 trillion in yearly sales by 2015 (Enright 2011). A portion of this activity includes the sale and trade of living organisms. …

Manipulation Of Online Reviews: An Analysis Of Ratings, Readability, And Sentiments, Nan Hu, Indranil Bose, Noi Sian Koh, Ling Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As consumers become increasingly reliant on online reviews to make purchase decisions, the sales of the product becomes dependent on the word of mouth (WOM) that it generates. As a result, there can be attempts by firms to manipulate online reviews of products to increase their sales. Despite the suspicion on the existence of such manipulation, the amount of such manipulation is unknown, and deciding which reviews to believe in is largely based on the reader's discretion and intuition. Therefore, the success of the manipulation of reviews by firms in generating sales of products is unknown. In this paper, we …

Online Privacy Policy Of The Thirty Dow Jones Corporations: Compliance With Ftc Fair Information Practice Principles And Readability Assessment, Yuanxiang Li

Theses Digitization Project

This project conducted a statistical study of online privacy to examine how well corporations comply with FIPs and assess how easy their privacy was to read.

Semantic Inference On Heterogeneous E-Marketplace Activities, Jingzhi Guo, Lida Xu, Zhiguo Gong, Chin-Pang Che, Sohail S. Chaudry

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

An electronic marketplace (e-marketplace) is a common business information space populated with many entities of different system types. Each of them has its own context of how to process activities. This leads to heterogeneous e-marketplace activities, which are difficult to make interoperable and inferred from one entity to another. This study solves this problem by proposing a concept of separation strategy and implementing it through providing a semantic inference engine with a novel inference algorithm. The solution, called the RuleXPM approach, enables one to semantically infer a next e-marketplace activity across multiple contexts/domains. Experiments show that the cross-context/cross-domain semantic inference …

Optimal Decision Making For Online Referral Marketing, Zhiling Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Widely available web 2.0 technologies not only bring rich and interactive user experiences, but also easily help users advertise products or services on their own blogs and social network webpages. Online referral marketing, for example, is a business practice that rewards customers who successfully refer other customers to a website or upon completion of a sale usually via their own social contacts. The referral rewards come in different forms such as shopping vouchers, redeemable points, discounts, prizes, cash payments, etc. We develop an analytical model to evaluate the business potential of incorporating an online referral marketing program into the firm's …

The Valuation Of User-Generated Content: A Structural, Stylistic And Semantic Analysis Of Online Reviews, Noi Sian Koh

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The ability and ease for users to create and publish content has provided vast amount of online product reviews. However, the amount of data is overwhelmingly large and unstructured, making information difficult to quantify. This creates challenge in understanding how online reviews affect consumers’ purchase decisions. In my dissertation, I explore the structural, stylistic and semantic content of online reviews. Firstly, I present a measurement that quantifies sentiments with respect to a multi-point scale and conduct a systematic study on the impact of online reviews on product sales. Using the sentiment metrics generated, I estimate the weight that customers place …