The Value of External Data Capabilities in the Search Market: Evidence from a Field Experiment

讲座题目 ：The Value of External Data Capabilities in the Search Market: Evidence from a Field Experiment

主讲嘉宾：陈一行 助理教授

时间：2024年7月2日（星期二）10:00-11:00

讲座地点：明理楼A205

主持人：陈星宇教授，管理学院

讲座摘要 ：

Firms increasingly leverage external entities' data capabilities to unlock improvements in their offerings, but measuring the value of such capabilities is challenging. Collaborating with the search team at a technology company, we analyze a field experiment where we manipulated access to an external, leading search engine's autocomplete API. We measure the causal impact of the removal of access to such an API on the clickthrough rate (CTR) on the focal company's search suggestions and CTR on results on the Search Engine Results Page. We find that, on average, compared to the baseline with access to the external API, API removal leads to a 4.6% decrease in the CTR on search suggestions. Further, exploiting the experimental variation, we use an instrumental-variables approach to establish that a 10% increase in CTR on search suggestions leads to a 1.85% increase in CTR on the top-slot search results. These estimates suggest the revenue potential of utilizing external data capabilities for nascent search products. Finally, the negative effect of API removal on search suggestions becomes less negative over time with the effect magnitude in the longer term being half what we would have obtained with a short-term experiment. We provide suggestive mechanism evidence of the longer-term effect: the focal company's reliance on the leading search engine's data capability limits the improvement of its own autocomplete predictions based on the accumulation of internal data. Apart from its managerial implications, this research sheds light on policies such as the Digital Markets Act that proposes data sharing by large digital platforms.

主讲人简介：

陈一行，博士，美国圣母大学门多萨商学院 (Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame) 市场营销系助理教授、露西家族数据和社会研究所研究员、哈珀癌症研究所研究员、Eck全球卫生研究院研究员。于2020年获德州农工大学梅斯商学院工商管理（市场营销方向）博士学位。主要研究领域包括：营销的社会效应（医疗、教育、能源、算法偏见）和平台企业的数字营销战略。他的学术成果在多本国际顶级营销学和医学期刊发表，如：Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology。他屡获殊荣，先后获得Poets & Quants全球40位40岁以下的最佳商学院教授、首届金融时报全球社会影响力学术研究奖、美国市场营销协会社会责任杰出研究奖、美国市场营销协会John A. Howard年度最佳博士论文奖、美国新墨西哥大学杰出青年校友、德州农工大学杰出博士论文奖、门多萨商学院社会贡献研究奖、门多萨商学院Prochaska家族杰出教学奖、梅斯商学院院长杰出教学奖。他的学术论文还曾四度入围国际顶级期刊年度最佳论文奖，包括2022年美国市场营销协会社会责任研究奖、2021年美国市场营销协会Journal of Marketing Research Paul E. Green最佳论文奖以及2018和2020年美国市场营销协会Journal of Marketing MSI/H. Paul Root最佳论文奖。陈一行博士担任市场营销领域的国际顶级期刊Journal of Marketing 和Journal of Marketing Research的编委。

管理学院

2024年6月28日