A consumer contest is a sales promotion technique that requires participants to apply certain skills as they compete for prizes or awards. This article is the first to employ a game-theoretical approach to investigate consumer contest design issues, including prize structure, segmentation, and...

The paper proposes a simple model of auctions with an impatient seller who chooses the reserve price and the buy-it-now (BIN) price to maximize revenue. The three main sales channels in the online auction (the pure auction, the BIN auction, and the fixed-price sale) are each shown to be an...

On search keywords with trademarked terms, the brand owner (“focal brand”) and other relevant firms compete for consumers. For the focal brand, paid clicks have a direct substitute in the organic links below the paid ad(s). The proximity of this substitute depends on whether competing firms...

As sponsored search becomes increasingly important as an advertising medium for firms, search engines are exploring more advanced bidding and ranking mechanisms to increase their revenue from auctions for sponsored search advertising. For instance, Google, Yahoo! and Bing are experimenting with...

Charities increasingly utilize social media tools in fundraising. This research studies three mechanisms by which Facebook “likes” affect charitable behavior: (1) signaling, (2) commitment escalation, and (3) social contagion. The first study manipulates the number of Facebook likes on a...

This research examines how the intensity of the dynamic competitive interaction with other bidders in ascending auctions influences consumers' willingness to pay for auctioned products. It focuses on one important aspect of this interaction – the speed of competitor reaction. The key...

Behavioral advertising targets consumers based on their personal characteristics, while contextual advertising is based on the content consumers are currently viewing. Nowadays, many websites employ a combination of the two, known as microtargeting, to display more tailored ads to consumers....

Channel coordination in search advertising is an important but complicated managerial decision for both manufacturers and retailers. Due to the highly concentrated market of search advertising, a manufacturer's and its retailers' ads can compete instead of complement with each other. We consider...

With an internet-based platform to transparently report global business-to-business (B2B) dealings, companies could freely invest and transact. Part I also explores eBay's secrets of success, complete with a detailed examination of its feedback and rating systems to find what tools can be...

In sponsored search advertising, advertisers bid to be displayed in response to a keyword search. The operational activities associated with participating in an auction — submitting the bid and the ad copy, customizing bids and ad copies based various factors (such as the geographical region...