The choice at the checkout: Quantifying demand across payment instruments

Dramatic changes have occurred in the U.S. payment system over the past two decades, most notably an explosion in electronic card-based payments. This shift has led to a series of policy debates driven in part by consumers' choice of payment instruments. Using a new nationally representative survey, we transform consumer responses to open-ended questions into product rankings and estimate a characteristics-based rank-order logit model in order to quantify consumer substitution among payment methods. Our estimates are then used to conduct supply-driven and demand-driven counterfactual experiments in order to estimate market share and cost effects. From a counterfactual experiment in which merchants stop accepting credit cards, we predict merchant costs to decline substantially. Because merchants accept credit cards nonetheless, we regard our finding as evidence either that the credit card networks hold market power, or that merchants experience unmeasured intangible benefits from credit card acceptance. We also predict that contactless debit will take market share from cash, checks, and credit, and that the age/cohort effect alone is unlikely to cause debit card use to increase substantially over a 10-year period.     

Anti‐Competitive Interconnection: the effects of the elasticity of consumers' expectations and the shape of the network effects function

I find that interconnection might cause the market to be less competitive, and might lead to an increase in the price firms charge for their product. Absent interconnection, firms compete for a consumer for two reasons. The first reason is to obtain revenue from selling the product to a consumer (as in the case without network effects). The second reason is that by expanding the network by one more consumer, the product becomes more attractive to all other consumers. Interconnection eliminates the second reason—when firms interconnect, they are no longer concerned with consumers' following the crowd. I show that consumers and society might be worse off from interconnection. I focus on two factors that make the (post‐interconnection) price increase larger: consumer expectations that are highly sensitive to prices and consumers putting a high value on small increases in network size at the equilibrium market shares. Both of these factors make firms highly competitive, but only if the firms' products' networks are not interconnected.     

MERCHANT TRANSMISSION INVESTMENT*

We examine the performance attributes of a merchant transmission investment framework that relies on ‘market driven’ investment to increase transmission network capacity needed to support competitive wholesale markets for electricity. Under a stringent set of assumptions, the merchant investment model has a remarkable set of attributes that appears to solve the natural monopoly problem and the associated need for regulating electric transmission companies. We expand the merchant model to incorporate several attributes of wholesale power markets and transmission networks that the merchant model ignores. These include market power in wholesale electricity markets, lumpiness in transmission investment opportunities, stochastic attributes of transmission networks and associated property rights definition issues, strategic behavior by potential merchant transmission investors and issues related to the coordination of transmission system operators and merchant transmission owners. Incorporating these more realistic attributes of transmission networks and the behavior of transmission owners and system operators leads to the conclusion that several potentially significant inefficiencies may result from reliance on the merchant transmission investment framework. Accordingly, it is inappropriate for policymakers to assume that they can avoid dealing with the many challenges associated with stimulating efficient levels of investment in electric transmission networks by adopting the merchant model.     

Interchange fee regulation and service investments

This paper analyzes the impact of interchange fee regulation on the investment incentives of a payment card platform in the presence of full merchant internalization. We distinguish between investment in consumer and retailer services. We find that the optimally regulated interchange fee can be above the privately optimal one to induce the platform to invest more in retailer services. We also demonstrate that the two prominent regulatory benchmarks of a zero interchange fee and regulation according to the “tourist test” tend to set too low investment incentives under a total welfare standard. Instead, “tourist test” regulation can be a reasonable approximation under a total user surplus standard.     

Biases in optimal pricing with network externalities

Access and usage externalities affect consumer welfare and behavior in regulated communications networks, but nobody has ever adjusted prices to allow for externalities with a binding revenue constraint. If we fail to account for network externalities when we set (profit-constrained) welfare-maximizing access and usage prices, are the resulting prices too high or too low? This article demonstrates that the outcome depends upon what size of customer is likely to exit the network. It determines ranges where the access price increases and the usage price decreases, as well as the reverse.     

Payment Evasion

This paper shows that a firm can use the purchase price and the fine imposed on detected payment evaders to discriminate between unobservable consumer types. Assuming that consumers self‐select into regular buyers and payment evaders, we show that the firm typically engages in second‐degree price discrimination in which the purchase price exceeds the expected fine. In addition, we find that higher fines do not necessarily reduce payment evasion. We illustrate with data from fare dodging on public transportation.     

MVNO services: Policy implications for promoting MVNO diffusion

This study seeks to validate a comprehensive model of consumer acceptance in the context of MVNOs. While the MVNO business model has gained much popularity over the past few years, it shows a sign of drastic decrease. This study uses the unified theory of acceptance and the use of technology (UTAUT) model with constructs from the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) such as compatibility, relative advantage and social influence. Structural equation modeling is used to construct a predictive model of attitudes toward the MVNO services. While the model confirms the classical role of technology adoption factors (i.e., perceived usefulness and ease of use are key antecedents to consumers’ intention), the results also show that users’ intention and usage are influenced by IDT factors. The model brings together extant research on MVNO and provides an important cluster of antecedents to eventual technology acceptance via constructs of behavioral intention to use and to the actual MVNO usage. Policy implications of MVNO are discussed in terms of consumer adoption and market diffusion.     

Leveraging Social Networks to Develop Radically New Products

In this article, the authors consider the nexus of social networks and radically new products. These new products are so innovative that they forge new product categories, and social networks might be particularly fruitful in their development, dissemination, and help to foster growth and acceptance. Several social networks concepts are brought to bear on these issues, from the class diffusion model, to current considerations of lead users and emerging ideas about crowdsourcing. In particular, the classic diffusion model provides parameters to reflect innovative consumer behavior, and it is suggested that, in complement to studies that seek customer traits to identify innovators, social network concepts and indices of degree, betweenness, and closeness centrality are very well suited in identifying customers embedded in social networks whose relational ties are indicative of their likely influence and stature. Next, lead users are considered in the specific context of health care, and it is suggested that online forums provide numerous benefits to customer patients as well as opportunities to health‐care providers. Next, the dynamics of social networks are considered as they apply to cutting‐edge ideas about crowdsourcing, movements that companies are exploring to be radically open to customer feedback and suggestions. This article closes with an example of a novel appeal that bridges social networks and radically new products—the challenge of solving societal difficulties, from food scarcity, to environmental pollutants, to weather patterns, to discovering treatments for cancer or other medical conditions.     

Technology Adoption in Online Social Networks

With the advances of information technology, online social networks are becoming increasingly important venues for technology adoption. However, although the dynamics of technology adoption in real world social networks have been well documented, technology adoption in online social networks remains relatively under‐explored. This study identifies the differences between online and offline social networks and proposes a framework to investigate the dynamics of technology adoption in online social networks. To illustrate the proposed research framework, this study employs behavior‐link panel data obtained from an open source software (OSS) development network to examine how online social networks affect the adoption of Subversion, the latest OSS version control technology. Based on social network theory, co‐membership is used to construct online social networks within the OSS development network. Methodologically, this study takes advantage of the panel dataset and addresses the issues of simultaneity and individual heterogeneity that frequently confound the relationship between network structure and adoption decision, and as a result it demonstrates a more compelling relationship between social networks and technology adoption. The results of this study reveal that social networks are major conduits for technology adoption in an online social network in terms of imitation, leadership, lock‐in, similarity, recency, and team size effects. In online social networks, one's decision to adopt a new technology is strongly influenced by the actions of the connected others. Project leaders have a stronger influence over other members in technology adoption decision making, even in informal virtual teams where traditional governance structures do not apply. Older projects exhibit stronger inertia and thus lack innovativeness. Similarities among projects facilitate faster adoption, and the effect of leadership attenuates in the networks with increasing project dissimilarity. Recent adoptions of technology within the networks, rather than more distant ones, have a stronger impact on subsequent adoption, implying the salience of memory over usage confidence, and increased size of a project team accelerates the rate of adoption. These results help in understanding the dynamics of technology adoption in online social networks, and provide useful guidelines for firms to promote technology and product innovation.     

Home Ownership,Household Leverage and Hyperbolic Discounting

I examine tenure and mortgage choice in an equilibrium model in which households make decisions as if they discount hyperbolically rather than exponentially. Overall, hyperbolic discounting does not seem to explain the high rates of home ownership or portfolio concentration in housing in the data. I then study the choice between mortgages that require a substantial down payment and mortgages that require no down payment. Allowing households access to no‐down‐payment mortgages exacerbates rather than mitigates the undersaving of hyperbolic discounters. However, even when households discount hyperbolically, welfare is higher when households have access to no‐down‐payment mortgages.     

Network structure and innovation: The leveraging of a dual network as a distinctive relational capability

This paper employs comparative longitudinal case study research to investigate why and how strong dyadic interfirm ties and two alternative network architectures (a ‘strong ties network’ and a ‘dual network’) impact the innovative capability of the lead firm in an alliance network. I answer these intrinsically cross‐level research questions by examining how three design‐intensive furnishings manufacturers managed their networks of joint‐design alliances with consulting industrial design firms over more than 30 years. Initially, in order to explore the sample lead firms' alliance behavior, I advance an operationalization of interorganizational tie strength. Next, I unveil the strengths of strong ties and the weaknesses of a strong ties network. Finally, I show that the ability to integrate a large periphery of heterogeneous weak ties and a core of strong ties is a distinctive lead firm's relational capability, one that provides fertile ground for leading firms in knowledge‐intensive alliance networks to gain competitive advantages whose sustainability is primarily based on the dynamic innovative capability resulting from leveraging a dual network architecture. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consumer choice and local network effects in mobile telecommunications in Turkey

The aim of this paper is to analyze the extent of network effects in mobile telecommunications in Turkey, and to identify other determinants of consumer choice based on consumer survey data. This study shows that there are regional disparities in the adoption of network services in Turkey, the attractiveness of the different networks varies for consumers between different regions. The results show that local network effects are significant for consumer choice. This finding means that consumers are more likely to be affected by the choices of other people within their local area than by the overall size of a network. Furthermore, local network effects also outweigh macro network effects at least in Turkey.     

Exploring Adaptivity in Service Development: The Case of Mobile Platforms

Together with the developing technologies of a fast‐evolving Web environment, computers, and handheld devices, human–computer interaction is gaining more importance. User interface, as the interactive layer between user and information systems, has a great role in system adoption. Based on a technology acceptance model, acceptance of a system can be explained as a function of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). Because several external variables have impact on PU and PEOU, the content and interface design of every single application should be addressed accordingly in a way that enhances the consumer's attitude about using the system by considering the impact of external variables through system usage. The objective of this study was to uncover potential external variables that may influence PEOU and PU, and indirectly influence behavioral attitude in mobile service acceptance and to explore the effects of those variables, primarily adaptivity and the relationships of all the variables among each other, through the limited interface of a mobile platform. Thus, developers will be able to relate the tuning of product features to the adoption of the products they are developing based on a platform.     

TYING IN TWO‐SIDED MARKETS WITH MULTI‐HOMING*

This paper analyzes the effects of tying on market competition and social welfare in two‐sided markets when economic agents can engage in multi‐homing by participating in multiple platforms to reap maximal network benefits. The model shows that tying induces more consumers to multi‐home and makes platform‐specific exclusive content available to more consumers, which is beneficial to content providers. As a result, tying can be welfare‐enhancing if multi‐homing is allowed, even in cases where its welfare impacts are negative in the absence of multi‐homing. The analysis thus can have important implications for recent antitrust cases in industries where multi‐homing is prevalent.     

Dynamic branching and interest rate competition of commercial banks: Evidence from Hungary

I supplement previous models of bank competition by incorporating the endogenous branching choices of commercial banks. I apply a dynamic structural model of banks' branching and interest rate choices to a unique bank-level dataset on Hungarian commercial banks during 2004–2007. I find that banks charge a premium in interest rates for relative branch network dominance, and banks with relatively smaller networks are less likely to close branches. I present significant and robust estimates of branch setup costs and scrap values, and discuss the potential use of branching restrictions as regulatory tools to alter lending rates and consumer surplus.     

Commercializing Technological Innovation: Learning from Failures in High‐Tech Markets*

Commercialization is known to be a critical stage of the technological innovation process, mainly because of the high risks and costs that it entails. Despite this, many scholars consider it to be often the least well managed phase of the entire innovation process, and there is ample empirical evidence corroborating this belief. In high‐tech markets, the difficulties encountered by firms in commercializing technological innovation are exacerbated by the volatility, interconnectedness, and proliferation of new technologies that characterize such markets. This is clearly evinced by the abundance of new high‐tech products that fail on the market chiefly due to poor commercialization. Yet there is no clear understanding, in management theory and practice, of how commercialization decisions influence the market failure of new high‐tech products. Drawing on research in innovation management, diffusion of innovation, and marketing, this article shows how commercialization decisions can influence consumer acceptance of a new high‐tech product in two major ways: (i) by affecting the extent to which the players in the innovation's adoption network support the new product; (ii) by affecting the post‐purchase attitude early adopters develop toward the innovation, and hence the type of word‐of‐mouth (positive or negative) they disseminate among later adopters. Lack of support from the adoption network is found to be an especially critical cause of failure for systemic innovations, while a negative post‐purchase attitude of early adopters is a more significant determinant of market failure for radical innovations. There follows a historical analysis of eight innovations launched on consumer high‐tech markets (Apple Newton, IBM PC‐Junior, Tom Tom GO, Sony Walkman, 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, Sony MiniDisc, Palm Pilot, and Nintendo NES), which illustrates how commercialization decisions (i.e., timing, targeting and positioning, inter‐firm relationships, product configuration, distribution, advertising, and pricing) can determine lack of support from the innovation's adoption network and a negative post‐purchase attitude of early adopters. The results of this work provide useful insights for improving the commercialization decisions of product and marketing managers operating in high‐technology markets, helping them avoid errors that are precursors of market failure. It is also hoped the article will inform further research aimed at identifying, theoretically and empirically, other possible causes of poor customer acceptance in high‐tech markets.     

Networks in a protected business context: Licenses as restraints and facilitators

Taking the network approach developed in the Nordic countries as a point of departure (cf. [Håkansson, H. and Snehota, I. (1989). No business is an island. The network concept of business strategy, Scandinavian Journal of Management 5 (3) 187-200.; Turnbull, P., Ford, D., and Cunningham, M. (1996). Interaction relationships and networks in business markets. An evolving perspective, Journal of Business Marketing 11 (3/4) 44-62]) this paper seeks to explore how firms and networks are affected by high involvement by governmental authorities. A special focus is given to the regulating instrument of licenses. In two case studies of protected industries, the pharmacy and insurance industry, we find that licenses are restrictions but also facilitators for relationships and networks. Licenses render firms a certain degree of acceptance, define roles and positions in the network, and affects efficiency. Thus, although licenses can be seen as a restriction for firms it also becomes evident that they facilitate firms' activities related to operating and/or entering new markets.     

基于非线性效应的第三方支付平台兼容性研究

本文在设定网络外部性效用为符合梅特卡夫法则的非线性函数条件下,构建双寡头支付平台兼容和不兼容两种情况下的优化模型,探讨双寡头支付平台的兼容性策略选择问题。研究发现,规模对称的双寡头支付平台兼容之后,两家支付平台的利润、消费者效用及社会福利均会增加;银联成立后中国工商银行的银行卡业务利润得以提升也验证了模型结果。建议政府借鉴银联的成功经验,使银联在线成为各支付平台的聚合型平台,提高第三方支付清算系统的效率。     

Design of Robust New Products under Variability: Marketing Meets Design*

In designing consumer durables such as appliances and power tools, it is important to account for variations in product performance across different usage situations and conditions. Since the specific usage of the product and the usage conditions can vary, the resultant variations in product performance also can impact consumer preferences for the product. Therefore, any new product that is designed should be robust to these variations—both in product performances and consumer preferences. This article refers to a robust product design as a design that has (1) the best possible (engineering and market) performance under the worst‐case variations and (2) the least possible sensitivity in its performance under the variations. Achieving these robustness criteria, however, implies consideration of a large number of design factors across multiple functions. This article's objectives are (1) to provide a tutorial on how variations in product performance and consumer preferences can be incorporated in the generation and comparison of design alternatives and (2) to apply a multi‐objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) that incorporates multifunction criteria in order to identify better designs while incorporating the robustness criteria in the selection process. Since the robustness criteria is based on variations in engineering performance as well as consumer preferences, the identified designs are robust and optimal from different functional perspectives, a significant advantage over extant approaches that do not consider robustness issues from multifunction perspectives. This study's approach is particularly useful for product managers and product development teams, who are charged with developing prototypes. They may find the approach helpful for obtaining customers' buy‐in as well as internal buy‐in early on in the product development cycle and thereby for reducing the cost and time involved in developing prototypes. This study's approach and its usefulness are illustrated using a case‐study application of prototype development for a handheld power tool.     

The economics of networks

I analyze the salient features of networks and point out the similarities between the economic structure of networks and the structure of vertically related industries. The analysis focuses on positive consumption and production externalities, commonly called network externalities. I discuss their sources and their effects on pricing and market structure. I distinguish between results that do not depend on the underlying industry microstructure (the ‘macro’ approach) and those that do (the ‘micro’ approach). I analyze the issues of compatibility, coordination to technical standards, interconnection and interoperability, and their effects on pricing and quality of services and on the value of network links in various ownership structures. I also briefly discuss the issue of interconnection fees for bottleneck facilities.