We investigate the effect of an EU-wide consumer protection regulation on consumer trust as well as consumer behavior. The Unfair Commercial Practice Directive (UCPD) was implemented by EU member states between 2007 and 2010. We utilize data from the Special and Flash Eurobarometer for the years...

Whether consumers are aware of potentially adverse product effects is key to private and social incentives to disclose information about undesirable product characteristics. In a monopoly model with a mix of aware and unaware consumers, a larger share of unaware consumers makes information...

We quantify the prevalence of undisclosed influencer posts on Twitter across a large set of brands based on a unique data set of over 100 million posts. We develop a novel method to detect undisclosed influencer posts and find that 96% of influencer posts are not disclosed as such. Despite...

New digital technologies not only support consumers in better fulfilling their own consumption needs, but also enable them to create greater value for other consumers. These new consumer co- production activities, collectively referred to as the sharing economy, require firms to rethink their...

Social commerce represented at least $14 billion dollars in 2015, steadily increasing from previous years. A survey by Statista showed that 65.4% of US users had used a social media platform to make purchase directly through a post in 2017. As the size of social media worldwide continues to...

The antitrust agencies typically find customer reactions probative of the likely competitive effects of a merger. Thus, merger challenge data released by the FTC reveal that strong complaints from customers almost always lead to a government challenge. Nevertheless, some judges have been quite...