Download Marketing Science News Sept 2016

Marketing Science News,
September 1, 2016
Press Release
Accepted
Papers
Call for Papers:
Special Issues
Agenda for MSFTC
Conference
Press Release
Consumers may search online for 30 days, but they
buy close to what they searched and found on the first
day
CATONSVILLE, MD, September 1, 2016 – Given the ease of online
search, consumers can explore and discover hundreds of available items
in any category. Retailers and advertisers are keen to influence the search
and final purchase through better product recommendations and targeted
advertising. A forthcoming article in the INFORMS journal Marketing
Science studies online search and purchase behavior of consumers in the
digital camera category and finds that even though consumers may search
for extended periods of time, what they purchase tends to be remarkably
close to items they searched and found in their very first search.
The study conducted by Bart Bronnenberg of Tilburg University, Jun Kim
of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Carl Mela of
Duke University combine detailed consumer online browsing and purchase
data for digital cameras from the online measurement firm comScore, with
scraped camera product pages from the three largest online retailers
(Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart) to uncover a variety of insights about
online consumer search behavior. From the browsing and purchase
history of over two million consumers, they used a sample of more than
1,000 digital camera purchases with full browsing histories over a threemonth period.
“People differ in their search behavior a lot; some make up their mind right
away but others search for long periods—often up to a month and review
many products.” said Mela. The study finds that about 25 percent of
consumers search and purchase in just one online session, the average
purchase takes much longer – around 15 days and over six sessions. The
vast majority of purchases happen in under a month. Further, about 40
percent of consumers search only one brand and 20 percent only one
model, while the average consumer will search about three brands and six
models.
For marketers, a long period of search can be a great opportunity to
influence the exploration and discovery of new products during search and
purchase. But as Bronnenberg notes, “What surprised us was that
consumers don’t explore anywhere close to full range of products and
attributes in the category. The final product they purchase is very close in
terms of the attributes to the products they discovered on the first day.”
This suggests that consumers have a rough idea of the quality and type of
features they want as they begin search. The search helps them merely to
refine the right combination of features within the narrow range of features
of the products they found on the first day.
On first glance, this finding might mean that retailers and advertisers can
do little to influence the final purchase. But Kim cautions that would be the
wrong conclusion. He notes, “In fact, the exact model with the right
combination of features that the consumer will ultimately purchase can still
be influenced up until the moment of purchase. The fact that what people
buy is close to what they initially found means that ad targeting and
product recommendations can use this information effectively and
recommend close variants of what the consumer initially searched and
found.”
Concludes Mela: “Overall, we think the whole exploration and discovery
angle when searching for online purchases may be overstated,” but then
cautions that “it is also possible, that the limited exploration we find may be
due to widespread availability of online reviews for digital cameras.”
Reviews may have informed the consumers exploration and discovery and
the initial search outside of the search and purchase behavior that the
study observes. Discovery may then be still important in categories where
such reviews are less available.
To cite this study:
Bart J. Bronnenberg, Jun B. Kim, and Carl F. Mela (2016). “Zooming in on
Choice: How do Consumers Search for Cameras Online?” forthcoming at
Marketing Science.
http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.2016.0977
About INFORMS
With nearly 12,000 members from across the globe, INFORMS is the
leading international association for professionals in operations research
and analytics. More information about INFORMS is available
at www.informs.org or @informs.
Bart Bronnenberg
Tilburg University
Jun B. Kim
HKUST
Carl Mela
Duke University
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The press release is an attempt to make Marketing Science more
accessible to the public through general media. For each issue, the
Editor-In-Chief of Marketing Science, currently K. Sudhir, selects a
couple of papers for the press release. He then works with the
authors, Gerry Tellis, a member of the Marketing Science Media
Committee and INFORMS to prepare the press release. INFORMS
issues the press release.
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Accepted Papers
Below is the list of papers accepted during the period from July 16 to August 31, 2016:

“Dyadic Compromise Effect,” by Lin Bao Boldt and Neeraj Arora.

“Behavioral Price Discrimination in the Presence of Switching Costs,” by
Seethu Seetharaman, Koray Cosguner, and Tat Chan.

“Competition in Corruptible Markets,” by Shubhranshu Ranjan Singh.

“Ten Million Readers Can’t Be Wrong!”, or Can They? On the Role of
Information about Adoption Stock in New Product Trial,” by Coby Morvinsky,
On Amir, and Eitan Muller.

“Match Your Own Price? Self-Matching as a Retailer's Multichannel Pricing
Strategy,” by Pavel Kireyev, Vineet Kumar, and Elie Ofek.

“Promotion Spillovers: Drug Detailing in Combination Therapy,” by Hongju
Liu, Qiang Liu, and Pradeep K. Chintagunta.

“Signaling Virtue: Charitable Behavior under Consumer Elective Pricing,”
by Minah Jung, Leif D. Nelson, Ayelet Gneezy, and Uri Gneezy.

“Entry of Copycats of Luxury Brands,” by Sarah Yini Gao, Wei Shi Lim, and
Christopher Tang.

“A Cross-Cohort Changepoint Model for Customer-Base Analysis,” by Arun
Gopalakrishnan, Eric T. Bradlow, and Peter Fader.

“First-Mover Advantage through Distribution: A Decomposition Approach,”
by Mitsukuni Nishida.
Here is the link to the abstracts: https://yale.box.com/s/dshqk3vd2pu8x42s9pit9vwxm51kdb5j
CFP for Four Special Issues of Marketing Science
Marketing Science is now calling for submissions to four special issues coming up in the
areas of Mobile Technologies, Health, Consumer Protection and Field Experiments. We
also have two associated conferences for health and consumer protection.
Mobile Technologies: http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/mksc/mobiletechnologies
Health: http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/mksc/health
Consumer Protection: http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/mksc/consumerprotection
Field Experiments: http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/mksc/fieldexperiments
Agenda for the Marketing Science-FTC Conference on
Marketing and Consumer Protection
September 16, 2016
at the Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC
Thank you for your interest in the Marketing Science-Federal Trade Commission Economic
Conference on Marketing and Consumer Protection which will be held on September 16, 2016.
You may find the agenda for the conference here:
https://yale.app.box.com/s/linuvqs9bxkj34x4ii18zckom7qbj7cu. If you are aware of any
colleagues or friends who may be interested in attending the conference, please share with
them.
About ISMS Marketing Science News
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This ISMS News is approved by Marketing Science Editor-in-Chief, currently K. Sudhir.
The VP for Communications of ISMS, currently Xueming Luo, sends the news out.
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