Research

Publications

1. Monetizing Platforms: Empirical Evidence of Supply and Demand Responses to Entry Costs in Two-sided Markets [journal]

(previously circulated as "Platform Monetization and Unintended Consequences on its Ecosystem: Evidence from a Two-sided Market for Books")

(with Kai Zhu and Qiaoni Shi), Management Science, 2025 

External coverage:

Univers magazine

2. AI Applications to Customer Feedback Research: A Review [book chapter] [SSRN]

(with Ishita Chakraborty and Peter Lee), Review of Marketing Research, special issue on AI in Marketing, 2023

3. Interacting User-Generated Content Technologies: How Questions and Answers Affect Consumer Reviews [journal] [Taverne Open Access Version]

(with Georgios Zervas and Chris Dellarocas), Journal of Marketing Research, 2021

External coverage: 

Ariyh

RIMtailing

Working papers

1. Raising Questions: How Imperfect Information Cues Affect Consumer Ratings 

(Submitted) [SSRN]

(with Roshini Sudhaharan)

2. Generative AI Spurs Passive But Not Active Engagement with Content: Evidence from Field and Online Experiments

(Submitted) [SSRN]

(with Unnati Narang and Carl-Philip Ahlbom)

3. Digital Platforms 2.0: Learnings, Opportunities, and Challenges 

(R&R, IJRM) [SSRN]

(with various authors!)

4. ‘Starting From’ prices: Insights from Field Experiments at an Online Travel Marketplace 

(Submitted) [SSRN] 

(previously circulated as "Reference Price Effects in Search Aggregators")

(with Anita Rao and Georgios Zervas)

Works in progress

-What’s in a Response? Uncovering Management Response Strategies and Their Impact on Future Ratings and Sales 

(with Ishita Chakraborty and Hulya Karaman)

-Governance Shocks and User Engagement: Lessons from the 2023 Reddit ‘Go Dark’ Protests

(with Mimansa Bairathi, Qinglai He and Justin Huang)

-The Causal Impact of Recommender Clicks

(with George Knox)

Recent/upcoming conference presentations:

• SCECR 2025, Paphos, June 2025

• EMAC 2025, Madrid, May 2025

• 16th Paris Conference on Digital Economics, April 2025

resting papers awaiting revival :)

-Bayesian inference in dynamic models of online reputation systems

(with Amin Rahimian and Narendra Mukherjee )

Online reputation systems are an essential component of electronic commerce platforms. However, despite their prevalence, online ratings are subject to selection biases since the decision to leave a rating depends on the specific consumer and their circumstances. There are a number of hidden parameters governing such selection biases but it is difficult to infer them directly from observed ratings given the complexity of reputation systems. In this work, we first propose a generative model that accounts for various behavioral phenomena behind online rating generation (e.g., cost to leaving a rating or herding). We then build upon recent advances in  likelihood-free/simulation-based Bayesian inference using deep learning to infer the hidden parameters of the generative model in a scalable manner. The inference engine only takes the time series of ratings as input, and therefore can be used to model correlations of inferred cost parameters with various product features. As a preliminary proof of concept, we apply our model to a dataset of 450,000 product reviews submitted on Amazon.com. We find that the cost to leaving a negative review is much greater than a positive review, and a baseline level of bandwagon effects (in the form of herding) are present for the majority of products. Gaining a better understanding of the dynamics of reputation systems, namely, the conditions under which ratings are submitted, is crucial for marketers, brand managers, and designers of digital platforms, who can leverage this information to stimulate further reviews and better manage user generated content. Working code is available on https://github.com/narendramukherjee/reputation-systems/tree/master/snpe and the docker image containing the dependencies for the code is on https://hub.docker.com/r/nmukherjee/reputation-systems-snpe

-The Role of Digital Knowledge Management Tools in Emerging Marketplaces: Evidence from an intervention in West Bengal, India

(with Somprakash Bandyopadhyay and Sneha Bhattacharyya)

Conventional marketplaces, particularly in developing countries, often involve transactions of goods and services carried out in accordance to implicit socio-economic and institutional prescriptions, thus excluding subsistence/bottom of pyramid producers from carrying out profitable exchanges. Our aim in this paper is to explore the extent to which the introduction of digital marketplaces can address these issues and enhance market participation in the context of rural craft producers in India. To this end, we design a two-tier intervention framework: the first component focuses on creating a digital platform to connect rural artisans with consumers and entrepreneurs worldwide, enabling collaboration and co-creation of handicraft products. Subsequently, the second component focuses on imparting digital marketplace literacy and product innovation training to our target group. We conduct our intervention over 40 weeks with staggered roll-out to cover hundreds of rural artisans from Birbhum, West Bengal, and measure key metrics such as market competence and performance over time. We find a positive and significant impact of the intervention on all measured dimensions, reflecting improvements in skills as well as downstream market performance. However, there are several implementation challenges and socio-political factors that need to be addressed in order to sustain this enhancement, which we touch upon from an ethnographic perspective.

Presentations

Older projects

A Simulation Model Using Transaction Cost Economics to Analyse the Impact of Social Media on Online Shopping (2012)

M.Sc Dissertation (2014)