This is an open online academic seminar focusing on topics related to quantitative marketing.
The schedule is available as a Google calendar and you can sign up to receive updates here.
Please contact the organizers at virtualquantmark@googlegroups.com if you have any questions.
The Zoom link for all of the talks is: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/93394346729?pwd=SoVXVesbltpYbQxo9tbbPF6YgopDl3.1
We will post some recordings of talks at this channel and a full list of previous talks is available here.
Monday, October 13, Noon ET - Minkyung Kim (CMU)
Review Solicitations in Equilibrium: Allocating Review Supply, Shaping Demand and Returns (with Hana Choi and Jinsoul Seo)
Abstract: We study how review solicitations shift the supply of reviews and affect product demand and return outcomes, leveraging exogenous variation in solicitations at an apparel e‑commerce website. On the supply side, solicitations increase reviewer participation and widen the dispersion of ratings. We also document that writers face disproportionately high costs to post the very first review relative to subsequent ones. On the demand side, product orders increase and product return rates decline on average. Return patterns indicate that improved matching is the dominant mechanism behind the sales effect: return rates fall more where products had limited pre-existing reviews or positive prior quality signals. Finally, a misalignment between review writers and readers for thin review history products implies a misallocation of review supply, which constrains the seller's ability to address the cold‑start problem.
Monday, October 27, Noon ET - Kevin Lee (Michigan)
Monday, November 3, Noon ET - Joonhwi Joo (UT Dallas)
Monday, November 10, Noon ET - Samsun Knight (Toronto)
Monday, November 17, Noon ET - Ashesh Rambachan (MIT)
Monday, December 1, Noon ET - Eric Bradlow (Wharton)
The seminars will last for 60 minutes with less formal conversation afterwards.
45 minutes of presentation
15 minutes of discussion.
Optional: speaker stays in Zoom for less formal conversation after the talk.
We also often invite additional panelists with expertise relevant to the talk to ask questions during the talk.
Please email the organizers if you'd like to be considered for a seminar talk. Please include an extended abstract or a working paper.
Yufeng Huang (Rochester), Zhenling Jiang (Wharton UPenn), Emaad Manzoor (Cornell), Olivia Natan (Berkeley), Hortense Fong (Columbia), Avner Strulov-Shlain (Booth)
Founding team: Dean Eckles (MIT Sloan), Andrey Fradkin (BU Questrom), Ayelet Israeli (HBS), Andrey Simonov (CBS), Raluca Ursu (NYU Stern)
virtualquantmark@googlegroups.com