Show Your Face! Investigating the Relationship Between Human Faces and Music’s Success

Streaming services are becoming the primary source for media consumption. Particularly platforms like SoundCloud, where users can disseminate user-generated content (UGC), are gaining relevance. To shed light into the drivers which positively influence the number of listeners, we draw from marketing literature related to depictions of people, which suggests that human faces can contribute to a higher degree of brand liking or brand identification. Thereupon, we propose a hypothesis which suggests that human faces on cover arts likewise generate more plays. We follow a data science approach using 1754 observations from SoundCloud and apply Google’s facial recognition API (Vision AI) to examine the impact of human faces on music’s success. We provide initial evidence that tracks with a human-face cover art yield in a higher number of plays compared to tracks with a cover art without a human face

Price Tactics For A Turbulent Environment: A Complexity Theory View

This paper proposes that pricing tactics are influenced by the nature of the external environment. It illustrates the pricing tactics suggested for a turbulent, versus a stable, environment, when viewed through a complexity theory lens. A qualitative, case method, using depth interviews, investigated the pricing tactics in four firms to identify the tactics adopted in more successful, versus less successful, firms in turbulent versus stable environments. The results partially confirmed that the use of destabilizing pricing tactics can be helpful in a turbulent market, while stabilizing tactics can be helpful in a stable market. However, the effect of such tactics on business performance was not clear. These findings will benefit marketers by emphasizing a new way to consider future pricing activities. How this approach can assist marketers, and suggestions for further research, are provided. Since businesses and markets are complex adaptive systems, using complexity theory to understand how to cope in turbulent environments is necessary but has not been widely researched. Therefore, this paper can be seen as a foundation for research using complexity theory to better understand pricing tactics in turbulent environments

Market Skimming Pricing: An Examination of Elements Supporting High Price for New Products in Pakistan

Market skimming is a very important pricing strategy for the companies making innovative and technology based products. Market skimming pricing can be best practiced when the company is highly reputable, providing great quality and innovative products and the customers give a great value to the introduced technology and readily adopt it. The objective of this paper is to find out the factors responsible for market skimming pricing. In this research, the individuals using personal computers are taken as the population whereas Product quality, Brand image, Innovation and Technology adoption are taken as the variables responsible for practicing Market Skimming Pricing. A questionnaire is designed and the survey is conducted. The results showed that all the four variables significantly and positively influence market skimming pricing. The practice of market skimming pricing is explained up to 27% by the independent variables considered. Keywords: market skimming pricing, product quality, brand image, innovation, technology adoption

Software dynamic pricing by an optimization deterministic model in a monopolistic market

This paper develops an optimization model for pricing a monopolistic application software in the presence of piracy. The purpose is raising revenue produced by product’s sale with determining prices in a price skimming strategy and minimizing amount of piracy. The model is a multifunctional price skimming optimization with simplex method which accompanied by a deterministic method for calculating time intervals of each segment. A linear function is used to describe demand of each segment. In addition, a linear piracy function is proposed to make piracy a dynamic parameter. The model has the ability to apply penetration pricing and controlling market share. Rough estimates of Windows 7 sale’s parameters are used to apply in the model. Optimizing case of Windows 7 is resulted in 7.3 percent increase in revenue while value of net market share is virtually constant. Therefore, the developed model demonstrates its competence in optimizing revenue by determining prices with presence of piracy. Results of the research show that to tackle piracy, range of price skimming must be decreased in a way that highest price need to be intensely reduced while lowest one must be slightly reduced. The benefit of using this strategy, is incurring lowest revenue loss due to piracy. The Effects of an escalation in piracy on proposed optimization model include increase in number of sale, demand, selling portion, market share, and decrease in price, price difference between segments, and revenue

PRICING STRATEGIES FOR ONLINE MULTIPLAYER GAMES

This dissertation examines the different pricing strategies available to online multiplayer game publishers. We develop mathematical models of the pricing decision that the publisher engages in and conduct a numerical experiment to identify critical parameters for the pricing decision. We also develop an agent based simulation to further examine the influence of these parameters on the dynamics between the publisher and consumers and make recommendations about the conditions under which certain pricing strategies are superior to others

Digital piracy: An assessment of consumer piracy risk and optimal supply chain coordination strategies.

Digital piracy and the emergence of new distribution channels have changed the dynamics of supply chain coordination and created many interesting problems. There has been increased attention to understanding the phenomenon of consumer piracy behavior and its impact on supply chain profitability. The purpose of this dissertation is to better understand the impact of digital piracy on online music channel and optimal supply chain strategies which achieve high levels of coordination. A multi-method approach including survey, mathematical modeling, and simulation are used to a) analyze the impact of piracy on digital music channel coordination under different contract arrangements, b) develop theoretical and operational basis for conceptualizing a measurement model of consumer piracy risk, c) examine the effectiveness of piracy control strategies used to dissuade consumers from illegal music downloads. Findings from this dissertation contribute to the literature on digital piracy, consumer piracy behavior, online channel distribution, and supply chain coordination, and provide several important managerial implications

A Theory Of Complex Adaptive Inquiring Organizations: Application To Continuous Assurance Of Corporate Financial Information

Drawing upon the theories of complexity and complex adaptive systems and the Singerian Inquiring System from C. West Churchman\u27s seminal work The Design of Inquiring Systems the dissertation herein develops a systems design theory for continuous auditing systems. The dissertation consists of discussion of the two foundational theories, development of the Theory of Complex Adaptive Inquiring Organizations (CAIO) and associated design principles for a continuous auditing system supporting a CAIO, and instantiation of the CAIO theory. The instantiation consists of an agent-based model depicting the marketplace for Frontier Airlines that generates an anticipated market share used as an integral component in a mock auditor going concern opinion for the airline. As a whole, the dissertation addresses the lack of an underlying system design theory and comprehensive view needed to build upon and advance the continuous assurance movement and addresses the question of how continuous auditing systems should be designed to produce knowledge--knowledge that benefits auditors, clients, and society as a whole