To Brush or Not to Brush: Product Rankings, Consumer Search, and Fake Orders

2023 | Information Systems Research | Citations: 0

Authors: Jin, Chen; Yang, Luyi; Hosanagar, Kartik

Abstract: Brushing—online merchants placing fake orders of their own products—has been a w ... Expand

Abstract: Brushing—online merchants placing fake orders of their own products—has been a widespread phenomenon on major e-commerce platforms. One key reason why merchants brush is that it boosts their rankings in search results. Products with higher sales volume are more likely to rank higher. Additionally, rankings matter because consumers face search frictions and narrow their attention to only the few products that show up at the top. Thus, fake orders can affect consumer choice. We focus on this search-ranking aspect of brushing and build a stylized model to understand merchants’ strategic brushing behavior as well as how it affects consumers. We consider a high-type merchant (who sells a more popular product) and a low-type merchant (who sells a less popular product) competing on an e-commerce platform where product rankings evolve over time. We find that if brushing gets more costly for merchants (e.g., due to stricter platform policies), it may sometimes surprisingly harm consumers as it may only blunt brushing by the high-type merchant but intensify brushing by the low-type merchant. If search is less costly for consumers (e.g., due to improved search technologies), it may not always benefit consumers, either. Moreover, the design of the ranking algorithm is critical: placing more weight on sales-volume-related factors may trigger a nonmonotone change in consumer welfare; tracking recent sales only as opposed to cumulative sales does not always dial down brushing and, in fact, may sometimes cause the low-type merchant to brush more.History: Ravi Bapna, Senior Editor; De Liu, Associate Editor.Funding: C. Jin gratefully acknowledges the Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund [Tier 1, Grant R-253-000-144-133], The Wharton School Dean’s Postdoctoral Research Fund, and Mack Institute Research Fund. All authors gratefully acknowledge the 2019 Networks, Electronic Commerce and Telecommunications Institute (NET) Summer Research Grant.Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.1128. Collapse

Topics: IS economics consumer surplus electronic commerce fake review electronic market

Methods: computational algorithm literature sample

Theories: economic search theory

Implementing Smart Contracts: The case of NFT-rental with “pay-per-like”

2023 | International Conference on Business Informatics | Citations: 0

Authors: Schneider, Johannes; Sopi, Alfred; Brocke, Jan vom

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Topics: smart contract blockchain online advertising click fraud mobile application

Methods: design process literature study design science design artifact

Introduction to the Blockchain Engineering Minitrack

2022 | HICSS | Citations: 0

Authors: Chen, Hong-Mei; Sanders, Lawrence

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Topics: blockchain smart contract malware online advertising click fraud

Methods: experiment

UNFOLDING THE CLICKBAIT: A SIREN'S CALL IN THE ATTENTION ECONOMY

2019 | European Conference On Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Zhang, Wenping; Jiang, Qiqi; Peng, Chih-Hung

Abstract: The media consumption moving online was supposed to enable people to access info ... Expand

Abstract: The media consumption moving online was supposed to enable people to access information more effectively, instead, to some extent, people were yet overwhelmed. Clickbait, defined as “(On the Internet) content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page” (in Oxford English Dictionary), prevails and restrains people retrieve their desirable information effectively. In this exploratory study, we proposed two intriguing research conjectures, i.e. how rhetorical features in the clickbait influence the visiting traffic to the publisher at different levels and attempted to understand the antecedents and consequences of the prevalence of clickbait. In collaboration with a leading digital media company, we longitudinally collected a massive dataset in 2017. To test the research conjectures, we designed and developed a series of text mining methods and applied econometric analysis for empirical validation. The findings revealed 1) the rhetorical characteristics (hyperbole, insinuation, and visual rhetoric) could entice individual to click the baited headlines, 2) there was a quadratic (inverted U-shaped) relationship between number of clickbait posted by publisher and its visit traffic, and 3) such non-linear relationship was moderated by publisher’s age. Collapse

Topics: click fraud systems design fake news

Methods: natural language processing econometric modeling descriptive statistic literature study regression analysis method

An Exploratory Analysis in Android Malware Trends

2016 | Americas Conference on Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Hicks, Chelsea; Dietrich, Glenn

Abstract: As smartphones become increasingly integral to our daily lives, so too is the pr ... Expand

Abstract: As smartphones become increasingly integral to our daily lives, so too is the prevalence of malware for smartphones. This is because while mobile phones used to only function as portable phones, today's mobile phones are now miniature computers. This means that risks that used to only be for computers are now risks for our smartphones as well. As a result, a research stream dedicated to understanding what’s unique about smartphone malware has emerged. In this study, we analyze malware characteristics from a non-technical view, unlike previous studies. Previous studies analyze the actual code and execution of malware, while we take advantage of anti-virus companies analysis of malware already conducted, and instead analyze these analyses. We do this to discover trends that are emerging in smartphone malware, such that anti-virus companies can give these trends greater priority to researching and discovering these malware. Collapse

Topics: malware smartphone Android online advertising click fraud

Methods: descriptive statistic literature study Pearson's chi-squared test

Can Payment-per-Click Induce Improvements in Click Fraud Identification Technologies?

2015 | Information Systems Research | Citations: 0

Authors: Chen, Min; Jacob, Varghese S.; Radhakrishnan, Suresh; Ryu, Young U.

Abstract: Pay-per-click (PPC) is a common pricing model used to pay for ads on the Web and ... Expand

Abstract: Pay-per-click (PPC) is a common pricing model used to pay for ads on the Web and is open to the possibility for click fraud, where clicks are not from a legitimate user. Identifying click fraud is generally done in a three-stage process: the service provider (SP) first classifies clicks as fraudulent or not, then the advertiser does the same with a different technology, and if there is a disagreement, the SP examines further and his conclusions are considered binding. The advertiser pays for clicks that are identified as valid in the first two stages or confirmed as valid in the last stage. We model the choice of the identification technologies as a double moral hazard problem. We analyze the case where the PPC is incentive compatible to overcome the moral hazard problem, and examine the question of whether the incentive compatible PPC is sufficient to incentivize the two parties to unilaterally make further improvements to their identification technologies and simultaneously increase their profits. We show that when the cost of the third-stage identification technology is large, which is likely to be the case because of its complexity and use of expensive human experts, the incentive compatible PPC does not support unilateral technological improvements. We then examine a setting where the third-stage identification is delegated to a third party and find that this arrangement can induce unilateral improvements to the identification technologies in the first two stages. Collectively our results show that although the PPC model itself may not induce improvements in the first two stages of click fraud identification, a common arrangement espoused of having a third party resolve disagreements helps make PPC support unilateral technological improvements. Accordingly, we show an indirect benefit to the third-party arrangement. Collapse

Topics: online advertising click fraud moral hazard economic surplus IS economics

Methods: machine learning optimization model computational algorithm

Theories: prisoner's dilemma

The Effect of Third Party Investigation on Pay-Per-Click Advertising

2012 | International Conference on Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Chen, Min; Jacob, Varghese S; Radhakrishnan, Suresh; Ryu, Young U

Abstract: Click fraud is a critical problem in pay-per-click advertising. While both servi ... Expand

Abstract: Click fraud is a critical problem in pay-per-click advertising. While both service providers (SPs) and advertisers employ technologies to identify fraudulent clicks, prior work shows that they cannot be induced to make further improvements to their respective technologies. We consider the use of third-party investigation to address this problem and examine whether the responsibility of investigation payments helps induce both parties to work towards improving their technologies unilaterally. Using a principal-agent setting, we show that the advertiser always has incentives to improve his verification technology and the SP will improve his detection technology only when the detection cost is not too large. Given that the cost of detection technology is likely to be small due to the use of inexpensive online filters, our result suggests that third-party investigation helps induce further enhancements to the technologies and is a good mechanism to address the incentive problems in the click fraud setting. Collapse

Topics: click fraud online advertising economic surplus IS economics moral hazard

Methods: optimization model computational algorithm

A diffusion mechanism for social advertising over microblogs

2012 | Decision Support Systems | Citations: 20

Authors: Li, Yung-Ming; Shiu, Ya-Lin

Abstract: Social media have increasingly become popular platforms for information dissemin ... Expand

Abstract: Social media have increasingly become popular platforms for information dissemination. Recently, companies have attempted to take advantage of social advertising to deliver their advertisements to appropriate customers. The success of message propagation in social media depends greatly on the content relevance and the closeness of social relationships. In this paper, considering the factors of user preference, network influence, and propagation capability, we propose a diffusion mechanism to deliver advertising information over microblogging media. Our experimental results show that the proposed model could provide advertisers with suitable targets for diffusing advertisements continuously and thus efficiently enhance advertising effectiveness. Collapse

Topics: advertising management microblog social network social media social influence

Methods: experiment survey data transformation principal component analysis paired t-test

Fraud detection in online consumer reviews

2011 | Decision Support Systems | Citations: 27

Authors: Hu, Nan; Liu, Ling; Sambamurthy, Vallabh

Abstract: Increasingly, consumers depend on social information channels, such as user-post ... Expand

Abstract: Increasingly, consumers depend on social information channels, such as user-posted online reviews, to make purchase decisions. These reviews are assumed to be unbiased reflections of other consumers' experiences with the products or services. While extensively assumed, the literature has not tested the existence or non-existence of review manipulation. By using data from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, our study investigates if vendors, publishers, and writers consistently manipulate online consumer reviews. We document the existence of online review manipulation and show that the manipulation strategy of firms seems to be a monotonically decreasing function of the product's true quality or the mean consumer rating of that product. Hence, manipulation decreases the informativeness of online reviews. Furthermore though consumers understand the existence of manipulation, they can only partially correct it based on their expectation of the overall level of manipulation. Hence, vendors are able to change the final outcomes by manipulating online reviewers. In addition, we demonstrate that at the early stages, after an item is released to the Amazon market, both price and reviews serve as quality indicators. Thus, at this stage, a higher price leads to an increase in sales instead of a decrease in sales. At the late stages, price assumes its normal role, meaning a higher price leads to a decrease in sales. Finally, on average, there is a higher level of manipulation on Barnes & Noble than on Amazon. Collapse

Topics: online review DVD user-generated content electronic market decision support system

Methods: cross sectional research longitudinal research robustness check statistical hypothesis test White test

Brand Positioning Strategy Using Search Engine Marketing

2010 | Management Information Systems Quarterly | Citations: 47

Authors: Dou, Wenyu; Lim, Kai H.; Su, Chenting; Zhou, Nan; Cui, Nan

Abstract: Whether and how firms can employ relative rankings in search engine results page ... Expand

Abstract: Whether and how firms can employ relative rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) to differentiate their brands from competitors in cyberspace remains a critical, puzzling issue in e-commerce research. By synthesizing relevant literature from cognitive psychology, marketing, and e-commerce, this study identifies key contextual factors that are conducive for creating brand positioning online via SERPs. In two experiments, the authors establish that when Internet users' implicit beliefs (i.e., schema) about the meaning of the display order of search engine results are activated or heightened through feature priming, they will have better recall of an unknown brand that is displayed before the well-known brands in SERPs. Further, those with low Internet search skills tend to evaluate the unknown brand more favorably along the particular brand attribute that activates the search engine ranking schema. This research has both theoretical and practical implications for understanding the effectiveness of search engine optimization techniques. Collapse

Topics: search engine internet technology electronic commerce Google+ marketing management

Methods: experiment survey focus group statistical hypothesis test experimental task

Theories: schema theory cognitive theory