Wenbo Wang

Lay Theories of Medicine and a Healthy Lifestyle

This research proposes that consumers hold “lay theories of medicine” that guide their preferences and behaviors in the health domain. Lay theories of medicine incorporate lay beliefs about illnesses and symptoms (i.e., a form of lay diagnosis that may feature causal [un]certainty) and lay beliefs about health remedies (i.e., a treatment function that takes into account how consumers think remedies work, including the focus and action rapidity of treatment as additional dimensions of response efficacy). According to the conceptual framework, lay diagnosis and treatment beliefs together drive consumer preference among alternative health remedies, which, in turn, has downstream consequences for a healthy lifestyle. A series of studies finds support for this framework in an investigation of Western medicine and its Eastern counterparts (traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicines) among Chinese, Indian, and Asian American consumers.

Does Online Word of Mouth Increase Demand? (And How?) Evidence from a Natural Experiment

We leverage a temporary block of the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo due to political events to estimate the causal effect of user-generated microblogging content on product demand in the context of TV show viewership. Using a set of difference-in-differences regressions, we show viewership decreased more strongly in geographical areas with a higher Sina Weibo penetration, and only for shows with a high activity level on Sina Weibo. We quantify the effect on viewership in units of comments on tweets (comments were disabled during the block) by instrumenting the number of relevant comments with a dummy for the time period of the block, and find an elasticity of 0.02. In terms of the behavioral mechanism, we find more pre-show microblogging activity increases demand, whereas the ability to engage in microblogging during showtime as a complementary activity to TV consumption does not affect product demand.We leverage a temporary block of the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo due to political events, to estimate the causal effect of online word-of-mouth content on product demand in the context of TV show viewership. Based on this source of exogenous variation, we estimate an elasticity of TV show ratings (market share in terms of viewership) with respect to the number of relevant comments (comments were disabled during the block) of 0.016. In terms of the behavioral mechanism, we find more post-show microblogging activity increases demand, whereas comments posted prior to the show airing do not affect viewership. These patterns are inconsistent with informative or persuasive advertising effects and suggest a complementarity between TV consumption and anticipated post-show microblogging activity.

TV Channel Search and Commercial Breaks

This study investigates time lapses that interrupt product consumption. Preeminent examples are commercial breaks during television or radio programming. The authors suggest that breaks facilitate consumers’ search for alternatives. Specifically, when there is so much uncertainty that consumers are unclear about utility levels of different products, they engage in costly search to resolve the uncertainty. For TV programming, breaks lower the opportunity cost of search, allowing the consumer to sample alternative channels without further interrupting the viewing experience on the current channel. Using data from the Chinese TV market, the authors estimate a sequential search model to study consumer TV channel choice behavior. The data contain a quasi-natural experiment due to a Chinese government policy change on commercial breaks. The natural experiment creates exogenous variations in the data that enable the empirical identification of heterogeneous consumer preference and search cost. The data patterns support the idea that viewers search for alternatives during commercial breaks. Drawing on the estimates, the authors investigate how the timing of breaks affects TV channels’ viewership, offering insights about how to strategically adjust the timing of breaks.