Publications
18 results found
Honka E, Seiler S, Ursu R, 2024, Consumer search: what can we learn from pre-purchase data?, Journal of Retailing, ISSN: 0022-4359
Researchers are increasingly able to observe consumers’ behavior prior to a purchase, such as their navigation through a store or website and the products they consider. Such pre-purchase (or search) data can be valuable to researchers in a variety of ways: as an additional source of information to estimate consumer preferences, to understand how firms can influence the search process through marketing mix variables, and to analyze how limited information about products affects equilibrium market outcomes. We provide an overview of these three research areas with a particular emphasis on online and offline retailing.
Ursu R, Seiler S, Honka E, 2023, The Sequential Search Model: A Framework for Empirical Research
Levine J, Seiler S, 2022, Identifying State Dependence in Brand Choice: Evidence from Hurricanes, MARKETING SCIENCE, Vol: 42, Pages: 934-957, ISSN: 0732-2399
Smith AN, Seiler S, Aggarwal I, 2022, Optimal Price Targeting, MARKETING SCIENCE, ISSN: 0732-2399
Morozov I, Seiler S, Dong X, et al., 2021, Estimation of preference heterogeneity in markets with costly search, Marketing Science, Vol: 40, Pages: 871-899, ISSN: 0732-2399
We study the estimation of preference heterogeneity in markets in which consumers engage in costly search to learn product characteristics. Costly search amplifies the way consumer preferences translate into purchase probabilities, generating a seemingly large degree of preference heterogeneity. We develop a search model that allows for flexible preference heterogeneity and estimate its parameters using a unique panel data set on consumers’ search and purchase behavior. The results reveal that when search costs are ignored, the model overestimates standard deviations of product intercepts by 53%. We show that the bias in heterogeneity estimates leads to incorrect inference about price elasticities and seller markups and has important consequences for personalized pricing.
Seiler S, Tuchman A, Yao S, 2020, EXPRESS: the impact of soda taxes: pass-through, tax avoidance, and nutritional effects, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol: 58, Pages: 2249-2249, ISSN: 0022-2437
The authors analyze the impact of a tax on sweetened beverages using a unique dataset of prices, quantities sold, and nutritional information across several thousand taxed and untaxed beverages for a large set of stores in Philadelphia and its surrounding area. The tax is passed through at an average rate of 97%, leading to a 34% price increase. Demand in the taxed area decreases by 46% in response to the tax. Cross-shopping to stores outside of Philadelphia offsets more than half of the reduction in sales in the city and decreases the net reduction in sales of taxed beverages to only 22%. There is no significant substitution to bottled water and modest substitution to untaxed natural juices. The authors show that tax avoidance through cross-shopping severely constrains revenue generation and nutritional improvement, thus making geographic coverage an important policy decision.
Aribarg A, Otter T, Zantedeschi D, et al., 2018, Advancing Non-compensatory Choice Models in Marketing, Customer Needs and Solutions, Vol: 5, Pages: 82-92, ISSN: 2196-291X
Seiler S, Yao S, Wang W, 2017, Does online word of mouth increase demand? (and how?) evidence from a natural experiment, Marketing Science, Vol: 36, Pages: 838-861, ISSN: 0732-2399
We leverage a temporary block of the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo due to political events to estimate the causal effect of online word-of-mouth content on product demand in the context of TV show viewership. Based on this source of exogenous variation, we estimate an elasticity of TV show ratings (market share in terms of viewership) with respect to the number of relevant comments (comments were disabled during the block) of 0.016. We find that more postshow microblogging activity increases demand, whereas comments posted prior to the show airing do not affect viewership. These patterns are inconsistent with informative or persuasive effects and suggest complementarity between TV consumption and anticipated postshow microblogging activity.
Seiler S, Yao S, 2017, The impact of advertising along the conversion funnel, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Vol: 15, Pages: 241-278, ISSN: 1570-7156
Thomassen Ø, Smith H, Seiler S, et al., 2017, Multi-category competition and market power: a model of supermarket pricing, American Economic Review, Vol: 107, Pages: 2308-2351, ISSN: 0002-8282
In many competitive settings, consumers buy multiple product categories, and some prefer to use a single firm, generating complementary cross-category price effects. To study pricing in supermarkets, an organizational form where these effects are internalized, we develop a multi-category, multi-seller demand model and estimate it using UK consumer data. This class of model is used widely in theoretical analysis of retail pricing. We quantify cross-category pricing effects and find that internalizing them substantially reduces market power. We find that consumers inclined to one-stop (rather than multi-stop) shopping have a greater pro-competitive impact because they generate relatively large cross-category effects.
Seiler S, Pinna F, 2017, Estimating search benefits from path-tracking data: measurement and determinants, Marketing Science, Vol: 36, Pages: 565-589, ISSN: 0732-2399
We study consumer search behavior in a brick-and-mortar store environment, using a unique data set obtained from radio-frequency identification tags, which are attached to supermarket shopping carts. This technology allows us to record consumers’ purchases as well as the time they spent in front of the shelf when contemplating which product to buy, giving us a direct measure of search effort. We estimate a linear regression of price paid on search duration, in which search duration is instrumented with a search-cost shifter. We show that this regression allows us to recover the marginal return from search in terms of price at the optimal stopping point for the average consumer. Our identification strategy and coefficient interpretation are valid for a broad class of search models, and we are hence able to remain agnostic about the details of the search process, such as search order and search protocol. We estimate an average return from search of $2.10 per minute and explore heterogeneity across consumer types, product categories, and category location in the store. We find little difference in the returns from search across product categories, but large differences across consumer types and locations. Our findings suggest that situational factors, such as the location of the category or the timing of the search within the shopping trip, are more important determinants of search behavior than category characteristics such as the number of available products.
Gaynor M, Propper C, Seiler S, 2016, Free to choose? Reform, choice, and consideration sets in the EnglishNational Health Service, American Economic Review, Vol: 106, Pages: 3521-3557, ISSN: 0002-8282
Choice in public services is controversial. We exploit a reform inthe English National Health Service to assess the effect of removingconstraints on patient choice. We estimate a demand model thatexplicitly captures the removal of the choice constraints imposed onpatients. We find that, post-removal, patients became more responsiveto clinical quality. This led to a modest reduction in mortalityand a substantial increase in patient welfare. The elasticity of demandfaced by hospitals increased substantially post-reform and wefind evidence that hospitals responded to the enhanced incentives byimproving quality. This suggests greater choice can raise quality.
Seiler S, 2016, Comments on “costly search and consideration sets in storable goods markets” by Tiago Pires, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Vol: 14, Pages: 197-200, ISSN: 1570-7156
Aaltonen A, Seiler S, 2016, Cumulative growth in user-generated content production: Evidence from Wikipedia, Management Science, Vol: 62, Pages: 2054-2069, ISSN: 0025-1909
Open content production platforms typically allow users to gradually create content and react to previous contributions. Using detailed edit-level data across a large number of Wikipedia articles, we investigate how past edits shape current editing activity. We find that cumulative past contributions, embodied by the current article length, lead to significantly more editing activity, while controlling for a host of factors such as popularity of the topic and platform-level growth trends. The magnitude of the effect is large; content growth over an eight-year period would have been 45% lower in its absence. Our findings suggest that other open content production environments are likely to also benefit from similar cumulative growth effects. In the presence of such effects, managerial interventions that increase content are amplified because they trigger further contributions.
Bloom N, Propper C, Seiler S, et al., 2015, The impact of competition on management quality: evidence from public hospitals, The Review of Economic Studies, Vol: 82, Pages: 457-489, ISSN: 0034-6527
We analyse the causal impact of competition on managerial quality and hospital performance. To address the endogeneity of market structure we analyse the English public hospital sector where entry and exit are controlled by the central government. Because closing hospitals in areas where the governing party is expecting a tight election race (“marginals”) is rare due to the fear of electoral defeat, we can use political marginality as an instrumental variable for the number of hospitals in a geographical area. We find that higher competition results in higher management quality, measured using a new survey tool, and improved hospital performance. Adding a rival hospital increases management quality by 0.4 standard deviations and increases survival rates from emergency heart attacks by 9.7%. We confirm the robustness of our IV strategy to “hidden policies” that could be used in marginal districts to improve hospital management and to changes in capacity that may follow from hospital closure.
Seiler S, 2013, The impact of search costs on consumer behavior: A dynamic approach, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Vol: 11, Pages: 155-203, ISSN: 1570-7156
Bloom N, Cooper Z, Gaynor M, et al., 2011, In defence of our research on competition in England's National Health Service, LANCET, Vol: 378, Pages: 2064-2065, ISSN: 0140-6736
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