Marketing Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2790
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Item Essays on Digital Content Provision and Consumption(2022) Wang, Chutian; Zhou, Bobby; Joshi, Yogesh V; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Consumption of digital content has become an inseparable part of consumers' lives today. As providers of digital content, media platforms continuously seek to pursue pricing and product design strategies that increase their profits. This dissertation studies media platforms' digital content provision and consumers' consumption decisions. In the first essay, we focus on the pricing of digital content and analyze the impact of consumers' endogenous content consumption on platforms' paywall strategies. Paywalls increase subscription revenues for platforms, but they also impact content consumption and thus advertising revenues. We build an analytical model that endogenizes consumers' content consumption decisions. We find that under moderate ad rates, a metered paywall under which a limited amount of content is provided for free is optimal when consumers display sufficient heterogeneity in their costs of consuming content. We also study how the amount of free content and the subscription price vary with changes in the advertising rate and consumer preference. In the second essay, we analyze the accuracy of news reported by the news media. When consumers are seeking the truth and accurate reporting is costly, determining the optimal level of accuracy in reporting is a strategic decision for a profit-maximizing media firm. We build an analytical model to study this media firm decision. When consumers and the media firm are both initially uncertain about the true state of the world, we show that the media firm always chooses full accuracy if investigation and reporting are of low cost. However, if achieving accuracy is sufficiently costly, the media firm provides news only when consumers' priors regarding the truth are not too extreme, so that they see enough value in news consumption. Interestingly, consumers' truth-seeking and the firm's profit maximization can lead to reporting inaccuracy and exaggeration of the more likely state a priori. We also discuss the implications of polarization in consumers’ prior beliefs and the media firm’s different objectives on the accuracy of news.Item LEARNING MECHANSIMS AND HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY(2012) Kothari, Anupama Kunal; Agarwal, Ritu; Viswanathan, Siva; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Health information technology (HIT) is gaining momentum and widespread use globally in healthcare institutions through the implementation and use of HIT such as telemedicine and electronic medical records. Literature has discussed various aspects of health information technology such as increasing the accessibility of healthcare, improving the efficacy and reducing associated errors. However, the potential of HIT as a medium of learning has largely been ignored by extant literature. This dissertation seeks to understand the mechanisms of learning in the context of health information technologies, specifically- telemedicine and electronic medical records. The two essays investigate the characteristics of learning under telemedicine and under electronic records. The first essay uses a quantitative mode of investigation, while the second essay utilizes a qualitative mode of research. The first essay deals with telemedicine, a healthcare information technology that provides healthcare across geographic boundaries. The essay investigates how the telemedicine process facilitates synchronous learning in terms of a facilitator-learner theoretical model. It explores the impact of facilitator characteristics and learner characteristics on synchronous learning. Additionally, the essay also examines the impact of organizational variables such as technology on the relationship between learning and facilitator-learner mechanics. Data for this essay is drawn from surveys administered over several hospitals that use telemedicine in India. The second essay studies the role of electronic medical records in information dissemination and learning. In this essay, the role of electronic medical records in providing healthcare personnel with asynchronous learning opportunities is investigated. It explores the impact of individual and organizational factors on discovery learning through electronic medical records. The essay identifies factors such as case complexity, status, familiarity with technology and clinical specialty that influence learning through electronic medical records. The second essay draws on interviews of members of a healthcare team in a multiple specialty hospital that uses electronic medical records. Together, the essays explore various aspects of learning through health information technology, including synchronous learning, asynschronous learning, learning mechanics and motivations for learning.