We start with Martina Pocchiari on online review updating. Leveraging a field experiment from PissedConsumer (seriously), they aim to answer when to ask for an update: Early to increase the likelihood, or late to benefit from “time is an ultimate healer". Cool project!
Next up is Isin Acun on Digital Services Taxes recently introduced in Europe. Some "Big Tech" companies absorbed this tax internally, while others passed it through to advertisers. The authors investigate how advertisers strategically respond. Really interesting work.
Lachlan Deer closes the morning session with a structural model that quantifies online word-of-mouth to see how large an effect social media has on new movies. Turns out the impact of social media on demand is smaller than currently perceived. Super promising project!
Sijia (Catherine) Ma is up next, presenting her recent work on the impact of image-generating AI on artistic productivity and market diversity. They find that although individual productivity increases, the overall market becomes more similar. Interesting paper!
Next, David Kusterer presents his work on fake reviews. Leveraging a lab experiment, they design a feedback system with reduced incentives for sellers to buy fake reviews. Spoiler alert: Displaying all ratings and inspection seem to reduce fake reviews. Cool project!
Before lunch, Arda Guler (from Goethe Frankfurt, not from Real Madrid) closes the session with personalized mobile push notifications. In a collaboration with industry partner Payback, they find that causal targeting can improve the effectiveness of mobile push notifications.
After lunch, we are back with Marilù Miotto on a timely topic: Deepfakes. Her study dives deep into how deepfakes affect news credibility and sharing. Findings reveal that labeling content as deepfake can reduce the credibility of non-labeled content. Very cool work!
Xi Wu is up next on data breaches. Following a breach, firms cut back on data collection to reduce risk, but face pressure to improve services. Examining mobile app markets, they find that firms increase security investment but maintain data collection. Super interesting project!
Today's last session starts with Joram de Vreede. He presents a transformer-based machine learning architecture optimized for multi-touch conversion attribution in online digital campaigns, with a feed-forward attention mechanism. Very rigorous work.
Next is Anna Baturevich on digital platforms. Through a choice-based conjoint experiment on Prolific (meta alert: studying platforms within a platform), the authors examine the decision-making process for joining digital health platforms. Super cool project!
We wrap up today with Joey van Angeren on gig economy. Leveraging a natural experiment, they finds that a personal phone call with a platform representative increases the number of jobs and revenue for workers. Great paper to wrap up the day and see you tomorrow!
Day 2 starts with Simon Schulten on print flyers. They examine the impact of switching from print store flyers to digital ads on revenue and visits through a randomized controlled trial with a large retailer. Turns out the print flyers work better. Very convincing evidence!
Maximilian Kaiser is next on product embeddings for new product sales prediction. He shows that their method performs better, relies on fewer assumptions about important product attributes and requires less data collection effort, hence it's highly scalable. Super cool method!
Danial Hayati closes the morning session on augmented reality. They show that AR reduces perceived fit uncertainty, thus could reduce product returns, but can also cause misleading information due to technological constraints. Nicely conducted experiments and moderation analyses!
Gillian Ponte kick-starts the last session on privacy risks from targeting decisions. They propose targeting strategies that satisfy differential privacy and protect privacy risk. The later the differential privacy is applied in targeting, the higher the profits. Amazing work!
Max Pachali is up next on sustainability in e-commerce. Sustainable products are on the rise, as are greenwashing and misleading claims. They investigate the impact of disclosing credible sustainability claims on sales. Super interesting paper!
Last (but not least), Sameer Mehta is up on data cooperatives. Access to credit is challenging for marginalized communities in agriculture in the developing world. He proposes a data layer that pools farmers' data to facilitate lending. What amazing work to wrap up the workshop!
Another year, another amazing Workshop on Digital Markets (WDM)!
Thank you to all the presenters, discussants, and committee members for making this workshop thrive once again.
Looking forward to the Tilburg edition next year!