Online sellers' offline environment : implications for platform strategy
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- How does a seller's local environment affect their behavior on digital platforms? The digitization of the economy has drastically lowered the costs of data storage, access, and transmission. Leveraging digital technologies, platform companies such as Amazon and Airbnb have created online marketplaces that have extended an unprecedented level of market access to individual entrepreneurs, whom we often refer to as sellers. Much of the existing research on digital platforms shows that platforms can dictate sellers' behavior through a variety of reward and punishment mechanisms, e.g., search ranking algorithms and surge pricing. However, a great amount of variation in sellers' behavior can be attributed to factors in their local environment -- factors outside the platform's control. Upon closer examination, one may realize that local factors could potentially explain many perplexing seller actions faced by platforms and their engineers. For instance, why do Uber drivers protest surge pricing? Why do e-commerce sellers continue to sell counterfeit products despite strict regulation? Why do Airbnb hosts refuse to interact with users even with algorithms rewarding host-user interactions? In this dissertation, I argue that factors such as sellers' cultural customs, local interactions, and perception of the law may serve to explain many of their behavioral patterns. These factors strongly affect sellers' behavior on digital platforms. Their behavior, in turn, influences a platform's growth trajectory and contains major social implications. Therefore, it is important for both platform designers and policymakers to pay attention to sellers' heterogeneous local environments in order to anticipate sellers' behavior, create appropriate designs, and devise sound policy.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2018; ©2018 |
| Publication date | 2018; 2018 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Koo, Wesley Wu-Yi |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Eesley, Charles |
| Thesis advisor | Eesley, Charles |
| Thesis advisor | Eisenhardt, Kathleen M |
| Thesis advisor | Katila, Riitta |
| Degree committee member | Eisenhardt, Kathleen M |
| Degree committee member | Katila, Riitta |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Wesley Wu-Yi Koo. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2018. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2018 by Wesley Wu-Yi Koo
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