The Hedonic Curse: Investigating the Influence of Hedonic Ads on the Evaluation of Subsequent Ads

In the age of multi-channel advertisements, it is imperative for businesses to understand how advertisements are perceived by the consumer. While several studies in marketing and information systems have studied ad design, ad effectiveness, and potential outcomes like satisfaction and sales, few have studied the effect of advertisements on a dyadic level. In this study, we point out that ads are rarely shown to consumers in isolation. Thus, understanding the effects of ad sequence is both interesting to researchers and instrumental to marketers. In the current study, we explore the effects of ad sequence when a hedonic ad is followed by a utilitarian ad or a hedonic ad. We uncover the detrimental influence of hedonic ads on ads that follow, such that users evaluate a brand as more negative when its ad follows a hedonic ad, as compared to a utilitarian ad. We call this the hedonic curse, and provide preliminary results from a quasi-natural experiment to support this claim. We also intend to conduct a lab study to provide converging evidence for this effect, and to validate the underlying mechanism

CONSUMERS’ ENDORSEMENT EFFECTS ON MARKETER AND USER-GENERATED CONTENT IN A SOCIAL MEDIA BRAND COMMUNITY

The effects of marketer-generated content (MGC) and user-generated content (UGC) on inducing consumers’ responses have been widely studied as stand-alone main effects. Extending these research, this paper studies the interaction effects of consumers’ endorsements on MGC and UGC posts in a social media brand community (SMBC) of a popular Asian fashion retailer. We examined if passive and active consumers’ endorsements have enhancement effects on MGC/UGC and if they are also effective in inducing consumers’ expenditure by themselves. Passive endorsement refers to “likes” on social network sites (SNS), while active endorsement refers to the more involved act of “commenting” on a post. We found evidence that active endorsements positively moderate the effects of MGC in inducing consumers’ expenditure. However, passive endorsements negatively moderated MGC, making it less effective in inducing expenditure. Interestingly, the results were reversed for UGC whereby passive endorsements positively moderated UGC, while active endorsements negatively moderated UGC in inducing expenditure. Meanwhile, active endorsements through social-tagging on brand fans were found to be very effective, with recipients of social-tags spending $6 more than non-recipients in a particular week. Additional robustness checks on selection bias were conducted, and results remain qualitatively similar

Analyzing the Co-evolution of Network Structure and Content Generation in Online Social Networks

With the rapid growth of online social network sites (SNS), it has become imperative to investi-gate what drives content production on these platforms. We posit that the content producing behavior of users is influenced not just by their personal attributes like age and gender, but also by their social network structure. However, it is empirically challenging to estimate network structure and behavior through traditional approaches as the social network structure and the content production behavior influence the evolution of each other. In the current study, we adapt an actor-based continuous-time model to jointly estimate the co-evolution of the users\u27 social network structure and their content production behavior using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based simulation approach. We apply our model to an online social network of university students and uncover strong evidence for both social influence and homophilous friend selection. Interestingly, we find that individuals befriend others who are similar in content production during the friendship formation stage, but gradually diverge in their content production behavior from these similar others over time. We offer potential explanations for this phenomenon and emphasize the importance of these findings for platform owners and product marketers

Why Are People Addicted to SNS? Understanding the Role of SNS Characteristics in the Formation of SNS Addiction

Research has shown that many people use social networking sites (SNS) excessively, which may lead to various negative consequences. With the aim of reducing SNS addition, this study investigates the role of SNS characteristics in the formation of SNS addiction. By applying incentive sensitization theory in the context of SNS addiction, we suggest that the compulsive motivation for using an SNS is developed by pleasurable and rewarding SNS use experiences. Social network characteristics and communication characteristics, which determine the rewards that users obtain from SNS use, moderate the relationship between habitual SNS use and SNS addiction. We develop novel behavioral measures of habitual SNS use and SNS addiction based on SNS activity logs and empirically test the research model using a large and unique dataset. Besides contributing to the theoretical development of SNS addiction, the results of this study offer practical options to help prevent SNS addiction. Moreover, the measures of SNS addiction enable the automated monitoring of user behavior on SNS, which could be useful for detecting potential SNS addicts

The Role of Financial Literacy in Online Peer-to-Peer Lending: An Empirical Approach

With the development of FinTech, more and more individuals are entitled to participate in financial activities, but little is known about whether they are well-equipped to make the right decisions and thus benefit from financial services. Especially, financial products and services are often perceived to be complex. Therefore, financial literacy (i.e. individuals’ ability to process economic information and make informed decision) plays a key role. In this study, we collaborate with a large P2P platform and innovate the measurement of financial literacy. Rather than assessing financial literacy through survey questions, we measure it by observing individuals’ actual decisions made on personal credit on the platform. Our preliminary results demonstrate the importance of financial literacy for both borrowing and investment in online P2P lending. Our study contributes to the nascent IS literature on FinTech, and provides practical insights for P2P lending platform owners and policy makers

On the energy efficiency of NOMA for wireless backhaul in multi-tier heterogeneous CRAN

This paper addresses the problem of wireless backhaul in a multi-tier heterogeneous cellular network coordinated by a cloud-based central station (CCS), namely heterogeneous cloud radio access network (HCRAN). A non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is adopted in the power domain for improved spectral efficiency and network throughput of the wireless downlink in the HCRAN. We first develop a power allocation for multiple cells of different tiers taking account of the practical power consumption of different cell types and wireless backhaul. By analysing the energy efficiency (EE) of the NOMA for the practical HCRAN downlink, we show that the power available at the cloud, the propagation environment and cell types have significant impacts on the EE performance. In particular, in a large network, the cells located at the cloud edge are shown to suffer from a very poor performance with a considerably degraded EE, which accordingly motivates us to propose an iteration algorithm for determining the maximal number of cells that can be supported in the HCRAN. The results reveal that a double number of cells can be covered in the urban environment compared to those in the shadowed urban environment and more than 1.5 times of the number of microcells can be deployed over the macrocells, while only a half number of cells can be supported when the distance between them increases threefol