Does Chatter Matter? The Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales

The Internet has enabled a new era of user-generated content, threatening the hegemony of traditional content generators as the primary sources of “legitimate” information. In this study, we examine the usefulness of such content, consisting of data from blogs and social networking sites, in predicting sales in the music industry. We track changes in online chatter for a sample of 108 albums for four weeks before and after their release dates. We identify the significance of variables on the observation date in predicting future album unit sales one, two, and three weeks ahead. Our findings are that future sales are positively correlated with (a) the volume of blog posts about an album, and (b) traditional factors such as whether the album is released by a major label and reviews from mainstream sources like Rolling Stone. More generally, the study provides some preliminary answers for marketing managers interested in assessing the relative importance of the burgeoning number of “Web 2.0” information metrics that are becoming available on the Internet. The study also provides a framework for thinking about when user-generated content influences decision making.     

School district quality and property values: Examining differences along school district boundaries

Examining differences across school district boundaries rather than school attendance zone boundaries has several advantages. These advantages include being applicable when attendance zones are not available or less relevant to educational outcomes as arises with within district school choice and for examining the effect of factors like school spending or property taxes that do not vary within districts. However, school district boundaries have often been in place for many years allowing households to sort based on school quality and potentially creating distinct neighborhoods on either side of boundaries. We estimate models of housing prices using repeated cross-sections of housing transactions near school district boundaries in Connecticut. These models exploit changes over time to control for across boundary differences in neighborhood quality. We find significant effects of test scores on property values, but those effects are notably smaller than both OLS and traditional boundary fixed effects estimates.     

The Role of Retail Competition,Demographics and Account Retail Strategy as Drivers of Promotional Sensitivity

We study the determinants of sensitivity to the promotional activities of temporary price reductions, displays, and feature advertisements. Both the theoretical and empirical literatures on price promotions suggest that retailer competition and the demographic composition of the shopping population should be linked to response to temporary price cuts. However, datasets that span different market areas have not been used to study the role of retail competition in determining price sensitivity. Moreover, little is known about the determinants of display and feature response. Very little attention has been focused on retailer strategic decisions such as price format (EDLP vs. Hi-Lo) or size of stores. We assemble a unique dataset with all U.S. markets and all major retail grocery chains represented in order to investigate the role of retail competition, account retail strategy, and demographics in determining promotional response. Previous work has not simultaneously modeled response to price, display, and feature promotions, which we do in a Bayesian Hierarchical model. We also allow for retailers in the same market to have correlated sales response equations through a variance component specification. Our results indicate that retail strategic variables such as price format are the most important determinants of promotional response, followed by demographic variables. Surprisingly, we find that variables measuring the extent of retail competition are not important in explaining promotional response.     

The effect of the WIC program on consumption patterns in the cereal category

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a federally-funded food assistance program for low income participants who are at nutritional risk. Beneficiaries receive vouchers for specific foods and brands, selected for their nutritional value. While the program is designed to improve nutrition, it may also induce changes in consumption behavior that persist beyond participation in the program. In this paper, we study how participation in WIC impacts the consumption patterns and preferences during and after the program. Our analysis focuses on the cereal category, in which the subsidized brands must meet certain nutritional guidelines. As expected, during the program households increase cereal consumption volume and shift their choices towards the WIC-approved brands. More interesting is that once households exit the program, the higher category consumption rate and elevated share of WIC brands persist. To understand the behavioral mechanism underlying these consumption patterns, we estimate a choice model and find an increased preference for WIC brands after controlling for state dependence. The evidence suggests that this targeted food subsidy program is effective in creating behavior change that persists even after the incentive is withdrawn.     

U.S.-China trade war and competitive advantage of Vietnam

China has been losing international competitiveness in labor-intensive industries due to various factors, including the trade war with the United States and globalization. Vietnam, however, has rapidly expanded its labor-intensive exports. The paper proposes to explore the future of labor-intensive industries in Vietnam due to the U.S.-China trade war. The paper examines export performance data from United Nation Comtrade for 10 specific labor-intensive industries that serve the U.S. market between 2000 and 2020 to assess the possibility of Vietnam overtaking China's position as the world's largest manufacturer. Using situation analysis, the paper compares the competitive advantage of Vietnam in labor-intensive industries due to the U.S.-China trade war. The paper found that China's competitiveness was negatively impacted for the final two periods, while Vietnam's competitive advantage increased.     

斯特恩商学院——我们需要了解信息技术

在体育界,各个运动队上场的队员数量都很明确:一支篮球队需要5个人,棒球队要9个人,足球队是11个人。然而,在工作场所,随着团队合作在不断扩大且复杂化的组织中目益普遍,要确定每支团队的最佳人数则几乎是无章可循的。最近,有杂志宣称,4-6个人是实现最高团队效率的人数。它的根据在哪里呢?我们需要追溯一下著名的"拉绳子"     

The long-term box office performance of sequel movies

With a 26-year-long database of nationally distributed movies, we estimate the prevalence and effectiveness of sequels over time, while controlling for other factors that might influence demand. In particular, we examine whether the effectiveness of a strategy increases over time (possibly due to managerial learning) or decreases (possibly because its effectiveness is competed away or because of consumer satiation). After taking into account both supply side and demand side effects by using simultaneous equations, we find that sequels have a positive effect indirectly (i.e., supply side effect) through a significantly larger number of theaters showing such movies compared to non-sequel movies. In terms of direct effect (i.e., demand side effect), sequels do better than non-sequels in generating more attendance in the first week and in total. Parent movies, the movies from which sequels originate, also do better than non-sequels in terms of total attendance and first-week attendance. Interestingly, sequel movies generate less total attendance than parent movies. On the other hand, sequels generate more revenues upfront than parents. We also find that the impact of sequels on first-week attendance has been increasing over time, but the number of sequels released has not. Our follow-up analysis suggests that one reason can be due to the higher (inflation-adjusted) production budget of a sequel than of the original (i.e., the parent) movie possibly leading to a decreasing gross margin for sequels within a movie franchise.     

An Empirical Assessment of Endogeneity Issues in Demand Analysis for Differentiated Products

This article explores the issue of price and expenditure endogeneity in empirical demand analysis. The analysis focuses on the U.S. carbonated soft drink market. We test the null hypothesis that price and expenditures are exogenous in the demand for carbonated soft drinks. Using an almost ideal demand system (AIDS) specification, we strongly reject exogeneity for both prices and expenditures. We find that accounting for price/expenditures endogeneity significantly impacts demand elasticity estimates. We also evaluate the implications of endogeneity issues for testing weak separability.