Flawless victory! Investigating search and experience qualities as antecedent predictors of video game success

2023 | Electronic Markets | Citations: 0

Authors: Heidenreich, Sven; Handrich, Franziska; Kraemer, Tobias

Abstract: In recent years, video games have been on the rise as entertainment goods, leadi ... Expand

Abstract: In recent years, video games have been on the rise as entertainment goods, leading to a growing interest by practitioners, researchers, and, of course, consumers alike. While a few unusually successful video games produce overall high revenues, most released games struggle to break even. Hence, there is an urgent need to better understand what distinguishes financially successful games from nonsuccessful video games. Accordingly, several researchers have called for investigations into the drivers of the financial success of video games. However, empirical studies within this respect are still lacking. Based on longitudinal data of 351 video games, the current study strives to fill this research gap by investigating the relative importance of potential success factors for the short-term and long-term financial success of video games. The results of multiple regression analyses confirm that search qualities such as brand popularity, reviews, and awards as well as experience qualities such as graphics, sound, and game duration significantly drive financial success in terms of the total number of sold video games in Europe. Consequently, managers in the video game industry can boost their chances for the production of a successful video game by focusing on these factors. Collapse

Topics: video game database system ease of use internet technology missing data

Methods: regression analysis method computational algorithm longitudinal research descriptive statistic statistical hypothesis test

Theories: information theory

Collaborations and Innovation in Partitioned Industries: An Analysis of U.S. Feature Film Coproductions

2023 | Organization Science | Citations: 0

Authors: Jia, Ruo; Lewis, Demetrius; Negro, Giacomo

Abstract: In partitioned industries, a small number of generalist organizations occupy the ... Expand

Abstract: In partitioned industries, a small number of generalist organizations occupy the center of the market, whereas a much larger number of specialists populate the periphery. The role of collaborations within and across the center-periphery boundary in these industries has been underexplored. We propose that hybrid collaborations between organizations in the center and periphery—combining the broad resource base of generalists with the focused knowledge of specialists—encourage product innovation and result in enhanced organizational adaptation for both populations. We test these ideas in the U.S. motion picture industry, where film production companies face significant unpredictability of success and fluctuating audience tastes. We find that generalist and specialist production companies that partner to produce films introduce more creative content in their films compared with those that collaborate in the same population or produce alone. Generalist film companies benefit further from these collaborations through increased competitive differentiation of their films from other generalists in subsequent productions, whereas specialists experience lower exit rates. These findings suggest that interorganizational collaborations between generalists and specialists provide effective adaptive strategies to compete in markets with uncertain demand and shifting audience preferences. These strategies can sustain, rather than weaken, industry partitioning. Funding: This work was funded by an ad hoc research grant from Emory University. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1600. Collapse

Topics: innovation management online review database system knowledge sharing internet technology

Methods: Internet Movie Database review multidimensional scaling Wald test descriptive statistic regression analysis method

Online-to-Offline Platforms: Examining the Effects of Demand-Side Usage on Supply-Side Decisions

2023 | Information & Management | Citations: 0

Authors: Wan, Xing; Jha, Ashish Kumar; Kazantsev, Nikolai; Boh, Wai Fong

Abstract: This study explores the impact of demand-side usage of digital platforms on oper ... Expand

Abstract: This study explores the impact of demand-side usage of digital platforms on operational decision-making by supply-side firms. The positive impact of digital platforms on product sales is established in the literature. However, this study focuses on the perspective of supply-side firms, examining the effect of increasing reliance on digital platforms on supply-side firms’ decisions. The study shows that greater demand-side usage of onlineto-offline (O2O) digital platforms is associated with more efficient operational decisions of supply-side firms. Benefits of leveraging O2O platforms include information transparency and resource pooling. The study further examines the extent to which benefits from participating in O2O digital platforms are affected by inter-firm relationships in which a supply-side firm is embedded. The study uses a panel data model to test hypotheses with data on China’s movie theaters that join O2O platforms. It found that movie theaters with greater demandside usage of O2O digital platforms see better resource utilization and product concentration. Furthermore, it shows that more vertically integrated firms can better reap the benefits from demand-side usage of digital platforms. In contrast, more horizontally integrated firms can less strategically leverage the benefits from demand-side usage of O2O platforms. Collapse

Topics: digital platform information system use decision making mobile application consumer behavior

Methods: qualitative interview robustness check personal interview statistical hypothesis test data modeling

Transforming Digital Inventions into Digital Innovations – A Missing Material Perspective on Technology Adoption

2022 | HICSS | Citations: 0

Authors: Chasin, Friedrich; Baiyere, Abayomi

Abstract: Technology agnosticism dominates explanations of technology adoption in digital ... Expand

Abstract: Technology agnosticism dominates explanations of technology adoption in digital innovation. Accordingly, technology itself plays a limited role in determining adoption success. Instead, aspects outside the inventors' control, including marketing, user perceptions, and organizational environment, decide the adoption outcome. We revisit the original innovation concept and draw attention to what we call a digital invention. Looking at the transition of a digital invention to digital innovation, we argue for a technology-affinity perspective to complement existing adoption perspectives. The new perspective emphasizes the role of conscious invention design for innovation. We find three ways in which specific invention focus can increase the invention's chances for adoption. For instance, we show that contrary to the prevalent idea of technologies enabling new ways of doing things, it is the invention's focus on enabling innate behaviors that can facilitate adoption. Past innovation and contemporary innovation in the film industry illustrate our thinking. Collapse

Topics: innovation management digital innovation technology adoption marketing management Apple iPhone

Methods: theory development qualitative interview design science

Return of the Movie Night? Analyzing the Impact of Netflix Subscriptions on Offline Movie Spending

2022 | International Conference on Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Fang, Sihan; Gopal, Anand; Kwon, Hyeokkoo Eric; Park, Yongjin

Abstract: The subscription-based business model is disruptive in the copyright industries ... Expand

Abstract: The subscription-based business model is disruptive in the copyright industries. More than a digitalized distribution channel, it fundamentally transforms both supply and demand sides regarding content provision and consumption. However, there is scant evidence about how and why it affects the local traditional industry. This study investigates the impact of the subscription-based business model on offline activity consumption in the motion picture industry. Leveraging a unique dataset with individuals' every transaction record and a difference-in-differences approach, we conclude that Netflix subscription increases offline movie consumption. We support that individuals have unmet hedonic and social demands with the imperfect disruptive technology. They, therefore, attend more hedonic and social activities, including movies, dining, entertainment, to satisfy their unmet needs. In addition, the identified effect is more pronounced for individuals with higher hedonic (i.e., younger people) and social (i.e., lower-income and residents of smaller towns) needs. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Collapse

Topics: digital service Netflix streaming service video streaming service mobile application

Methods: experimental group robustness check longitudinal research difference in differences quasi experiment

The Fickle Crowd: Reinforcement and Contradiction of Quality Evaluations in Cultural Markets

2022 | Organization Science | Citations: 0

Authors: Kim, Minjae; DellaPosta, Daniel

Abstract: We clarify conditions under which two seemingly contradictory yet widely observe ... Expand

Abstract: We clarify conditions under which two seemingly contradictory yet widely observed tendencies occur in cultural markets where amateur connoisseurs evaluate products—reinforcement of previous consensus and contradiction of that same consensus. We start from prior work’s insight that achieving “distinction” requires that evaluators display tastes demonstrating higher skills of discernment and standards that are acknowledged as legitimate by others. Based on this, we argue that evaluators reinforce prior evaluations of products to demonstrate that they share the same quality standards as their peers, but they selectively contradict prior evaluations by downgrading widely acclaimed products, because doing the latter makes the evaluator appear to have even more sophisticated tastes than their peers. We test this account using 1.66 million reviews from an online platform where amateur connoisseurs publicly evaluate beers. Our analyses support an endogenous model explaining why and when evaluators may contradict existing evaluations even though a group plausibly sharing the same quality standards may have established such evaluations in the first place. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1556. Collapse

Topics: logistics management collaborative filtering accounting anonymity website

Methods: computational algorithm descriptive statistic robustness check theory development hierarchical linear modeling

The causal effect of subscription video streaming on DVD sales: Evidence from a natural experiment

2022 | Decision Support Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Yu, Yinan; Chen, Hailiang; Peng, Chih-Hung; Chau, Patrick Y.K.

Abstract: Subscription-based video streaming has recently become the main revenue driver i ... Expand

Abstract: Subscription-based video streaming has recently become the main revenue driver in the home entertainment industry. Whether and how it affects the sales of physical media, which was previously the industry’s largest revenue source for decades, is still not well understood. We answer this question using a natural experiment that occurred on October 1, 2015, when the content owner Epix switched its streaming partner from Netflix to Hulu. This event created an exogenous shock that significantly reduced the streaming availability of Epix’s content because of the difference in the market shares of the two streaming service providers at the time. This occurrence allows us to investigate the causal effect of subscription streaming on physical DVD sales. Our difference-indifferences analysis shows that the decline in the streaming availability of Epix’s content caused an increase of 36.07% in its monthly DVD sales during the 15 months after the event. We also find that the cannibalization between these two channels is much stronger for movies with higher level of content stickiness (e.g., more recent titles, and titles with a general audience (G) or parental guidance (PG) rating or belonging to the children/family genre). Our findings provide important implications for content owners on how to balance physical sales with revenues from streaming licenses. Collapse

Topics: DVD digital service Netflix Hulu streaming service

Methods: experimental group natural experiment Internet Movie Database review longitudinal research robustness check

Investigating the Effects of Dimension-Specific Sentiments on Product Sales: The Perspective of Sentiment Preferences

2021 | Journal of the Association for Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Jiang, Cuiqing; Wang, Jianfei; TANG, Qian; Lyu, Xiaozhong

Abstract: While the literature has reached a consensus on the awareness effect of online ... Expand

Abstract: While the literature has reached a consensus on the awareness effect of online word-of-mouth (eWOM), this paper studies its persuasive effect-specifically, dimension-specific sentiment effects on product sales. We examine the sentiment information in eWOM along different product dimensions and reveal different persuasive effects on consumers' purchase decisions based on consumers' sentiment preference, which is defined as the relative importance that consumers place on various dimension-specific sentiments. We use an aspect-level sentiment analysis to derive dimension-specific sentiment and PVAR (panel vector auto-regression) models, and estimate their effects on product sales using a movie panel dataset. The findings show that three dimension-specific sentiments (star, genre, and plot) are positively related to movie sales. Regarding consumers' sentiment preferences, we find a positive relationship to movie sales that is stronger for plot sentiment, relative to star sentiment for low-budget movies. For high-budget movies, we find a positive relationship to movie sales that is stronger for star sentiment, relative to plot or genre sentiment. Collapse

Topics: online word of mouth word of mouth online review big data knowledge representation

Methods: sentiment analysis product review robustness check natural language processing topic model

Theories: attitude theory

Can online user reviews be more helpful? Evaluating and improving ranking approaches

2020 | Information & Management | Citations: 9

Authors: Wang, Jying-Nan

Abstract: Given the sharply increasing number of online reviews, the selection of strategi ... Expand

Abstract: Given the sharply increasing number of online reviews, the selection of strategies by review-hosting firms to help users access more helpful reviews is an intriguing but insufficiently studied issue. We first propose a model to help us understand how reviews receive helpful votes (HV) and non-helpful votes. According to this model, the performances of different ranking approaches are compared using several simulated datasets with empirical features. In addition to three well-known ranking approaches, we develop a novel approach based on Bayesian statistics that is easy to implement in existing websites and can be combined with other content recommendation techniques to determine the prior belief in online reviews. More importantly, we suggest two simple ways to enhance existing ranking approaches. The numerical evidence demonstrates the advantages of two enhanced approaches, as indicated by higher helpful ratios and a reduced Matthew effect. These findings have important practical implications for consumers, online retailers, and review-hosting firms. Collapse

Topics: website electronic commerce online review virtual world anonymity

Methods: simulation descriptive statistic experiment computational algorithm Bayesian analysis

Putting Question-Answering Systems into Practice: Transfer Learning for Efficient Domain Customization

2019 | ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Kratzwald, Bernhard; Feuerriegel, Stefan

Abstract: Traditional information retrieval (such as that offered by web search engines) i ... Expand

Abstract: Traditional information retrieval (such as that offered by web search engines) impedes users with information overload from extensive result pages and the need to manually locate the desired information therein. Conversely, question-answering systems change how humans interact with information systems: users can now ask specific questions and obtain a tailored answer—both conveniently in natural language. Despite obvious benefits, their use is often limited to an academic context, largely because of expensive domain customizations, which means that the performance in domain-specific applications often fails to meet expectations. This article proposes cost-efficient remedies: (i) we leverage metadata through a filtering mechanism, which increases the precision of document retrieval, and (ii) we develop a novel fuse-and-oversample approach for transfer learning to improve the performance of answer extraction. Here, knowledge is inductively transferred from related, yet different, tasks to the domain-specific application, while accounting for potential differences in the sample sizes across both tasks. The resulting performance is demonstrated with actual use cases from a finance company and the film industry, where fewer than 400 question-answer pairs had to be annotated to yield significant performance gains. As a direct implication to management, this presents a promising path to better leveraging of knowledge stored in information systems. Collapse

Topics: information retrieval domain-specific language knowledge sharing Wikipedia open source

Methods: experiment deep learning artificial neural network question answering term frequency–inverse document frequency