Despite the popular use of social media by consumers and marketers, empirical research investigating their economic values still lags. In this study, we integrate qualitative user-marketer interaction content data from a fan page brand community on Facebook and consumer transactions data to assemble a unique data set at the individual consumer level. We then quantify the impact of community contents from consumers (user-generated content, i.e., UGC) and marketers (marketer-generated content, i.e., MGC) on consumers' apparel purchase expenditures. A content analysis method was used to construct measures to capture the informative and persuasive nature of UGC and MGC while distinguishing between directed and undirected communication modes in the brand community. In our empirical analysis, we exploit differences across consumers' fan page joining decision and across timing differences in fan page joining dates for our model estimation and identification strategies. Importantly, we also control for potential ...

Social Media Brand Community and Consumer Behavior: Quantifying the Relative Impact of User- and Marketer-Generated Content

Despite the popular use of social media by consumers and marketers, empirical research investigating their economic values still lags. In this study, we integrate qualitative user-marketer interaction content data from a fan page brand community on Facebook and consumer transactions data to assemble a unique data set at the individual consumer level. We then quantify the impact of community contents from consumers (user-generated content, i.e., UGC) and marketers (marketer-generated content, i.e., MGC) on consumers’ apparel purchase expenditures. A content analysis method was used to construct measures to capture the informative and persuasive nature of UGC and MGC while distinguishing between directed and undirected communication modes on the brand community. In our empirical analysis, we exploit differences across consumers’ fan page joining decision and across timing differences in fan page joining dates for our model estimation and identification strategies. Importantly, we also control for potential self-selection biases and relevant factors such as pricing, promotion, social network attributes, consumer demographics and unobserved heterogeneity. Our findings show that engagement in social media brand communities lead to a positive increase in purchase expenditures. Additional in-depth examinations of UGC and MGC impacts show robust evidence that social media brand community contents affect consumer purchase behavior through embedded information and persuasion. Evidence also points to the different roles played by UGC and MGC, varying by the type of directed or undirected communication modes by consumers and the marketer. Specifically, the elasticities of UGC information richness are 0.006 (directed communication) and 3.140 (undirected communication), whereas those of MGC information richness are insignificant. Moreover, the elasticity of UGC valence is 0.180 (undirected communication), while that of MGC valence is 0.004 (directed communication). Overall, UGC exhibits a stronger impact than MGC on consumer purchase behavior. Our findings provide various implications for academic research and practice.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2170034_code358840.pdf?abstractid=2048614&type=2

This paper presents a comprehensive literature review on applications of economic and pricing models for resource management in cloud networking. To achieve sustainable profit advantage, cost reduction, and flexibility in provisioning of cloud resources, resource management in cloud networking requires adaptive and robust designs to address many issues, e.g., resource allocation, bandwidth reservation, request allocation, and workload allocation. Economic and pricing models have received a lot of attention as they can lead to desirable performance in terms of social welfare, fairness, truthfulness, profit, user satisfaction, and resource utilization. This paper reviews applications of the economic and pricing models to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for resource management in cloud networking. Besides, we survey a variety of incentive mechanisms using the pricing strategies in sharing resources in edge computing. In addition, we consider using pricing models in cloud-based software defined wireless networking. Finally, we highlight important challenges, open issues and future research directions of applying economic and pricing models to cloud networking.

Resource Management in Cloud Networking Using Economic Analysis and Pricing Models: A Survey

Advertising is a crucial tool for demand creation and market expansion. When a manufacturer uses a retailer as a channel for reaching end customers, the advertising strategy takes on an additional dimension: which party will perform the advertising to end customers. Cost sharing (�co-operative advertising�) arrangements proliferate the option by decoupling the execution of the advertising from its funding. We examine the efficacy of cost sharing in a model of two competing manufacturer�retailer supply chains who sell partially substitutable products that may differ in market size. Some counterintuitive findings suggest that the firms performing the advertising would rather bear the costs entirely if this protects their unit profit margin. We also evaluate the implications of advertising strategy for overall supply chain efficiency and consumer welfare.

Advertising in Asymmetric Competing Supply Chains

Advertising is a crucial tool for demand creation and market expansion. When a manufacturer uses a retailer as a channel for reaching end customers, the advertising strategy takes on an additional dimension: which party will perform the advertising to end customers. Cost sharing (“cooperative advertising”) arrangements proliferate the option by decoupling the execution of the advertising from its funding. We examine the efficacy of cost sharing in a model of two competing manufacturer-retailer supply chains who sell partially substitutable products that may differ in market size. Some counterintuitive findings suggest that the firms performing the advertising would rather bear the costs entirely, if this protects their unit profit margin. We also evaluate the implications of advertising strategy for overall supply chain efficiency and consumer welfare.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2236440_code1325944.pdf?abstractid=2236440&mirid=1&type=2

Consumer responses to price discrimination: Discriminating bases, inequality status, and information disclosure timing influences☆

This article offers an economic rationale for national brands to provide private labels to their retailers. We build a game-theoretic model that analyzes the interactions among two national brand manufacturers and one common retailer. In an interesting strategic role, the private label mitigates the promotion competition between the two national brands and provides benefits for all three members in the channel. Our analysis shows that offering a private label can be a credible commitment from a national brand manufacturer that it will not engage in promotions and decrease the incentive of the national brand rival to engage in promotions. In this way, we attempt to provide a reason for why national brand manufacturers provide retailers with private labels in practice. In addition, we discuss the optimal quality level of private labels.

A Positive Theory of Private Label: A Strategic Role of Private Label in a Duopoly National-Brand Market

The introduction of independent retailers has long been recognized as a buffer that alleviates the price competition between channels. In this paper, we argue that this effect may be counter-balanced if the manufacturers compete along dimensions that differ from prices (such as advertising). We find that delegating to retailers may intensify other non-price competition between the manufacturers and therefore make the manufacturers worse off. Our analysis shows that the “retailer buffer” may be a two-edged sword and thus suggests that channel structure may critically depend on the specific dimensions along which the manufacturers compete with each other.

/pdf/advertising-competition-and-industry-channel-structure-1bc3yg55cr.pdf

Advertising competition and industry channel structure

The existing marketing literature suggests that persuasive advertising elicits counteractions from competing manufacturers and consequently leads to wasteful cancellation of the advertising effects. Thus, persuasive advertising is widely perceived to be combative in nature. A series of previously published papers demonstrates that appropriate targeting may partially mitigate the combative nature of persuasive advertising in that either the rival manufacturer or the retailer may benefit. In this paper, we complement their results by demonstrating the possibility that every channel member may benefit from persuasive advertising, i.e., a Pareto improvement along the distribution channel, thereby leading to the conclusion that persuasive advertising need not result in channel conflict.

Chih-Jen Wang

Papers

Consumer responses to price discrimination: Discriminating bases, inequality status, and information disclosure timing influences☆

A Positive Theory of Private Label: A Strategic Role of Private Label in a Duopoly National-Brand Market

Advertising competition and industry channel structure

Is Persuasive Advertising Always Combative in a Distribution Channel