Revealing transactions data to third parties: Implications of privacy regimes for welfare in online markets

We examine the effects of privacy policies regarding transactions (e.g., price/quantity) data on online shopping platforms. Disclosure of transactions data induces consumer signaling behavior that affects merchant pricing decisions and the welfare of platform participants. A profit‐maximizing platform prefers the disclosure policy that maximizes total welfare. Although this policy benefits sophisticated consumers, it harms unsophisticated (myopic) consumers. Consequently, the welfare effects of alternative privacy policies, data breaches, deceptive privacy policies, and opt‐in/opt‐out requirements can differ sharply, depending on the level of consumer sophistication and on other factors such as the prevailing status quo.     

An instrumental variable approach to distinguishing perceptions from preferences for beer brands

Recent developments in behavioral economics have prompted interest in identifying how product perceptions and beliefs influence decision making. Using a branded discrete choice experiment for beer, this article uses the control function approach and plausible instruments to correct for the endogeneity problem in a way that is applicable in a wide range of circumstances. Even after correction, we find that perceptions substantially affect consumer choices. In the context of brand equity for beer brands, we find that the perceived taste and brand familiarity are key determinants of choice.     

Déjà lu: On the limits of data reuse across multiple publications

Scholars in our field, Operations and Supply Chain Management (OSCM), are under high pressure to show research productivity. At most schools, this productivity is measured by the number of journal articles published. One possible response to such pressure is to improve research efficiency: publishing more journal articles from each data collection effort. In other words, using one dataset for multiple publications. As long as each publication makes a sufficient contribution, and authors ensure transparency in methods and consistency across publications, generating more than one publication from one data collection effort is possible. The aim of this Notes and Debates article, however, is to draw attention to inappropriate reuse of empirical data in OSCM research, to explain its implications and to suggest ways in which to promote research quality and integrity. Based on two cases of extensive data reuse in OSCM, eighteen problematic practices associated with the reuse of data across multiple journal articles are identified. Recommendations on this issue of data reuse are provided for authors, reviewers, editors and readers.     

Review: Chinese public administration and finance—a call for a new theory,research and dialogue

In implementing its national strategy to achieve global leadership, China needs a new public administration theory that integrates political administration, economic management and social regulation. Even so, China has already started to promote its brand of political and economic development abroad. Therefore new comparative research and dialogue is called to explore the universality of Chinese and Western public administration ideas.     

CEO career horizon,corporate governance,and real options: The role of economic short‐termism

Research Summary: Combining studies on real options theory and economic short‐termism, we propose that, depending on CEOs’ career horizons, CEOs have heterogeneous interests in strategic flexibility, and thus, have different incentives to make real options investments. We argue that compared to CEOs with longer career horizons, CEOs with shorter career horizons will be less inclined to make real options investments because they may not fully reap the rewards during their tenure. In addition, we argue that long‐term incentives and institutional ownership will mitigate the relationship between CEOs’ career horizons and real options investments. U.S. public firms as an empirical setting produced consistent evidence for our predictions. Our study is the first to theoretically explain and empirically show that a CEO's self‐seeking behavior will impact real options investments. Managerial Summary: This article helps to explain how a CEO's self seeking‐behavior may shape a firm's real option investment, which could result in different level of strategic flexibility. We argue that CEOs with short career horizons have less time to exercise their firms’ real options, which should lower the investments in the firms’ real options portfolios relative to CEOs with long career horizons. We study a sample of U.S. public firms and find strong evidence that a CEO's expected tenure in the firm is positively related to the real options investments at the firm level. We find that this agency issue can be mitigated by adopting appropriate corporate governance mechanisms such as long‐term incentives and institutional investors.     

Mobile diaries – Benchmark against metered measurements: An empirical investigation

Researchers seeking to study the relationships between consumers' communications, attitudes, and behaviors could benefit from monitoring consumers over time, across multiple locations and channels, and in a way that reflects consumers' subjective perceptions. Diaries on smartphones (mobile diaries) can be used as a research tool for such purposes. A mobile diary is a self-report instrument whereby people use their mobile handset to repeatedly report experiences of interest. Mobile diaries are increasingly used in psychology, geography, medicine, and commercial marketing. Yet they have rarely been used for quantitative marketing research, and were not benchmarked against best-practice metrics in marketing.In this study, we aim to set the ground for using mobile diaries in quantitative marketing research. We first lay out the theoretical infrastructure for the usage of mobile diaries, and describe possible respondent reporting concerns, including concerns related to non-reporting, reporting over time, and concerns stemming from individual-level heterogeneity.We demonstrate the potential of mobile diaries, as well as the importance of the various concerns, using a benchmark test case in the context of primetime TV viewing. Our benchmark uses a sample of respondents with both mobile diary viewing reports and Nielsen People Meter (NPM) records. Our analysis reveals that averaging across all conditions, 47.4%–64.7% of the NPM records are reported by the diary. The major sources for mismatch are random time periods without alarms, short viewings, and periodic reporting inactivity (pulsing). Concerns such as a decrease in reporting rates over time (e.g., fatigue), smartphone ownership, and demographic variation across individuals have relatively small effects on reporting likelihood. Analyzing the cases in which diary reports do not have a matching NPM record, we find many of them can be attributed to out-of-home viewing and viewing on non-metered devices. This finding demonstrates how mobile diaries can complement metered measurements. Overall, aggregate diary-based ratings have a 0.90 correlation with NPM ratings.We discuss implications for designing and using mobile diary studies in marketing.     

Instructional Manipulation Checks: A longitudinal analysis with implications for MTurk

Instructional Manipulation Checks (IMCs) assess respondent behavior by, for example, asking participants not to answer a trick question. We find IMCs can be used to detect problematic response behavior in longitudinal surveys. This is important because a Latent Class Analysis based on IMC-failure in the two reported studies reveals that between 9% and 12% of respondents can be labelled Inattentive Stayers at the first survey-wave and between 13% and 17% at the third wave. The tendency of Inattentive Stayers to remain in the panel is particularly relevant for online panel services such as MTurk, with workers participating in many surveys over longer time-periods. We find IMC-failure to be mitigated by a warning to respondents that their attention will be checked early in the survey, but not by repeated exposure to IMCs, or a timer leaving questions on the screen longer. Respondent personality also plays a role in IMC-failure, which implies persistency of undesirable respondent behavior.     

Be bad but (still) look good: Can controversial industries enhance corporate reputation through CSR initiatives?

Even though the link between perceived corporate social responsibility fit (PCSR‐fit) and corporate reputation has received much attention from scholars, this tradition has ignored that the underpinnings of this association vary depending on the particular characteristics of each industry under study. To delve into this matter, we investigate in the increasingly relevant context of controversial industries (CIs) how PCSR‐fit could enhance corporate reputation and which are the mediating mechanisms of this association. Our academic contribution is twofold. First, we find that controversial sectors indeed can increase corporate reputation through CSR activities. However, we find that to achieve this goal, the nature of PCSR‐fit should be different than what extant literature indicates, because companies in these settings should directly focus on avoiding or reducing their inherent controversial harm or impact. Second, we evidence that “CSR initiatives' legitimacy” and “situational skepticism” mediate the PCSR‐fit and corporate reputation relationship in CIs. Therefore, we further unravel the underpinnings of this association to advance what we know on the matter and aid practitioners in this particular context.