Love Unshackled: Identifying the Effect of Mobile App Adoption in Online Dating
Authors: JaeHwuen Jung, Ravi Bapna, Jui Ramaprasad and Akhmed Umyarov
Publication: MIS Quarterly, Forthcoming
Abstract:
The proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices has led to numerous companies investing significant resources in developing mobile applications, in every imaginable domain. As apps proliferate, understanding the impact of app adoption on key outcomes of interest and linking this understanding to the the underlying mechanisms that drive these results is imperative. In this paper, we explore the changes in user behavior induced by adoption of a mobile application, in terms of engagement and matching outcomes in the online dating context. We also identify three mechanisms that are somewhat unique to the mobile environment, but are hitherto unestablished in the literature, that drive this shift in behavior – ubiquity, impulsivity and disinhibition. Our main identification strategy uses propensity score matching combined with difference-in-differences, coupled with a rigorous falsification test to confirm the validity of our identification strategy. Our results demonstrate that mobile app adoption induces users to become more socially engaged as measured by key engagement metrics such as visiting significantly more profiles, sending significantly more messages, and importantly, achieving more matches. We also discover various mechanisms facilitating this increased engagement: ubiquity of mobile use – users login more, and login across wider range of hours in the day. We find that men act more impulsively, in that they are less likely to check the profile of a user who messaged them before replying to them. This effect is not visible for women who continue to be deliberate in their checking before replying even after adoption of the mobile app. Finally, we find that both men and women exhibit disinhibition, in that users initiate actions to a more diverse set of potential partners than they did before on dimensions of race, education and height.
Designing Risk-Adjusted Therapy for Patients with Hypertension
Authors: Manaf Zargoush, Mehmet Gumus, Vedat Verter, Stella Daskalopoulou
Journal Name: Production and Operations Management, Forthcoming
Abstract:
Hypertension has not been well studied by operations researchers from a clinical decision support perspective. Moreover, little personalized (i.e. patient-centric) guidance is available regarding the number and combination of antihypertensive medications. To fill this gap, we develop a Markov Decision Process (MDP) to characterize the optimal sequence (and combination) of antihypertensive medications under the standard medication dose. Our model is patient-centric as it takes into account a set of relevant patient characteristics such as age, gender, blood pressure level, smoking habits, diabetes status, and cholesterol level. Based on a set of intuitive assumptions, we prove that our model yields a series of structured optimal policies. Having calibrated our model based on real data and medical literature, we analyze these optimal policies and discuss their insights to the real practice. We also compare the benefits, in terms of quality adjusted life expectancy, QALE, obtained from our results with those obtained from British Hypertension Society (BHS) guideline.
Did Europe Move in the Right Direction on E-Waste Legislation?
Authors: Shumail Mazahir, Vedat Verter, Tamer Boyaci and Luk van Wassenhove
Publication: Production and Operations Management, Forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper presents an analytical framework of the product take back legislation in the context of product reuse. We characterize existing and proposed forms of E-waste legislation and compare their environmental and economic performance. Using stylized models, we analyze an OEM’s decision about new and remanufactured product quantity in response to the legislative mechanism. We focus on the 2012 waste electrical and electronic equipment directive in Europe, where the policy-makers intended to create additional incentives for the product reuse. Through a comparison to the original 2002 version of the directive, we find that these incentives translate into improved environmental outcomes only for a limited set of products. We also study a proposed policy that advocates a separate target for the product reuse. Our analysis reveals that from an environmental standpoint, the recast version is always dominated either by the original policy or by the one that advocates a separate target for the product reuse. We show that the benefits of a separate reuse target scheme can be fully replicated with the aid of fiscal levers. Our main message is that there cannot be a single best environmental policy that is suitable for all products. Therefore, the consideration of product attributes is essential in identification of the most appropriate policy tool. This can be done either by the implementation of different policies on each product category or by implementation of product based target levels.
Juan Serpa's article featured in Management Science
Professor Juan Serpa's paper "The Impact of Supply Chains on Firm-Level Productivity," together with Harish Krishnan was selected by the Editor-in-Chief of Management Science one of the three Featured Articles for the February 2018 issue.
Management Science is a scholarly journal that publishes scientific research on the practice of management. Within our scope are all aspects of management related to strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, information technology, and organizations as well as all functional areas of business, such as accounting, finance, marketing, and operations. We include studies on organizational, managerial, and individual decision making, from both normative and descriptive perspectives.
Influential Chief Marketing Officers and Management Revenue Forecasts
Authors: David S. Koo and Dongyoung Lee
Publication: The Accounting Review, Forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the role of the chief marketing officer (CMO) in corporate voluntary disclosure of future revenues. Using a sample of S&P 1500 firms for the period from 2003 to 2011, we find that the presence of an influential CMO in top management is positively associated with the likelihood of a firm's issuing a management revenue forecast. We also find that firms with an influential CMO provide more accurate revenue forecasts than other firms. These findings extend to long-window change analyses and are robust to the use of a propensity-score matched-pair approach. Overall, the results are consistent with the notion that CMO influence in top management appears to play an important role in voluntary revenue disclosures.
Read abstract: The Accounting Review
Strategy processes and practices: Dialogues and intersections
Authors: Robert Burgelman, Steven Floyd, Tomi Laamanen, Saku Mantere, Eero Vaara and Richard Whittington
Publication: Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 39, No. 3 (SI), 2018, pp. 531-558.
Abstract:
Building on our review of the strategy process and practice research, we identify three ways to see the relationships between the two research traditions: complementary, critical, and combinatory views. We adopt in this special issue the combinatory view, in which activities and processes are seen as closely intertwined aspects of the same phenomena. It is this view that we argue offers both strategy practice and strategy process scholars some of the greatest opportunities for joint research going forward. We develop a combinatory framework for understanding strategy processes and practices (SAPP) and based on that call for more research on (a) temporality, (b) actors and agency, (c) cognition and emotionality, (d) materiality and tools, (e) structures and systems, and (f) language and meaning.
Read article: Strategic Management Journal
The Club Store Effect: Impact of Shopping in Warehouse Club Stores on Consumers' Packaged Food Purchases
Authors: Kusum L. Ailawadi, Yu Ma and Dhruv Grewal
Publication: Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2018, pp. 193-207.
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This article studies the impact of shopping at the warehouse club format on households' packaged food-for-home purchases. In addition to low prices, this format has several unique characteristics that can influence packaged food purchases. The empirical analysis uses a combination of households' longitudinal grocery purchase information, rich survey data, and detailed item-level nutrition information. After accounting for selection on observables and unobservables, the authors find a substantial increase in the total quantity (servings per capita) of purchases attributable to shopping at this format. Because there is no effect on quality of purchases, this translates into a substantial increase in calories, sugar, and saturated fat per capita. The increase comes primarily from storable and impulse foods and it is drawn equally from foods that have positive and negative health halos. The results have important implications for how marketers can create win–win opportunities for themselves and for consumers.
Read abstract: Journal of Marketing Research
Bridging Practice and Process Research to Study Transient Manifestations of Strategy
Authors: Laurent Mirabeau, Steve Maguire and Cynthia Hardy
Publication: Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 39, No. 3 (SI), March 2018
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At the intersection of Strategy Process (SP) and Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) research lies the focal phenomenon they share – strategy, which manifests itself in a variety of ways: intended, realized, deliberate, emergent, unrealized, and ephemeral strategy.
We present a methodology comprised of three stages that, when integrated in the manner we suggest, permit a rich operationalization and tracking of strategy content for all manifestations. We illustrate the utility of our methodology for bridging SP and SAP research by theorizing practices that are more likely to give rise to unrealized and ephemeral strategy, identifying their likely consequences, and presenting a research agenda for studying these transient manifestations.
The Strategic Role of Business Insurance
Authors: Juan Serpa and Harish S. Krishnan
Publication: Management Science, Vol. 63, No. 2, February 2017
Abstract:
The use of business insurance has been traditionally studied in a single-firm setting, but in reality preventing operational accidents involves the (unobservable) efforts of multiple firms. We show that, in a multifirm setting, insurance can be used strategically as a commitment mechanism to prevent excessive free riding by other firms. In the presence of wealth imbalances, contracts alone leave wealth-constrained firms with inefficiently low incentives to exert effort (because of limited liability) and firms with sufficient wealth with excessive incentives. Insurance allows the latter to credibly commit to lower effort, thereby mitigating the incentives of the wealth-constrained firms to free ride. This finding shows that insurance can improve the efficiency of risk management efforts by decreasing free-riding problems.
Read full article: Management Science
The Impact of Supply Chains on Firm-Level Productivity
Authors: Juan Serpa and Harish S. Krishnan
Publication: Management Science, Vol. 64, No. 2, February 2018
Abstract:
Firms in a vertical relationship are likely to affect each other’s productivity. Exactly how does productivity spill over across this type of relationship (i.e., through which mechanisms)? Additionally, how does the relative importance of these mechanisms depend on the structure of the supply chain?
To answer these questions, we decompose the channels of upstream productivity spillovers—from customers to suppliers—by developing a structural econometric model on a sample of approximately 22,500 supply chain dyads.
We find that the “endogenous channel” (i.e., the effect of the customer’s own productivity on the supplier’s productivity) is by far the most important source of spillovers. This is especially true if (i) the supplier has a concentrated customer base, (ii) the supplier and the customer have similar operational characteristics, and (iii) the relationship has medium maturity.
In the converse scenarios, we find, it is more important to have a partner with a portfolio of favorable “contextual” characteristics (high inventory turnover, financial liquidity, and asset turnover) than to have a productive partner.
Read full article: Management Science
Firm Expansion, Size Spillovers and Market Dominance in Retail Chain Dynamics
Authors: Jason R. Blevins, Ahmed Khwaja and Nathan Yang
Publication: Management Science, Forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop and estimate a dynamic game of strategic firm expansion and contraction decisions to study the role of firm size on future profitability and market dominance. Modeling firm size is important because retail chain dynamics are more richly driven by expansion and contraction than de novo entry or permanent exit. Additionally, anticipated size spillovers may influence the strategies of forward looking firms making it difficult to analyze the effects of size without explicitly accounting for these in the expectations and, hence, decisions of firms. Expansion may also be profitable for some firms while detrimental for others.
Thus, we explicitly model and allow for heterogeneity in the dynamic link between firm size and profits as well as potential for persistent brand effects through a firm-specific unobservable. As a methodological contribution, we surmount the hurdle of estimating the model by extending the Bajari, Benkard and Levin (2007) two-step procedure that circumvents solving the game. The first stage combines semi-parametric conditional choice probability estimation with a particle filter to integrate out the serially correlated unobservables.
The second stage uses a forward simulation approach to estimate the payoff parameters. Data on Canadian hamburger chains from their inception in 1970 to 2005 provides evidence of firm-specific heterogeneity in brand effects, size spillovers and persistence in profitability. This heterogeneous dynamic linkage shows how McDonald’s becomes dominant and other chains falter as they evolve, thus affecting market structure and industry concentration.
Read full article: Management Science
Market and Regional Segmentation and Risk Premia in the First Era of Financial Globalization
Authors: David Chambers, Sergei Sarkissian and Michael J. Schill
Publication: Review of Financial Studies, Forthcoming
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We study market segmentation effects using data on U.S. railroads that list their bonds in New York and London between 1873 and 1913. This sample provides a unique setting for such analysis because of the precision offered by bond yields in cost of capital estimation, the geography-specific nature of railroad assets, and ongoing substantial technological change. We document a significant reduction in market segmentation over time. Whilst New York bond yields exceeded those in London in the 1870s, this premium disappeared by the early 1900s. However, the segmentation premium persisted in the more remote regions of the United States.
Read full article: Review of Financial Studies
Two-Sided Reputation in Certification Markets
Authors: Matthieu Bouvard and Raphaël Levy
Publication: Management Science, Forthcoming
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In a market where sellers solicit certification to overcome asymmetric information, we show that the profit of a monopolistic certifier can be hump-shaped in its reputation for accuracy: a higher accuracy attracts high-quality sellers but sometimes repels low-quality sellers. As a consequence, reputational concerns may induce the certifier to reduce information quality, thus depressing welfare. The entry of a second certifier impacts reputational incentives: when sellers only solicit one certifier, competition plays a disciplining role and the region where reputation is bad shrinks. Conversely, this region may expand when sellers hold multiple certifications.
Read full article: Management Science
To Thine Own Self Be True? Facades of Conformity, Values Incongruence, and the Moderating Impact of Leader Integrity
Authors: Patricia Faison Hewlin, Tracy L. Dumas and Meredith Flowers Burnett
Publication: Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 60, No. 1, February 2017
Abstract:
When employees feel that their values do not match those of the organization, they often respond by pretending to fit in. We examine how leader integrity influences the tendency to create facades of conformity, proposing that employees will actually fake more when leaders are principled. In a laboratory experiment (Study 1), undergraduate students whose values ostensibly differed from those of other discussion group members and the university administration created more facades when they perceived the discussion group leader as having high integrity. A two-wave survey of employed adults (Study 2) replicated the moderation effect and also revealed negative effects of facade creation on work engagement. In both studies, our results indicate that, ironically, when leader integrity is high, the tendency to create facades of conformity in response to low values congruence is magnified. Additionally, our findings reveal that positive attributes in leaders may not always result in positive responses from followers. The results from our study also show that facades of conformity may serve as a partial explanatory mechanism in the relationship between values congruence and employee engagement.
Read full article: Academy of Management Journal
Popularity or Proximity: Characterizing the Nature of Social Influence in an Online Music Community
Authors: Sanjeev Dewan, Yi-Jen (Ian) Ho and Jui Ramaprasad
Publication: Information Systems Research, Vol. 28, No. 1, March 2017
Abstract:
We study social influence in an online music community. In this community, users can listen to and “favorite” (or like) songs and follow the favoriting behavior of their social network friends—and the community as a whole. From an individual user’s perspective, two types of information on peer consumption are salient for each song: total number of favorites by the community as a whole and favoriting by their social network friends. Correspondingly, we study two types of social influence: popularity influence, driven by the total number of favorites from the community as a whole, and proximity influence, due to the favoriting behavior of immediate social network friends. Our quasi-experimental research design applies a variety of empirical methods to highly granular data from an online music community. Our analysis finds robust evidence of both popularity and proximity influence. Furthermore, popularity influence is more important for narrow-appeal music compared to broad-appeal music. Finally, the two types of influence are substitutes for one another, and proximity influence, when available, dominates the effect of popularity influence. We discuss implications for design and marketing strategies for online communities, such as the one studied in this paper.
Read full article: Information Systems Research