Catching the Viewer\u27s Eye: Examining Exploration and Exploitation Strategies in the Live Streaming Market

Live streaming has become an important feature on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. More and more entrepreneurs (content creators) are competing in live streaming platforms like Twitch to maximize the attention they receive from consumers (viewers). In this competitive landscape, it is crucial for entrepreneurs to develop and provide new compelling content that can maximize the consumers’ attention and aid the discovery of their content. We adopt an exploration-exploitation framework and assess the four strategies these new entrepreneurs could use to attract viewership and position themselves on Twitch: exploration, exploitation, learning from viewers, and their neighbor streamers. We combined the natural language processing techniques with theory-driven measures to accomplish this. Using our proposed measures, we estimate the utility of consumers from these different strategies using the discrete choice demand model

Why Developers Participate in Open Source Software Projects: An Empirical Investigation

Our goal in this study is to provide insight into the motivational profiles of open source contributors. Adopting a functionalist view of motivation, we identify five functional dimensions from the literature on volunteerism that are relevant to the open source context and three functional dimensions from the literature on open source development. To assess the salience and relative strength of each functional explanation for open source participation, we conducted secure Web-based surveys of developers who participated in three large Apache open source projects. Applying exploratory factor analytic techniques to analyze the survey data collected from 122 Apache participants, we found 5 distinct factors underlying the motivation to participate in open source projects. We then used conjoint analysis to assess the relative importance of these underlying motivations. Results from the conjoint analysis indicate that while several dimensions are significant in explaining the motivation to participate in open source projects, the dominant motivations include increasing the contributor’s use value of the software (27 percent) followed by the recreational value of the task (19 percent) and the potential career impacts from participation (12 percent). This study contributes to the growing literature on open source software development by providing insight into the underlying motivational profiles of open source participation and by identifying the relative importance of different motivations within those profiles

Truck, Barter, and Exchange: An Empirical Investigation of Reciprocity in Online P2P Barter Markets

This study provides the first attempt to study the emerging online peer-to-peer (P2P) barter markets, in which individuals trade goods or services without the use of money. Using detailed transaction data from a leading P2P barter marketplace for books, we examine how the norm of reciprocity affects transaction outcomes. We find that although the barter marketplace is designed under the norm of indirect reciprocity, market participants also exhibit a strong preference towards direct reciprocity. We further find that both indirect reciprocity and direct reciprocity affect transactions, but in different ways. While both forms of reciprocity help improve the probability of success of a transaction, only direct reciprocity helps facilitate the fulfillment speed of a transaction. We also provide evidence that direct reciprocity is favored for exchanging rare goods. We discuss the implication of our findings for the design of P2P barter marketplaces

Synthesizing Professional and Market Logics: A Study of Independent iOS App Entrepreneurs

Professional logic and market logic are identified as two competing institutional logics and the dynamics between them are examined at societal and organizational levels. Under explored in the literatures are situations when the two logics are experienced simultaneously by one professional group or even one individual. This study intends to shed some light on the issue by studying logic synthesis practices of independent app entrepreneurs. The opening of and infrastructure support from mobile software platforms creates ample entrepreneurial opportunities for independent third-party developers. Meanwhile, it also exposes developers to the challenges of logic tensions. How developers synthesize logic tensions not only depends on their own experience, it is contingent on platform-level influence as well. Through a qualitative study of independent iOS app entrepreneurs, we juxtapose mobile software developers’ professional logic with the market logic, and explicate ways in which logic synthesis practices are performed in this context

The Value of Online Information Privacy: An Empirical Investigation

Concern over online information privacy is widespread and rising. However, prior research is silent about the value of information privacy in the presence of potential benefits from sharing personally identifiable information. We analyzed individuals' trade-offs between the benefits and costs of providing personal information to websites. We found that benefits - monetary reward and future convenience - significantly affect individuals' preferences over websites with differing privacy policies. We also quantified the value of website privacy protection. Among U.S. subjects, protection against errors, improper access, and secondary use of personal information is worth US$30.49 - 44.62. Finally, we identified three distinct segments of Internet consumers - privacy guardians, information sellers, and convenience seekers.Information privacy, conjoint analysis, cost-benefit tradeoff, privacy concern, monetary reward, time-saving service

Consumer Privacy and Marketing Avoidance

We introduce consumer avoidance into analytical marketing research. We show that consumer efforts to conceal themselves and to deflect marketing have a crucial impact on sellers¡¯ marketing strategy. Under reasonable conditions, seller marketing is a strategic complement with consumer concealment. Hence, consumer measures to conceal themselves from marketing will increase its cost-effectiveness and lead sellers to market more. Policies that encourage consumers to conceal their identities would lead sellers to increase marketing. By contrast, policies that encourage consumers to deflect seller marketing would lead sellers to reduce marketing. Further, there is a clear need for public policy. To the extent of the externality from the sellers to consumers, the equilibrium levels of marketing (chosen by sellers) and concealment and deflection (chosen by consumers) exceed the social optimum.

Economic Incentives for Participating in Open Source Software Projects

Using the Internet as a basis for communication, collaboration, and storage of artifacts, the open source community is producing software of a quality that was previously thought to be achievable only by professional engineers following strict software development paradigms. This accomplishment is even more astounding as developers contribute to the source code without any remuneration. Open source leaders as well as academics have proposed theories about the motivation of open source developers that are rooted in diverse fields such as social psychology and anthropology. However, Lerner and Tirole (2000) argue that developer participation in open source projects may, in part, be explained by existing economic theory regarding career concerns. This research seeks to confirm or disconfirm the existence of economic returns to participation in open source development. Our findings suggest that greater open source participation per se, as measured in contributions made, is not associated with wage increases. However, a higher status in a merit-based ranking within the Apache Project is associated with significantly higher wages. This suggests that employers do not reward the gain in experience through open source participation as an increase in human capital. The results are also consistent with the notion that a high rank within the Apache Software Foundation is a credible signal of the productive capacity of a programmer

Decision Making in Virtual Worlds: An Experimental Test of Altruism, Fairness and Presence

Virtual worlds are gaining in popularity and are proposed as a test laboratory for the real world. Inthese virtual worlds users act via their avatars and make decisions for them. In this paper, we analyzethe decision making in virtual worlds in an experiment conducted in a virtual world, as well as in thereal world over the internet, for the same set of subjects. For this purpose, we develop hypotheses fordecision making in the context of a classic economic experiment (the Dictator Game). We find similardecisions in the virtual and the real world with respect to sharing. Altruism has a significant influencein the real world setting but not in the virtual world; fairness is insignificant in both settings. Weidentify the feeling of presence in one’s avatar and potential satiation effects as factors that influencedecisions regarding the allocation of resources in the virtual world

The Value of Online Information Privacy: An Empirical Investigation

Concern over online information privacy is widespread and rising. However, prior research is silent about the value of information privacy in the presence of potential benefits from sharing personally identifiable information. Analyzing individuals' trade-offs between the benefits and costs of providing personal information to websites revealed that benefits, monetary reward and future convenience, significantly affect individuals' preferences over websites with differing privacy policies. Quantifying the value of website privacy protection revealed that among U.S. subjects, protection against errors, improper access, and secondary use of personal information is worth US $30.49 - 44.62. Finally, three distinct segments of Internet consumers were determined: privacy guardians, information sellers and convenience seekers.

Sales and Promotions: A More General Model

We embed the Varian (1980) model in a broader setting that considers how switcher/loyal customer segments are determined. Generally, customer acquisition is deterministic while pricing is randomized. The equilibrium outcome depends on the timing of customer acquisition relative to pricing. If sellers acquire customers before setting prices, the unique equilibrium is asymmetric. If sellers acquire customers and set prices simultaneously, the unique equilibrium is symmetric. Our results provide a fundamental justification for previous analyses that variously assumed the outcome to be asymmetric or symmetric. The comparative statics for the asymmetric and symmetric equilibria are identical.competition, pricing, customer acquisition