We use controlled lab experiments to test whether the market efficiency being affected by unfair negative ratings, and whether announcing the percentage of unfair ratings in the market makes any difference. We find that the market efficiency is higher than no rating information case even when...

This research examines the role of online anonymity in shaping herding behavior in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending markets. Drawing on theories from social psychology literature, we argue that a lender forms different credibility perceptions toward preceding peers per their anonymity status, and then...

This paper examines the impact of the cashback mechanism on online merchants’ affiliate and pricing strategies. Through reimbursing a portion of the transactional amount to consumers in a form of cashback, merchants are able to practice second-degree price discrimination. We develop an...

Through reimbursing a portion of the transactional amount to some consumers in a form of cashback, merchants are able to exercise third-degree price discrimination by offering two asymmetric prices via an online dual channel. To better understand such a novel pricing mechanism, we develop a game...

Despite the increasing popularity of product sampling promotions in e-commerce, empirical research investigating its sales impacts and mechanism still lags. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to investigate the economic impact of online product sampling promotions on e-commerce...

Prior literature has focused primarily on offline sampling of physical goods and online sampling of information goods, whereas a new form of sampling campaign—physical goods sampling via online channels—receives little attention. Leveraging a rich data set from Taobao, a large e-commerce...