Article
Computer Science, Software Engineering
Jose Correa, Andres Cristi, Andres Fielbaum, Tristan Pollner, S. Matthew Weinberg
Summary: This article considers a fundamental pricing problem in combinatorial auctions. It shows that by setting appropriate item prices, the expected welfare of the allocation they induce can be at least 1/(d + 1) times the expected optimal welfare. The article also demonstrates how to compute such a fixed point in polynomial time, even with only sample access to the valuation distributions.
MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING
(2023)
Review
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Yao Zhang, Cui Zhao, Zhe Liang
Summary: The study shows that in a competitive e-market, retailers' price and frill decisions are influenced by online reviews. Offering frills to consumers can increase profits when there is a small quality difference and low frill effectiveness. However, in a competitive context, retailers may focus more on promoting superior products rather than offering more frills.
COMPUTERS & INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
(2021)
Article
Management
Chu Zhang, Xiaona Zheng
Summary: This paper investigates the optimal customization strategies and product variety decisions for firms in different channels. The impact of customization on firms' pricing decisions, profits, and consumer welfare are highlighted, and some managerial insights are identified, such as launching customization scopes in the middle of the product line to capture demand and offering limited variety of standard products to stand out in competition. Additionally, the strategic role of customization in directing consumer traffic is discussed.
OMEGA-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Environmental Studies
Olena Myrna
Summary: In October 2018, an innovative pilot project was launched in Ukraine to facilitate the transparent transfer of rental rights for publicly owned agricultural land via an ascending-price online auction. This paper analyzes publicly disclosed auction data to investigate the factors influencing auction outcomes. The results confirm that a higher number of bidders and more active bidding lead to a significantly greater probability of auction success and higher rental rates.
Article
Environmental Studies
Olena Myrna
Summary: An innovative pilot project was launched in Ukraine in October 2018 to transparently transfer rental rights for publicly owned agricultural land through an online auction. This study analyzed publicly disclosed auction data to understand how competition, auction design characteristics, and land properties influenced the outcomes. The analysis revealed that more bidders and active bidding were associated with higher probability of auction success and rental rates.
Article
Operations Research & Management Science
Xiuxian Li, Pengwen Hou, Shuhua Zhang
Summary: This paper investigates the optimal advertising strategy for two heterogeneous retailers facing differentiated targeted effect consumers. Through Nash and Stackelberg games, it is found that the weaker retailer benefits more from targeted advertising when consumers' expected targeted effect is positive, and the stronger retailer is better off when he has decision-making power. Additionally, both retailers achieve a win-win situation when consumers' expected targeted effect is low or high enough, but may fall into a lose-lose situation when the expected targeted effect is moderate.
ANNALS OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Business
Stylianos Despotakis, R. Ravi, Amin Sayedi
Summary: The authors discuss the transition in the display advertising market from second-price to first-price auction format in connection with publishers adopting a header bidding strategy. They argue that this shift has improved revenue for publishers to some extent, and the move to first-price auctions by exchanges can increase clearing prices despite potential competition leading to lower revenue for some exchanges.
JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Operations Research & Management Science
Sarat Kumar Jena, Abhijeet Ghadge
Summary: This paper examines the impact of product bundling in a monopolistic supply chain network on the overall supply chain profit. The study finds that manufacturer bundling can generate higher profits compared to retailer bundling in certain cases, and advertising efforts have a significant effect on manufacturer bundling.
ANNALS OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Business
Guoqiang Wang, Garry Wei-Han Tan, Yunpeng Yuan, Keng-Boon Ooi, Yogesh K. Dwivedi
Summary: This study investigates the factors that affect consumers' acceptance of behavioral targeting advertising (BTA) services by extending the technology acceptance Model 2 (TAM2) with perceived risk. The results show that only the relationship between image and perceived usefulness (PU) was not supported. In practical situations, hidden attributes may affect the role of subjective norms (SN) and PU, and the relationship between variables cannot be fully explained by a linear perspective.
TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE
(2022)
Article
Business
Xinjie Xing, Hongfu Huang, Carl Philip T. Hedenstierna
Summary: Retail platforms provide consumer-profiling services (CPS), which gather consumers' preferences to support pricing activities of online retailers. A game-theoretic model is developed to investigate how a platform should offer CPS considering retailers' competition and consumers' data blocking. The study reveals that exclusively sharing data with high-quality retailers benefits both the platform and retailers. Surprisingly, data blocking by consumers can benefit the platform and retailers when the cost is moderate. However, data blocking always negatively affects consumer surplus and social welfare. Three extensions are examined to test the robustness of the main model: sequential pricing, asymmetric production costs, and positive service fees.
JOURNAL OF BUSINESS RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Business
Ernan Haruvy, Boram Lim, Peter T. L. Popkowski Leszczyc
Summary: This study examines auctions for identical items with different surcharges and finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between the surcharge amount and the price premium. By fitting an empirical model with a two-stage process, the study explores the determinants of both search and bid in consumer decision-making and maps the relationship between surcharge and expected revenue. The findings highlight the conditions under which consumers fail to accurately process price and surcharge differences.
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Management
Negin Golrezaei, Adel Javanmard, Vahab Mirrokni
Summary: The article discusses the problem of learning reserve prices against strategic buyers in ad exchange markets, proposing various learning policies to address this issue. These policies estimate buyers' preferences by observing auction outcomes and control the impact of auction results on future reserve prices.
OPERATIONS RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Hai Jian Wang, Xia Lei Yue, Aisha Rehman Ansari, Gui Qian Tang, Jian Yi Ding, Ya Qiong Jiang
Summary: This study analyzed the impact mechanism of consumers' perceived risk on the avoidance behavior of online targeted advertising by constructing a conceptual model. The results showed that perceived performance risk, time-loss risk, and freedom risk positively influenced advertising avoidance, with negative emotions mediating this relationship, while perceived privacy risk did not affect advertising avoidance through negative emotions. Perceived COVID-19 risk moderated the effect of negative emotions on advertising avoidance, providing insights for governments, advertisers, and online platforms on how risk perceptions influence advertising avoidance.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Ethics
Jeffrey Moriarty
Summary: Online retailers are using data and computing technologies to personalize prices, potentially leading to unfair competition for social surplus. The author suggests that online retailers should either disclose personalized pricing or stop the practice.
ETHICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Information Science & Library Science
Karthik Kannan, Rajib L. Saha, Warut Khern-am-nuai
Summary: The research finds that platforms that charge sellers for discoveries have a perverse incentive to deviate from accurate buyer profiling, while platforms that charge sellers for transactions do not have this incentive. As a result, social welfare is lower under discovery-based pricing compared to transaction-based pricing.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH
(2022)