Jeonghye Choi

Spatiotemporal analysis of imitation behavior across new buyers at an online grocery retailer

For Internet retailers, demand propagation varies not only through time but also over space. The authors develop a Bayesian spatiotemporal model to study two imitation effects in the evolution of demand at an Internet retailer. Building on previous literature, the authors allow imitation behavior to be reflected both in geographic proximity and in demographic similarity. As these imitation effects can be time varying, the authors specify their dynamics using a “polynomial smoother” embedded within the Bayesian framework. They apply the model to new buyers at Netgrocer. com and calibrate it on 45 months of data that span all 1459 zip codes in Pennsylvania. The authors find that the proximity effect is especially strong in the early phases of demand evolution, whereas the similarity effect becomes more important with time. Over time, new buyers are increasingly likely to emerge from new zip codes beyond the “core set” of zip codes that produce the early new buyers, and spatial concentration declines. The authors explore the managerial implications stemming from these findings through a hypothetical “seeding” experiment. They also discuss other implications for Internet retailing practice.

Preference Minorities and the internet

Offline retailers face trading area and shelf space constraints, so they offer products tailored to the needs of the majority. Consumers whose preferences are dissimilar to the majority—”preference minorities”—are underserved offline and should be more likely to shop online. The authors use sales data from Diapers.com, the leading U.S. online retailer for baby diapers, to show why geographic variation in preference minority status of target customers explains geographic variation in online sales. They find that, holding the absolute number of the target customers constant, online category sales are more than 50% higher in locations where customers suffer from preference isolation. Because customers in the preference minority face higher offline shopping costs, they are also less price sensitive. Niche brands, compared with popular brands, show even greater offline-to-online sales substitution. This greater sensitivity to preference isolation means that these brands in the tail of the long tail distribution draw a greater proportion of their total sales from high–preference minority regions. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for online retailing research and practice.

Traditional and IS-Enabled Customer Acquisition on the Internet

Geographic variation in consumer use of Internet retailers is partly explained by variation in offline shopping costs. Explanations for geographic variation in the efficacy of different customer acquisition methods including traditional methods of offline word-of-mouth (WOM) and magazine advertising and information systems (IS)-enabled methods of online WOM and online search remain unexplored. We estimate a multivariate negative binomial distribution (NBD) model on zip code--level customer counts from a leading Internet retailer and provide new insights into factors explaining geographic variation in the success of these methods. First, we show that target customer density explains geographic variation over and above the impact due to the number of potential customers. Moreover, the effect of density is greatest for offline and online WOM acquisitions; this suggests that density contributes to contagion, connectivity, and a hypothesized “social multiplier.” Second, when senders and recipients of WOM share consumption benefits, WOM is more powerful and compelling. We find that location-based convenience benefits have stronger effects on location-dependent offline WOM acquisitions than on location-independent online WOM acquisitions. Third, acquisition channels contribute differently to the total customer pool---offline WOM acquisitions are clustered, whereas magazine acquisitions are dispersed. Finally, separate click-to-conversion data from Coremetrics.com indicates that using the model-based predictions to target specific markets delivers a twofold improvement in actual click-to-order rates. This paper was accepted by Sandra Slaughter, information systems.

Osteolytic mandible presenting as an initial manifestation of an adult acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

A case of adult acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is reported. A 35-year-old male presented with an osteolytic lesion of the mandible. There was no definitive involvement in other craniofacial bones. A panoramic radiograph taken 4 months previously showed no bony involvement. A complete blood count showed a slightly decreased red blood cell count, but normal white blood cell count, white blood cell differential count and platelet count. Routine chemistry revealed hypercalcemia with an increased level of parathyroid hormone-related protein. Histopathological examination of bone marrow biopsy confirmed the diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

Linking Findings from Text Analyses to Online Sales Strategies

Much effort has been exerted to analyze online texts and unders tand how empirical results can help improve sales performance. In this research, we aim to extend this stream of research by decomposing online texts based on text sources, namely, companies and consumers. To be specific, we in vestigate how online texts driven by companies differ from those generated by consumers, and the extent to which both types of online texts have different effects on online sales. We obtained sales data from one of the biggest game publ ishers and merged them with online texts provided by companies using news articles and those created by consumers in user communities. The empirical analyses yield the following findings. Word visualization and topic analyses s how that firms and consumers generate different contexts. Specifically, companies spread word to promote their own events whereas consumers produce online words to share winning strategies. Moreover, online sales are influenced by co nsumer-generated community topics whereas firm-driv-en topics in news articles have little to no effect. These find ings suggest that companies should focus more on online texts generated by consumers rather than spreading their own wo rds. Moreover, online sales strategies should take advantage of specific topics that have been proven to increase online sales. In particular, these findings give startup companies and small business owners in variety of industries the advantage when they use the online channel for distribution and as a marketing platform.

How does Dependence on Portals Help Online Retailers` Growth? : The Moderating Effects of Firm Age and Niche Width Strategy

It is widely confirmed that online retailers can obtain crucial resources and greater growth potential by depending on the external web portal sites as it is explained in resource dependence theory. Nevertheless, recent studies show that the effect of dependence may not always be beneficial for firms and stress the importance of finding relevant contingent factors. In this study, we identify and suggest that firms` age and niche width strategy, whether generalist or specialist, are contributing factors on moderating the positive relationship between resource dependence and firm growth. To test our hypotheses based on the theory, we have collected monthly web traffic data of online retailers and portals from March 2000 and July 2008. The empirical results lend support to our theory of the firm age having a negative interaction effect on web traffic dependence. Moreover, results verified that positive effect of depending on the portals may become greater if the online retailer is a specialist in terms of niche width.