One-Sided Competition in Two-Sided Social Platform Markets? An Organizational Ecology Perspective

Similar to love, competition can often be unrequited. This study explores the asymmetric pattern of competition driven by membership overlap in two-sided mobile social apps (MSAs) markets. Building on the niche-width dynamics framework, we theorize and validate the relative prevalence and survival capabilities of messaging apps and SNS apps, especially when membership overlap fosters current or potential competition between the two app categories. The analyses—based on panel dataset consisting of information on 8,483 panel members’ exact amount of time used for 21 mobile social apps—show that competition between SNS and messaging apps can be asymmetric in favor of messaging apps. This asymmetric pattern is more pronounced for membership-based competition compared to usage-based competition. In addition, different MSAs developed by same platform providers exhibit synergistic effects, rather than destructive consequences, on each other’s growth. The findings identify the complex nature of competition within-category and between-category competition in MSAs markets

Crowded Social Media: Investigating the Crowdedness Effect on Social Media Usage

While public transit is a major place where people devote their time to smartphones, particularly social media usage, the literature has paid scant attention to how contextual factors in public transit affect the individual usage behavior of social media. Building upon prior literature on stress and social media as a stress reliever, this study examines the impact of physical crowdedness on users’ content consumption and generation behaviors on social media platforms. In collaboration with a major wireless telecom provider in China, we collect detailed information on smartphone usage behavior among 200,000 randomly selected individuals on a major public subway line in Qingdao, China. The results demonstrate a positive causal relationship between crowdedness and content consumption and generation on social media platforms, even after controlling for potential endogeneity of crowdedness

Nature or Nurture? An Analysis of Rational Addiction to Mobile Social Applications

Through the lens of rational addiction theory (Becker and Murphy, 1988), this study investigates whether addiction to mobile social apps should be viewed as a rational behavior rather than an uncontrollable, irrational disorder. To derive the analytical model, this study extends the rational addiction framework to include a utility-level network effect as the key factor that regulates the inter-temporal consumption of mobile social apps. Further, to validate empirically the rational addiction model in this context, we gathered and analyzed longitudinal panel data on the weekly app usage of thousands of smartphone users. The findings suggest that consistent with the rational addiction theory, users of mobile social apps are rational and forward-looking. They determine their current consumption based on both past and future consumption and the utility derived from network effects. However, the extent of rational addiction to mobile social apps varies considerably across diverse demographic groups and app categories

Impact of Digital-Only Bank Adoption on Consumer Consumption: Empirical Evidence

Emerging digital-only banks without any offline branches (i.e., digital banks), such as Chime in the U.S. and WeBank in China, are reshaping the legacy banking industry with their novel business model. However, the extant literature focuses mainly on traditional banks’ digital channels (e.g., online banking services), while paying relatively scant attention to digital banks. Thus, the ongoing policy debate swirls around digital banks’ impact on consumers and traditional banks. Against this backdrop, this study examines the impact of consumers’ digital bank adoption on their financial products, offline consumption, and online consumption-related transaction behavior across traditional and digital banks. To this end, we exploit a unique dataset on more than 100,000 consumers’ every transaction with all their digital and traditional banks over 18 months. This study provides valuable implications for policymakers as well as traditional and digital banks regarding the potential benefits and concerns of this new business model

Walk for Whom? The Effectiveness of Egoistic and Philanthropic Incentive Designs for Mobile Health Interventions

Financial incentives are widely used to promote health behavior. Among others, egoistic and philanthropic incentives are the two most representative types of financial incentives: While the former is directly given to individuals performing health behavior, the latter ties such behavior to charitable contributions. Despite their prevalence, an understanding of the optimal incentive design for health behavior is limited. In this study, we conducted a randomized field experiment in collaboration with a leading mobile health app provider in order to identify (1) the relative effectiveness of egoistic and philanthropic incentives in promoting health behavior, and (2) how they are moderated by the two common design factors: incentive easiness and incentive value. We found that egoistic incentives usually outperform philanthropic incentives unless incentives have high easiness and low value. In addition, while incentive easiness is a major driver of effective philanthropic incentives, incentive value is a key driver of effective egoistic incentives

Seizing the commuting moment : contextual targeting based on mobile transportation apps

Despite the average daily commuting time of commuters increasing by the day, the way marketers can benefit from our commuting behaviors has not yet been examined. In collaboration with one of the largest global mobile telecom providers, this study investigates how contextual targeting with commuting impacts user redemptions of mobile coupons. The analysis is based on a rich field study in which 14,741 mobile coupons were sent to 9,928 public transit app users consisting of commuters and noncommuters. The key findings indicate that commuters are about 3× as likely to redeem their mobile coupon compared with noncommuters. However, a multiple-coupon distribution strategy is more effective in increasing redemption among noncommuters than commuters. Moreover, the redemption rate of commuters is higher for coupons with shorter expiration periods, whereas that of noncommuters is higher for coupons with longer expiration periods. On the basis of theories from psychology and physiology, we argue that stress, which is exacerbated by commuting, increases commuters' coupon redemption rate. We provide empirical support for this argument and show that marketers can increase response rates by focusing on specific periods of the day when commuting stress is relatively high (e.g., rush hours). By carefully exploiting commuting, which is easily identifiable and occurs throughout the world, managers may improve their mobile marketing effectiveness.Accepted versio

Efficacy of a Health App for Obesity and Overweight Management: A Hidden Markov Model

We examined the efficacy of a mobile app for personal weight management by using a hidden Markov modeling approach, which captures the dynamics in the state of self-regulation of individuals to achieve their desired weight reduction objectives. The model illuminates the direct and indirect treatments that affect self-regulation state and success of overweight and obesity management. Results show that two self-regulation states (weak and strong) are optimal for describing the dynamics in the data. Relatively easy direct treatments, such as reducing calorie intake and relying on artificial electronic assistance, are more effective in the weak self-regulation state, whereas strenuous interventions, such as exercising, are more helpful in the strong state. The use of the mobile app is considerably more effective than the use of its PC channel in influencing users’ self-regulation states. Individuals who do not use either channel fail to transition from the weak to the strong state

Mobile Effects on Two-Sided Financial Decisions: Evidence from Field Experiments on Peer-to-Peer Lending Platforms

Mobile channels experience exponential growth in two-sided platforms. While literature has explored effects of mobile adoption on single-side decision-making, there is limited evidence on how mobile changes two-sided behavior, especially when negative effects are critical. We investigate how mobile affects behaviors of both borrowers and lenders in peer-to-peer lending platforms, and the resulting effect on credit risk management and economic return. Leveraging the cognitive load theory, we postulate that borrowers and lender under heavy and mild cognitive load exhibit distinct behaviors. We collaborate with a Chinese peer-to-peer lending platform to launch two-sided field experiments by randomly assigning the mobile treatment to borrowers and lenders. We find that mobile borrowers are more likely to abandon loan submissions, whereas mobile lenders have a higher tendency to approve loans. However, the loan credit risk remains consistent and mobile has a counterintuitive positive effect on profit enhancement. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications

Impact of customers' digital banking adoption on hidden defection : a combined analytical–empirical approach

The implementation of digital channels as avenues for economic transactions (e.g., online and mobile banking/FinTech) has shifted the paradigm of customer–bank interactions, providing unprecedented opportunities for both parties. The prevailing belief is that digital banking has several advantages, such as lower costs and higher information transferability for customers. These benefits can also promote competition between banks given customers' predilection for “multi‐homing,” or engagement with multiple banks. This study investigated the impact of customers' digital banking adoption on hidden defection, in which customers purchase financial products from competing banks instead of their primary banks. To this end, we developed an analytical model to provide insights into the effects of digital banking adoption while taking customers' multi‐homing behaviors into consideration. We then conducted a series of empirical analyses using comprehensive individual‐level transaction data to provide evidence of hidden defection. Our findings indicate that customers with higher loyalty exhibit greater hidden defection after digital banking adoption. Customers who engage primarily with personal‐service channels (e.g., branches) show stronger hidden defection than do self‐service channel (e.g., ATMs) users, and this effect is more prevalent among loyal customers. Our results provide valuable implications for omni‐channel services in a market characterized by multi‐homing behavior of customers.Accepted versio