{"title":"Price Promotions for \"Freemium\" App Monetization","authors":"Julian Runge, Harikesh S. Nair, Jonathan Levav","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3357275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3357275","url":null,"abstract":"The “freemium” model for digital goods involves selling a base version of the product for free, and making premium product features available to users only on payment. The success of the model is predicated on the ability to profitably convert free users to paying ones. Price promotions (or “sales”) are often used in freemium to induce the conversion. However, the causal effect of exposing consumers to such inter-temporal price variation is unclear. While sales can generate beneficial short-run conversion, they may be harmful in the long-run if consumers inter-temporally substitute purchases to periods with low prices, or use them as signals of low product quality. These long-run concerns may be accentuated in freemium apps, where the base version is sold for free, so that sales form extreme price cuts on the overall product combination. We work with the seller of a free-to-play video game to randomize entering cohorts of users into treatment and control conditions in which promotions for in-game purchases are turned on or off. We observe complete user behavior for half a year, including purchases and consumption of in-game goods, which, in contrast to much of the extant literature, enables us to assess possible substitution over time in consumption directly. We find that conversion and revenue improve in the treatment group; and detect no evidence of harmful inter-temporal substitution or negative inferences about quality from exposure to price variation, suggesting that promotions are profitable. We conjecture that the zero price of the base product that makes its consumption virtually costless, combined with the complementarity between the base product and premium features can help explain this. To the extent that this holds across freemium contexts, the positive effects of promotions documented here may hold more generally.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73066202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Bughin, Sybille Berjoan, F. Hintermann, Yuhui Xiong
{"title":"Corporate Resilience Out of the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"J. Bughin, Sybille Berjoan, F. Hintermann, Yuhui Xiong","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3872434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3872434","url":null,"abstract":"More than one year after the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared, the profit performance among large companies worldwide has been bifurcating between 1/3 of companies bouncing forward with higher profit trajectory as per before the crisis while the other firms are continuing to suffer a profit shortfall. Such asymmetry in performance in part reflects the large economic shock of the pandemic that takes time to be absorbed, but the probable main cause, we find in this research, is that large companies have been operating at significant gaps to the resilience frontier. The most important dynamic capabilities to support corporate resilience include higher agility, exercise of disruptive innovations, investment in sustainability practices, as well as active play in business ecosystems","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85496248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Firm Undercapitalization in Italy: Business Crisis and Survival Before and After COVID-19","authors":"Tommaso Orlando, Giacomo Rodano","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3826464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3826464","url":null,"abstract":"In a context characterized by upcoming regulatory changes and deeply affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, this paper examines the diffusion of firm undercapitalization (i.e., the firm displaying a level of equity below the legal limit) among Italian corporations. In a proposal by the National Board of Accountants, business crisis is substantially identified with undercapitalization. Indeed, our analyses show that the onset of undercapitalization often anticipates business termination: around 60 percent of involved firms go out of business within 3 years. In 2010-18, on average around 8.5 percent of Italian companies were undercapitalized. The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic may be substantial: our predictions indicate that the share of undercapitalized firms at the end of 2020 may exceed 12 percent. This estimate incorporates the powerful mitigating effects of several interventions enacted by the Italian government between March and August 2020 to support firms damaged by the pandemic. The increase in undercapitalization may reverberate onto the functioning of the new ‘early warning’ system, which will become operational in September 2021: our predictions suggest that the number of firms that could be involved in early warning procedures may be almost twice as large as that foreseeable on the basis of accounting data from 2018.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83169233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Patent Law, Appropriability, and External R&D: Empirical Evidence","authors":"Yun Hou, I. Png, X. Xiong","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3029106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3029106","url":null,"abstract":"Theoretically, whether technology firms should increase external R&D in response to stronger patent law depends on the effects of law on returns to external and internal R&D. Exploiting geographical differences in the strengthening of patent protection due to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, we find that, on average, external R&D increased by 42.3 percent. The effect was more pronounced among companies less intensive in manufacturing, smaller in scope, and in complex-technology and more geographically concentrated industries, and those where patents were less effective in appropriability.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73414971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Competitive Environment and Corporate Constructs of Price and Costs in the UAE","authors":"Fernando Zanella, P. Oyelere","doi":"10.22495/cocv17i4art11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv17i4art11","url":null,"abstract":"Target costing is a cross-disciplinary subject with several unexplored academic dimensions besides having applied business practices and economic policy implications. In this paper, we use a unique combination of mixed methods research approach to investigate the adoption of target costing by manufacturing firms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The first employed method is the new Dumitrescu-Hurlin (D-H) Granger non-causality test for heterogeneous panel data, while the second is a survey. The D-H test with annual data indicates the adoption of target costing by the publicly listed manufacturing firms. When using quarterly data, but with a smaller sample of firms, the results show bi-causality between costs and sales revenues; thus target costing is possibly corroborated but within a feedback mechanism. Survey results, based on self-reported data and again on a smaller sample, show mixed results. The relationship between target costing and the intensity of competition seems moderately corroborated by the survey results. This paper contributes to the literature by employing a unique mixed methods research approach, to the best of our knowledge not found previously in the literature, and by its findings on the adoption of target costing by manufacturing firms in a relatively open and dynamic economy such as the UAE.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"136 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86009448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Impact of Sharing Economy: New Evidence from Airbnb in Taiwan","authors":"Fang-Chang Kuo, Hsin-Hsi Shih","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3622098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3622098","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate the impact of Airbnb on incumbent hotels' revenue in Taiwan. Combining listing information scraped from Airbnb website with a panel of hotel revenues, we propose a novel set of instrumental variables to identify the casual impact. Relative to OLS estimate, IV-2SLS estimates indicate larger negative effects from Airbnb. Furthermore, smaller and lower quality hotels are heavily affected by Airbnb listings.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84212659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Seasonal Home Advantage in English Professional Football; 1973-2018","authors":"Thomas Peeters, J. van Ours","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3603228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3603228","url":null,"abstract":"We analyze 45 years of data from English professional football focusing on the determinants of home advantage. We conclude that seasonal home advantage is substantial and positively related to within-team variation in attendance. Furthermore, despite big cross-league differences in attendance, the average home advantage is about the same across the English leagues. The average home advantage over the period of analysis was 0.63 points and 0.45 goals difference. Finally, we find that over time there is a substantial decline in the home advantage that materializes equally across the leagues.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"120 19","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141205346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Economics of Attention Markets","authors":"David S. Evans","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3044858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3044858","url":null,"abstract":"The attention market involves competition in which platforms acquire time from consumers, with bundles of content and ads, and sell ads to marketers to deliver messages during that time. This paper shows that the attention market solves a transaction-cost problem that prevents efficient exchange between consumers and advertisers and that content plays a central role in solving that problem. The attention market contributes to consumer welfare by supplying valuable content, which more than compensates for any nuisance value of ads, and by facilitating competition through the provision of ads. This paper shows that American adults will spend more than 500 billion hours on ad-supported content in 2019. The value of content is measured in the trillions of dollars given the opportunity cost of time; recent studies of the consumer valuation of online media are consistent with that order of magnitude.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91101735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ndung'u Consolata, Ogutu Martin, Yabs John, N. Muranga, W. Kinoti
{"title":"Influence of Cost Strategy on Firm Performance","authors":"Ndung'u Consolata, Ogutu Martin, Yabs John, N. Muranga, W. Kinoti","doi":"10.31014/aior.1992.03.02.215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31014/aior.1992.03.02.215","url":null,"abstract":"In today's complex and dynamic environment firm competitiveness is inevitable. This means therefore, that for better positioning and to remain ahead of rivals, firms can pursue suitable strategies especially being a cost leader. Empirical studies show that cost strategies influence competitiveness and growth of a firm (Tehrani, 2003). This study sought to determine the influence of cost strategy on the performance of manufacturing firms in Kenya. According to Porter (1995) firms that pursue cost leadership can achieve better competitive advantage leading to improved performance. Additionally, he asserts that firms are able to defend their market since lower cost can enable them earn better returns. Firms that adopt cost strategy, therefore, endeavor to lower cost in terms of production in the industry. The study utilized Porter's (1980) framework with the foundation of Dynamic capability theory by David Teece & Gary Pisano in 1994 and stakeholders theory(Harrison, Bosse & Phillips, 2010) and goal setting theory by Locke & Latham (2006). The study adopted cross sectional descriptive survey, guided by positivist philosophy. This is because the study intended to observe a phenomenon and report it as it is. The study aimed to study all large manufacturers in Kenya. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire. Through use of percentages, mean scores and standard deviation the data was described. Regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis. The study found that cost strategy had a significant influence on the performance of manufacturing firms in Kenya.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77905188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Designing Generation Change in Family Firms: Lessons from Italy","authors":"Peter Agstner","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3564922","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3564922","url":null,"abstract":"In Italy, as in most other European countries, around 85-90% (in absolute numbers: 780,000) of all enterprises are family firms, which contribute to 80% of GDP and account for 70% of employment. 60% of publicly-traded corporations have a family as majority shareholder. However, only 20% of the family firms survive until the third generation. Already these first figures show the crucial importance of intergenerational succession in Italian family firms. In the management literature, family firms, and especially the topic of management succession, are widely investigated. Lawyers, on the contrary, still lag behind in this research field. The present paper seeks to close the research gap. First, the legal prototype for the governance of generation change processes in Italian family firms, i.e. the patto di famiglia (family pact) is analysed. The many limits and practical constraints surrounding this legislative product makes it necessary to look at alternati ve private orderings devices and evaluate their pros and cons. Thus, attention is drawn to the succession planning choices made by important Italian family firms (Benetton, Caprotti and Brunello Cucinelli), which opted for a regulation mainly in the corporate charter or by way of testament or trust. The casestudy approach here followed shall contribute to the better understanding of the practical tools employed in the design of such generation change and make them available for a broader comparative circulation.","PeriodicalId":11837,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other IO: Empirical Studies of Firms & Markets (Topic)","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88391915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}