Service design of consumer data intermediary for competitive individual targeting

Individual targeting, a marketing strategy that firms target individual consumers with tailored offers, is currently a widespread practice. Customer data intermediaries (CDIs) have emerged recently to help firms learn their prospective customers and launch their target marketing campaigns. This paper uses a common-value auction framework to study how a CDI designs and differentiates its information services to help two competing firms identify and target valuable customers. We characterize the firms' equilibrium target marketing strategies. The results show that the CDI serves one firm exclusively in unpromising markets where the proportion of valuable customers is relatively low, and provides both firms with differentiated services in promising markets where the proportion of valuable customers is relatively high. In addition, the CDI differentiates its services less when the proportion of valuable customers is higher

Market-based Recommendation: Agents that Compete for Consumer Attention

The amount of attention space available for recommending suppliers to consumers on e-commerce sites is typically limited. We present a competitive distributed recommendation mechanism based on adaptive software agents for efficiently allocating the 'consumer attention space', or banners. In the example of an electronic shopping mall, the task is delegated to the individual shops, each of which evaluates the information that is available about the consumer and his or her interests (e.g. keywords, product queries, and available parts of a profile). Shops make a monetary bid in an auction where a limited amount of 'consumer attention space' for the arriving consumer is sold. Each shop is represented by a software agent that bids for each consumer. This allows shops to rapidly adapt their bidding strategy to focus on consumers interested in their offerings. For various basic and simple models for on-line consumers, shops, and profiles, we demonstrate the feasibility of our system by evolutionary simulations as in the field of agent-based computational economics (ACE). We also develop adaptive software agents that learn bidding strategies, based on neural networks and strategy exploration heuristics. Furthermore, we address the commercial and technological advantages of this distributed market-based approach. The mechanism we describe is not limited to the example of the electronic shopping mall, but can easily be extended to other domains

Trusting (and Verifying) Online Intermediaries\u27 Policing

All is not well in the land of online self-regulation. However competently internet intermediaries police their sites, nagging questions will remain about their fairness and objectivity in doing so. Is Comcast blocking BitTorrent to stop infringement, to manage traffic, or to decrease access to content that competes with its own for viewers? How much digital due process does Google need to give a site it accuses of harboring malware? If Facebook censors a video of war carnage, is that a token of respect for the wounded or one more reflexive effort of a major company to ingratiate itself with the Washington establishment? Questions like these will persist, and erode the legitimacy of intermediary self-policing, as long as key operations of leading companies are shrouded in secrecy. Administrators must develop an institutional competence for continually monitoring rapidly-changing business practices. A trusted advisory council charged with assisting the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could help courts and agencies adjudicate controversies concerning intermediary practices. An Internet Intermediary Regulatory Council (IIRC) would spur the development of expertise necessary to understand whether companies’ controversial decisions are socially responsible or purely self-interested. Monitoring is a prerequisite for assuring a level playing field online

Markets for Information: An Introduction

We survey a recent and growing literature on markets for information. We offer a comprehensive view of information markets through an integrated model of consumers, information intermediaries, and firms. The model embeds a large set of applications ranging from sponsored search advertising to credit scores to information sharing among competitors. We then review a mechanism design approach to selling information in greater detail. We distinguish between ex ante sales of information (the buyer acquires an information structure) and ex post sales (the buyer pays for specific realizations). We relate this distinction to the different products that brokers, advertisers, and publishers use to trade consumer information online. We discuss the endogenous limits to the trade of information that derive from its potential adverse use for consumers. Finally, we revisit the role of recommender systems and artificial intelligence systems as markets for indirect information

Marketing Aspects of Technology Ventures

Cílem diplomové práce je analýza marketingových nástrojů použitých firmou XAX a následně vyhodnotit a navrhnout zvýšení jejich efektivity. Popis strategie společnosti a faktory ovlivňující budou identifikovány. Práce obsahuje návrhy a doporučení na zvýšení efektivity marketingových nástrojů dané firmy v oblasti High-tech odvětví.The aim of diploma thesis is to analyze marketing tools used in Company XAX and under this condition evaluate and purpose increase efficiency used tools. The current marketing strategy of the company is described and main influencing factors are identified. The thesis contains proposals and recommendations for tools usage in the field of High-tech marketing.

Platform Neutrality: Enhancing Freedom of Expression in Spheres of Private Power

AbstractTroubling patterns of suppressed speech have emerged on the corporate internet. A large platform may marginalize (or entirely block) potential connections between audiences and speakers. Consumer protection concerns arise, for platforms may be marketing themselves as open, comprehensive, and unbiased, when they are in fact closed, partial, and self-serving. Responding to protests, the accused platform either asserts a right to craft the information environment it desires, or abjures responsibility, claiming to merely reflect the desires and preferences of its user base. Such responses betray an opportunistic commercialism at odds with the platforms’ touted social missions. Large platforms should be developing (and holding themselves to) more ambitious standards for promoting expression online, rather than warring against privacy, competition, and consumer protection laws. These regulations enable a more vibrant public sphere. They also defuse the twin specters of monopolization and total surveillance, which are grave threats to freedom of expression.</jats:p

The Regulatory Implications of Mobile and Financial Services Convergence

The long awaited integration of mobile telephone and retail financial services is beginning to emerge in developing markets. To enhance the potential benefits from innovations in this domain, governments need to make complementary adjustments to domestic banking regulation and strengthen frameworks for international cooperation. In particular, as a highly regulated activity, deposit taking is insufficiently contestable for mobile operators to break into the market with enough independence from incumbent banks to stimulate valuable competition and innovation in payment networks. The success of mobile banking will also depend on the willingness and capacity of regulators to accommodate increasing international trade in retail financial services, new forms of distribution and customer due diligence rules that are more appropriate to less traditional markets. The paper provides an analysis of the relation between existing regulatory frameworks and the rise of mobile banking. And it outlines policy changes that governments should pursue in order to foster this form of innovation and target the benefits that it can bring, especially to consumers on the margins or excluded from modern financial services.Technology and Industry