Decision, Operations & Information Technologies Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2761
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Item WHITHER WONDER WOMEN? ESSAYS ON GENDER DIVERSITY IN IT-ENABLED PROFESSIONAL AND CREATIVE DOMAIN(2023) Wang, Yifei; Ramaprasad, Jui; Gopal, Anandasivam; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Working towards equality and inclusion around gender and race in society is critically important. Despite the increasing number of conversations around these issues, more work is needed to evaluate the causes of unequal participation of men and women in organizations, markets, and economies. In particular, the lack of equity in terms of representation and participation within the important information technology (IT) sector has often been viewed as an ongoing problem. My dissertation focuses on this specific sector and explores potential remedies to enhance the participation and representation of women in specific segments of IT-enabled work, albeit in three different empirical contexts. In my first essay, I investigate the unequal participation of women in IT labor markets and whether they are less willing to compete for complex and risky IT projects. Through multiple experiments on technically trained students, I find that women in the IT industry are more willing to participate in bidding for riskier projects, and their bids are higher than those of men. My second essay studies the issue of unequal representation by women within the digital music industry, where inequitable representation has been clearly noted. Women artists are often faced with less attention, respect, and market share. The study shows that TikTok dance challenges offer a low-cost, effective way to promote artists and increase visibility. The challenges are particularly beneficial for women music artists. My third essay examines the intersection of gender and race in digital music consumption after Floyd's death. I explore whether music can raise awareness of social justice issues and the role of Black artists as sensemaking agents. I find that hip-hop listeners increased after Floyd's death, particularly in less racially diverse cities. Black artists received more listenership across all genres, but consumption was skewed towards Black men artists, highlighting the underrepresentation of women in Black-dominated music genres. Collectively, the findings from these studies in my dissertation will provide valuable theoretical contributions, practical insights, and actionable solutions to bind the gender gap and make the digital markets more diverse and inclusive.Item DATA-DRIVEN ESSAYS: ROLE OF PRICING AND RETURNS(2022) Hemmati, Sahar; Elmaghraby, Wedad J; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, we identify leavers in retailers’ operations such as their shipping policy design as well as markdown strategy which can significantly impact their product returns and the costs associated with it. We study how a high free shipping thresholds can induce shoppers to place orders with an intention to return a part of the order later. Using an empirical approach, which exploits natural experiments, we confirm that high threshold and/or high shipping fees induce a substantial order padding behavior, which leads to lower sales revenue, after adjusting for returns. However, we find that such behavior can be largely alleviated with frictions to returns. We propose that retailers looking to design their shipping policy should correctly account for return environment features. We also explore the link between a retailer’s markdown pricing strategies and its impact on customers’ purchase and return behavior. We specifically study the distinction between regular price markdowns and bundle price markdowns and the key contributors to such distinctions, and how they contribute to sales and customers’ return behavior. Capturing this notion and the heterogeneous impact of bundle and regular discounts on merchandise with different substitutability or complementarity as well as correlation between items at return stage, we offer recommendations on how a retailer should approach the design of their markdown strategies.Item Online Doctor Reviews: Essays on their Economic Implications, Incidence of Fraud, and Motivation of Reviewers(2019) Shukla, Aishwarya Deep; Agarwal, Ritu; Gao, Guodong (Gordon); Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The ubiquity of WOM in the business world underscores how instrumental it has been as a consumer engagement lever. Therefore, it is imperative for business to understand the consequential role of WOM in influencing consumer behavior. There is also a great need to improve the quality and quantity of online reviews. I address three overarching questions in my dissertation: (1) What is the effect of WOM on consumer decision making; (2) How to detect fake reviews using the review text; and (3) How to encourage reviewers to reveal their identity and give higher quality reviews. In the first study, I estimate the causal effect of online WOM on consumer demand and uncover its mechanism in affecting the consumer decision making process. I utilize a natural experiment to examine the causal effect of online WOM on consumer demand. The setup allows me to gain granular understanding of how WOM affects the consideration set size and session duration. In addition, the availability of provider location in the dataset allows me to estimate the impact of online WOM on the consumer’s willingness to travel. In the second study, I detect fake online reviews. To identify fake reviews, I use an incidental honeypot that attracts fraudulent behavior by opening low-cost channels for fraudsters. This allows me to build a large training dataset for the machine learning classifier. Finally, in my third study, I explore how email message framing and assurance of user privacy affect the response rate and response quality of online WOM. I conduct a field experiment to uncover how the propensity of a user to give feedback for their doctor can be influenced by a motivational message and how privacy assurance affects identity revelation. Collectively, these studies advance our knowledge on the antecedents and consequences of online reviews, which helps business and society to better utilize WOM for greater value creation for consumers.Item Enemies at the Gate? Essays on New Entry Threats in the U.S. Information Technology Industry(2017) Pan, Yang; Gopal, Anandasivam; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Information Technology industry is characterized by constant technological changes, fast clock speed, and hypercompetitive markets. A significant part of this fast-moving dynamic is fed by the high rate of new entry in the form of entrepreneurial ventures. In recent decade, digital platforms accelerate these threats from startups by providing financial and marketing resources. While these developments have led to a significant increase in new entry threats faced by incumbent firms, there is little empirical research that has addressed the consequences of these threats on incumbents. This dissertation aims to fill this gap in the literature. In the first essay, I develop and validate an innovative measure of new entry threat. Then, I show that in the presence of new entry threat, firms tend to reduce their investments in innovation systematically. Further, firms that have a diversified product or technology portfolio, operate in industries with strong network effects, or face high levels of technological cumulativeness invest relatively more in R&D when facing greater new entry threats. The second essay focuses on the impact of new entry threat on the operational performance of firms in the IT industry, and studies how features of the incumbents’ board may help moderate the effects of new entry threat. I provide strong empirical evidence for the theoretical predication of the negative relationship between new entry threats and firm performance. I also show that facing high NET, firms with more independent directors are better able to withstand these threats. In the third essay, I examine the influence of new entry threats on the incumbent’s information disclosure in the IT industry. I find evidence consistent with theoretical prediction that high new entry threats faced by the firm indeed leads to a decrease in the incumbent’s information disclosure. Interestingly, I also find the effect is less pronounced in highly concentrated sub-industries, where actual entry barriers are higher, and more pronounced in the software and services sectors, where proprietary information is more vulnerable. Overall, the three essays contribute to the literature by first creating and validating a measure of new entry threats and linking this measure to specific firm-related strategic decisions within the IT industry.Item Essays on Supply Chain Finance(2016) Zhu, Weiming; Tunca, Tunay; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I study how a larger party within a supply chain could use its superior knowledge about its partner, who is considered to be financially constrained, to help its partner gain access to cheap finance. In particular, I consider two scenarios: (i) Retailer intermediation in supplier finance and (ii) The Effectiveness of Supplier Buy Back Finance. In the fist chapter, I study how a large buyer could help small suppliers obtain financing for their operations. Especially in developing economies, traditional financing methods can be very costly or unavailable to such suppliers. In order to reduce channel costs, in recent years large buyers started to implement their own financing methods that intermediate between suppliers and financing institutions. In this paper, I analyze the role and efficiency of buyer intermediation in supplier financing. Building a game-theoretical model, I show that buyer intermediated financing can significantly improve supply chain performance. Using data from a large Chinese online retailer and through structural regression estimation based on the theoretical analysis, I demonstrate that buyer intermediation induces lower interest rates and wholesale prices, increases order quantities, and boosts supplier borrowing. The analysis also shows that the retailer systematically overestimates the consumer demand. Based on counterfactual analysis, I predict that the implementation of buyer intermediated financing for the online retailer in 2013 improved channel profits by 18.3%, yielding more than $68M projected savings. In the second chapter, I study a novel buy-back financing scheme employed by large manufacturers in some emerging markets. A large manufacturer can secure financing for its budget-constrained downstream partners by assuming a part of the risk for their inventory by committing to buy back some unsold units. Buy back commitment could help a small downstream party secure a bank loan and further induce a higher order quantity through better allocation of risk in the supply chain. However, such a commitment may undermine the supply chain performance as it imposes extra costs on the supplier incurred by the return of large or costly-to-handle items. I first theoretically analyze the buy-back financing contract employed by a leading Chinese automative manufacturer and some variants of this contracting scheme. In order to measure the effectiveness of buy-back financing contracts, I utilize contract and sales data from the company and structurally estimate the theoretical model. Through counterfactual analysis, I study the efficiency of various buy-back financing schemes and compare them to traditional financing methods. I find that buy-back contract agreements can improve channel efficiency significantly compared to simple contracts with no buy-back, whether the downstream retailer can secure financing on its own or not.Item ASSESSING QUALITY IN HIGH-UNCERTAINTY MARKETS: ONLINE REVIEWS OF CREDENCE SERVICES(2016) Lantzy, Shannon; Stewart, Katherine; Viswanathan, Siva; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In economics of information theory, credence products are those whose quality is difficult or impossible for consumers to assess, even after they have consumed the product (Darby & Karni, 1973). This dissertation is focused on the content, consumer perception, and power of online reviews for credence services. Economics of information theory has long assumed, without empirical confirmation, that consumers will discount the credibility of claims about credence quality attributes. The same theories predict that because credence services are by definition obscure to the consumer, reviews of credence services are incapable of signaling quality. Our research aims to question these assumptions. In the first essay we examine how the content and structure of online reviews of credence services systematically differ from the content and structure of reviews of experience services and how consumers judge these differences. We have found that online reviews of credence services have either less important or less credible content than reviews of experience services and that consumers do discount the credibility of credence claims. However, while consumers rationally discount the credibility of simple credence claims in a review, more complex argument structure and the inclusion of evidence attenuate this effect. In the second essay we ask, “Can online reviews predict the worst doctors?” We examine the power of online reviews to detect low quality, as measured by state medical board sanctions. We find that online reviews are somewhat predictive of a doctor’s suitability to practice medicine; however, not all the data are useful. Numerical or star ratings provide the strongest quality signal; user-submitted text provides some signal but is subsumed almost completely by ratings. Of the ratings variables in our dataset, we find that punctuality, rather than knowledge, is the strongest predictor of medical board sanctions. These results challenge the definition of credence products, which is a long-standing construct in economics of information theory. Our results also have implications for online review users, review platforms, and for the use of predictive modeling in the context of information systems research.Item RECIPROCITY IN ONLINE MARKETS: EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF AUCTION AND BARTER MARKETS(2013) Ye, Shun; Viswanathan, Siva; Hann, Il-Horn; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation seeks to understand how reciprocity affects transaction outcomes and mechanism design in online markets. The first essay examines negative reciprocity illustrated as feedback-revoking behavior in the eBay auction market, focusing on its impact and implications for reputation system design. I utilize the biggest policy change of eBay's reputation system in its history as a natural experiment setting to infer the causal impact of the reputation system on seller behavior. I find that strategic engagement in negative reciprocity enables low quality sellers to manipulate their reputations and masquerade as high-quality sellers. I further show that these sellers react strongly to eBay's announcement of a ban on revoking. Interestingly, disallowing negative reciprocity motivates these sellers to significantly improve their service quality. The second essay examines positive reciprocity in one of the leading online barter markets for books, focusing on participants' different reciprocity strategies and their impacts on transaction outcomes. I find that, whereas market participants who use the immediate reciprocity strategy are able to motivate higher service quality for the current transaction from the other partner, participants who use the delayed reciprocity strategy derive more benefits for future transactions by fulfilling their wishlists sooner. I further show that the market participants can be segmented into different reciprocity strategies based on their book avidness, breadth of interest, and psychographic profiles. Overall, the two studies provide important theoretical and practical implications for the design and regulation of online markets.Item Decisions under Uncertainty in Decentralized Online Markets: Empirical Studies of Peer-to-Peer Lending and Outsourcing(2010) Lin, Mingfeng; Viswanathan, Siva; Lucas, Hank; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent developments in information technologies, especially Web 2.0 technologies, have radically transformed many markets through disintermediation and decentralization. Lower barriers of entry in these markets enable small firms and individuals to engage in transactions that were otherwise impossible. Yet, the issues of informational asymmetry that plague traditional markets still arise, only to be exacerbated by the "virtual" nature of these marketplaces. The three essays of my dissertation empirically examine how participants, many of whom are entrepreneurs, tackle the issue of asymmetric information to derive benefits from trade in two different contexts. In Essay 1, I investigate the role of online social networks in mitigating information asymmetry in an online peer-to-peer lending market, and find that the relational dimensions of these networks are especially effective for this purpose. In Essay 2, I exploit a natural experiment in the same marketplace to study the effect of shared geographical ties on investor decisions, and find that "home bias" is not only robust but also has an interesting interaction pattern with rational decision criteria. In Essay 3, I study how the emergence of new contract forms, enabled by new monitoring technologies, changes the effectiveness of traditional signals that affect a buyers' choice of sellers in online outsourcing. Using a matched-sample approach, I show that the effectiveness of online ratings and certifications differs under pay-for-time contracts versus pay-for-deliverable contracts. In all, the three essays of my dissertation present new empirical evidence of how agents leverage various network ties, signals and incentives to facilitate transactions in decentralized online markets, form transactional ties, and reap the benefits enabled by the transformative power of information technologies.