To infer product fitness information, consumers often consult digital influencers who exert effort to learn and evaluate product features and then propagate information to their followers. However, influencers' recommendations are not limited to products that exactly match their expertise, which...

This study analyzes the business model decision of social platforms with a commerce feature. In practice, social platforms can adopt either an advertising model or a brokerage model. We develop a game-theoretic model to recommend the better business model and investigate the effect of social...

Most digital content distributed in information-goods platforms encounter the threat of online piracy. Strategic pricing, technology-based platform protection, and deterrent enforcement such as legal and moral measures are viewed as antidotes to piracy. We examine the effects of deterrent...

We use a stylized model to investigate the revenue model decision for a monopolistic online platform offering social networking services. There are three possible revenue models: an ad-sponsored model offering a basic service, a subscription-based model offering a premium service, and a hybrid...