MIS Distinguished Speaker Series

Temple University

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Mar 18 – Hemant Bhargava to present “Platform Ecosystems: Co-Dependence, Scale, Design”

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Platform Ecosystems: Co-Dependence, Scale, Design

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Hemant K. Bhargava

Professor
Jerome and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management
Director, Center for Analytics and Technology in Society
Graduate School of Management
University of California Davis

 

Friday, Mar 18

11:00 am – 12:30 pm

In-person: 1810 Liacouras Walk, Room 420

Abstract:

I will discuss a couple of recent papers on platform economics, that aim to develop a highly general and extensible modeling architecture for analyzing the economics of platform ecosystems, specifically studying issues such as:

What factors govern the scale of the platform ecosystem? How are platform scale and power affected by: (i) Complementors’ production attributes? (ii) Platform’s economic + technical design, and strategic choices? (iii) Platform market structure? (iv) Nature of dependence between a platform and its complementors?

​How does ecosystem structure influence distribution of power (and revenue) between platform and complementors?

How will ecosystem structure, and platform-complementor co-dependence, evolve?

The two papers provide the basic modeling infrastructure, applied to platforms that monetize through advertising and through user fees. I will then discuss how the models can be adapted to address questions related to platform power, revenue-sharing, and platform regulation.

Bio:

Professor Hemant K. Bhargava is an academic leader in economic modeling and analysis of technology-based business and markets. He holds the Jerome and Elsie Suran Chair Professorship in Technology Management at UC Davis, and is the Director of the Center for Analytics and Technology in Society. His research focuses on decision analytics and how the distinctive characteristics of technology goods influences specific elements of operations, marketing, and competitive strategy, and the implications it holds for competitive markets and technology-related policy.  He has examined deeply these issues in specific industries including platform businesses, information and telecommunications industries, healthcare, media and entertainment, and electric vehicles. He has published extensively in the top journals Management Science, Operations Research, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Information Systems Research, INFORMS Journal on Computing, and Production and Operations Management. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the INFORMS Information Systems Society. He serves as Department Editor (Information Systems) for INFORMS’ flagship journal Management Science, and is on the Editorial Board of Marketing Science and other major journals. He co-founded the annual Theory in Economics of Information Systems workshop. He co-founded and was the first Academic Director of the UC Davis Master of Science in Business Analytics program, and previously served as Associate Dean at the Graduate School of Management. He was listed among the Global 100 Top Academic Data Leaders by Chief Data Officer magazine in 2020.  He has received several research awards, including most recently the INFORMS Journal on Computing “Test of Time” award for his 2007 paper on search engines, a Best Paper Award at INFORMS CIST 2021 for his work on revenue-sharing in platforms, and a Research Excellence Gift by Google in 2017-18.

April 10 – JaeHwuen Jung to present “The secret to Finding Love: A Field Experiment of Choice Structure in Online Dating Platform”

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The secret to Finding Love: A Field Experiment of Choice Structure in Online Dating Platform

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JaeHwuen Jung

Assistant Professor
Department of Management Information Systems
Fox School of Business
Temple University

Friday, April 10

10:30 – 12:00 pm | Zoom

Abstact:

Online matching platforms require new approaches to market design since firms can now control many aspects of search and interaction process through various IT-enabled features. While choice structure—the size of choice set and the number of choices a platform offers to its customers—is one of the key design features of online matching platforms, its impact on engagement and matching outcomes remains unclear. In this study, we examine the effect of different choice structures on the number of choices and matches on the platform by conducting a randomized field experiment in collaboration with an online dating platform. Specifically, we design four treatment groups with different choice structures where users can only interact with other users in the same group, select users who are in a similar age range and live in the same geographical location, and randomly assign them to each treatment group. We find that providing higher choice capacities to male and female users have a different effect on choice behaviors and matching outcomes. Moreover, while increasing the choice capacity of male users yields the highest number of choices, increasing the choice capacity of female users is the most effective way to increase matching outcomes. Structural analysis further reveals the underlying mechanisms of choice behavior and matching results, suggesting that users significantly decrease the number of choices after receiving a choice from other users and the effect of the choice capacity on matching outcomes differs by gender. We further provide a counterfactual analysis that explores optimal choice structure design depending on the gender ratio of the online dating platform.

Oct 11 – D.J. Wu to present “Platform Competition under Network Effects: Piggybacking and Optimal Subsidization”

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Platform Competition under Network Effects: Piggybacking and Optimal Subsidization

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D. J. Wu

Ernest Scheller Jr. Chair in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Commercialization
Professor, Area Coordinator, Information Technology Management
Georgia Institute of Technology
Scheller College of Business

Friday, October 11

10:30 – 12:00 pm | Speakman 200

Abstact:

A repeated challenge in launching a two-sided market platform is how to solve the “chicken-and-egg” problem. The solution often suggested in the literature is subsidizing one side of the market to jumpstart adoption of the platform. In this paper, using a game-theoretic framework, we study piggybacking — importing users from external networks — as a new approach to launching platforms. Our finding suggests that optimal use of the piggybacking strategy depends on the cross-side network effects. First, benchmarked with the case of no piggybacking, we find that the pricing impacts of piggybacking is non-trivial. It may help mitigate or avoid price competition. Second, we show that platform duopoly with piggybacking can become a “game of chicken” or even a prisoner’s dilemma, which implies that platforms are not always better off (sometimes even worse off) with piggybacking. Finally, when piggybacking users are fabricated (e.g., zombies or fake users), the platform strategies differ greatly from the authentic piggybacking case. It also undermines both the competing platform’s profit and the providers’ surpluses. Managerial implications for platform practitioners are also discussed

April 20 – Huseyin Cavusoglu to Present “Is Free Shipping Really Free? Strategic Implications of Membership-Based Free Shipping Programs of Online Marketplaces”

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Is Free Shipping Really Free? Strategic Implications of Membership-Based Free Shipping Programs of Online Marketplaces

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Huseyin Cavusoglu

Professor of Information Systems

Naveen Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas

Friday, April 20, 2018

10:30 AM – noon

Speakman Hall Suite 200

 

Abstract

We examine the membership-based free shipping (MFS) program offered by some online marketplaces in which a retail platform bears the shipping costs for purchases made by members that have paid an upfront fee, but non-members bear the shipping costs themselves. We show that the membership fee collected by the platform from members does not cover the cost of shipping products to members for their purchases during the membership period. While it may appear from this finding that the MFS program benefits members and hurts the platform, we show the MFS program actually benefits the platform when the shipping cost is less than a threshold value, which is increasing in the commission rate the platform earns from the third-party sellers. However, the gain from the MFS program is not necessarily decreasing in the shipping cost either. The MFS program always hurts non-members; it may also hurt even members. The demand enhancement, price increasing, and negative externality effects of the MFS program explain the results. Our findings imply that judging the success of the MFS program to either the platform or members solely based on the membership fee and shipping cost is misleading and that the MFS program is most attractive to the platform when the shipping cost is neither too low nor too high. Finally, the society can be worse off under the MFS program because the MFS program may stimulate demand from some low valuation and high misfit cost members who would not make a purchase in the absence of the MFS program, but the surplus enjoyed by these members is offset by the shipping cost borne by the platform.

September 29 – Amrit Tiwana to Present: “Platform Synergy: Architectural Origins and Competitive Consequences”

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Platform Synergy: Architectural Origins and Competitive Consequences

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Amrit Tiwana

Professor of Management Information Systems

Terry College of Business, University of Georgia

 Friday, September 29, 2017

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Speakman Hall Suite 200

Abstract

The internal architecture of apps has yet to receive attention in platform studies, which predominantly study apps’ platform-facing, external architecture. We develop a theory of how the interplay between an app’s internal and external architecture shapes its ability to leverage the platform to outcompete rival apps. Primary and archival data spanning four years from 618 BlackberryOS apps show how internal architecture’s complementarity with external architecture influences an app’s competitive lead. Apps fare better in a competitive race when they are modular monoliths—externally modular but internally monolithic.

Bio

Amrit Tiwana (people.terry.uga.edu/tiwana) is a Professor of MIS at UGA’s Terry College of Business. He serves or has served on the boards of Information Systems Research, Strategic Management Journal, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. His work has appeared in various MIS, strategy, software engineering, finance, and marketing journals including ISR, MISQ, JMIS, SMJ, and ACM Transactions on Software Engineering.