Person: Zhang, Lingling
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Zhang
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Lingling
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Zhang, Lingling
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Publication Strategic Channel Selection with Online Platforms: An Empirical Analysis of the Daily Deal Industry(2016-03-30) Zhang, Lingling; Chung, DougThe platform—a business model that creates value by connecting groups of users—is increasingly popular in many industries. Extant papers largely assume that platforms dominate the pricing decision, whereas in practice, prices in business-to-business transactions are often determined by a bargaining process. We study how the relative bargaining power of business partners affects pricing and competition in a two-sided market. We compile a unique and comprehensive dataset using sales data from the US daily deal market and specify a structural model based on Nash bargaining solutions. We find that Groupon, the larger deal platform, has more price-bargaining power than LivingSocial and that larger and chain merchants have more bargaining power than smaller and independent merchants. The difference in bargaining power between different types of merchant, interestingly, is more substantial on LivingSocial than on Groupon. Therefore, the size of a platform has two faces: while a larger customer base helps attract merchants, the platform’s bargaining power may motivate some merchants to work with its smaller competitors, over which they have more influence on price setting. Our counterfactual results show that the allocation of price-bargaining power plays an important role in the daily deal markets and that merchants are significantly worse off if platforms have higher price-bargaining power during the negotiation. Furthermore, as it increases the bargaining power, LivingSocial would be able to boost its profits but lose its attraction in acquiring merchants.Publication Selling to a Moving Target: Dynamic Marketing Effects in US Presidential Elections(2015-07-21) Chung, Doug; Zhang, LinglingWe examine the effects of various political campaign activities on voter preferences in the domain of US Presidential elections. We construct a comprehensive data set that covers the three most recent elections, with detailed records of voter preferences at the state-week level over an election period. We include various types of the most frequently utilized marketing instruments: two forms of advertising—candidate’s own and outside advertising, and two forms of personal selling—retail campaigning and field operations. Although effectiveness varies by instrument and party, among the significant effects we find that a candidate’s own advertising is more effective than outside advertising, and that advertising and retail campaigning work more favorably towards Republican candidates. In contrast, we find field operations to be more effective for Democratic candidates, primarily through get-out-the-vote efforts. We do not find any between-party differences in the effectiveness of outside advertising. Lastly, we also find a moderate but statistically significant carryover effect of campaign activities, indicating the presence of dynamics of marketing efforts over time.Publication Essays on Online and Multi-Channel Marketing(2016-05-13) Zhang, Lingling; Chung, Doug J.; Elberse, Anita; Gupta, SunilFirms increasingly adopt online and multi-channel marketing strategies to reach and persuade consumers. Therefore, designing an effective marketing mix is critical to their success. The aim of my dissertation is to understand the strategy behind firms’ channel choices and assess marketing effectiveness. It consists of three large-scale empirical studies examining several important aspects of online and multi-channel marketing. My first essay focuses on the business-to-business (B2B) interactions involving online platforms, which serve as new channels for traditional merchants to reach consumers and grow business. Using data from the daily deal market, we specify a structural model that examines consumer choices on the demand side and firm strategies on the supply side. In particular, we incorporate merchant heterogeneity and allow prices to be jointly determined by merchants and platforms through negotiation; both of these match the real-world complexity but are challenging to be modeled theoretically. Our results show how platform size, commission rate, and the allocation of price-bargaining power jointly determine the price setting and the platform differentiation among merchants. Essay two studies to what extent marketers’ actions can affect the reach of video advertising campaigns through influencing the amount of user-generated content. To do so, we compile a unique and comprehensive data set on ad campaigns conducted on video sharing sites such as YouTube. We find that several instruments under the control of advertisers can influence how much the reach of a campaign benefits from user-generated content. Our results underscore that, with the right strategy, advertisers can substantially increase the number of impressions that their online video campaigns yield. Essay three assesses the effect of advertising and personal selling in the U.S. presidential elections, where advertising involves both candidate campaign ads and those sponsored by outside political interest groups and personal selling takes the form of field operations. We set up a structural model that treats campaign allocation as endogenous and also allows the campaign effect to vary across individuals. Among the many findings, we show that field operations are more effective for partisan voters whereas candidate campaign ads are effective for non-partisans. Interestingly, ads from outside political groups are more effective for partisans than for non-partisans. Our counterfactual results indicate that field operations play a critical role in the 2008 and 2012 elections while the importance of ads is only substantial in a close competition like the 2004 election.