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Scheller College of Business

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70690

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Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

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Institute for Leadership and Social Impact

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https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/255

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 20

Essays on Price and Quality Tradeoffs

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-08-29) Hu, Zoey

Price and product quality are among the most important factors that influence consumers’ choices. This dissertation comprises two essays that examine the price and quality trade-off among consumers in two distinct settings. The first essay develops a Bayesian dynamic decision model aimed at capturing consumers’ price-quality tradeoffs that can be mapped to their preferences. I combine real-time information shown to consumers and their search actions to develop an innovative framework for integrating the learning processes of both consumers and online platforms. Consumers often use search filters for navigating a large pool of alternatives online, routinely updating their beliefs about the availability of price and quality bundles along the way, and using such information to inform their subsequent search strategies. Online platforms are uniquely positioned to infer consumer preferences on the scale of price and quality owing to their ability to observe and control the information set shown to consumers at each stage of the consumer search journey. I derive a closed-form solution using a utility form that customizes to the price-quality tradeoffs faced by consumers to aid a transparent interpretation of consumer search dynamics. Using both simulations and real-world data from a large travel website, I show that my model can afford online platforms with powerful prediction benefits that accrue from its enhanced capability to discover price-quality tradeoffs from search traces in real-time. The proposed approach contributes to the existing empirical search literature by incorporating the list of hotel options into a consumer search model that dynamically updates consumers’ understanding of the available options. The magnitude of performance benefits suggests that my model can be a potentially promising utility to help firms with contextual targeting, with overcoming cold-start problems, and with recommendation generation tasks in a world with increasingly strict consumer privacy regulations. The second essay investigates the relationship between price and quality by focusing on the impact on households' nutrition outcomes following an important policy legislation passed by Congress in 2010: the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA). The HHFKA instituted key reforms to the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, updating the nutritional guidelines for foods served in all public schools in the United States. Utilizing the Nielsen Homescan panel data, I document the potential spillovers of this policy on household food purchases. By comparing purchasing activities of a matched set of households with and without kids (who I argue are respectively likely and unlikely to have benefited from the treatment), I find out that the former group sizably reduces its calories purchased from grocery stores while keeping the nutritional composition of calories purchased materially unchanged even after the HHFKA went into effect, potentially leveraging school food programs that now provided a higher quality of food. Moreover, the overall calorie reduction is driven primarily by changes in the behaviors of a specific sub-segment of households that, prior to policy implementation, purchased less food, and food of lower nutritional quality than did the median household. I also find patterns supporting the view that this sub-segment of households began substituting their at-home food consumption with school meals presumably owing to two key types of resource constraints — time and nutritional awareness. Additionally, I find that a different sub-segment of households that purchased more food but of lower nutritional quality than the median household now exhibited deterioration of its dietary health from grocery purchases, suggesting an unintended licensing effect of this legislation on some households’ food purchases. I discuss the key implications for marketing and public policy from my main findings from both essays. Both essays reflect my empirical analysis training in the doctoral program, using distinct approaches, from Bayesian statistics and its application to a structural approach, to Econometrics and its application to causal analysis. The overarching theme is to gain insights into consumers’ decision-making process by leveraging rich consumer data and building reasonable models, in order to derive guidance for either business practice or policy making.
The Promise and the Peril of Equipping Service Chatbots with Emotions and Choices

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-08-17) Han, Elizabeth

The advance in AI-powered chatbot technologies and their rapid deployment in the service industry have attracted enormous interest from both researchers and practitioners in recent years. However, we still know little about the implications of equipping service chatbots with some important features such as emotional capabilities and choice provision. My dissertation not only investigates how customers respond to chatbots with emotional capabilities and choice-equipped chatbots during a service interaction, but also explores why and when these critical features would benefit or hurt customers. In my first essay, I examine the impact of positive emotion expressed by a chatbot on service evaluations. I show that chatbot-expressed positive emotion does not enhance service evaluations as in human-to-human interactions. Drawing on the emotional contagion and the expectation-disconfirmation theory, I further uncover the dual, affective and cognitive pathways underlying this non-effect and a boundary condition for the cognitive pathway. In my second essay, I explore the impact of empathy expressed by a service chatbot. Extending the social perception literature, I predict and reveal that chatbot-expressed empathy can either help or hurt service evaluations depending on the source of customers’ negative emotions. In the final essay, I draw on the fluency literature and investigate when and why the implementation of choices during a chatbot-driven service interaction enhances or impairs customers’ service experience. Through a series of experimental studies, this dissertation uncovers the promise and the peril of equipping chatbots with emotional and choice-provision capabilities in customer service. It also provides valuable insights for practitioners on the design and implementation of AI-powered chatbots in customer service and beyond.
When The Uniqueness Brings Us Together: How Initial Cues of Uniqueness Influence Creative Collaborations

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-07-30) Gong, Qing

While diverse perspectives benefit collaborations in generating creative outcomes, people generally tend to favor and connect based on similarities. To unpack this seeming dilemma, this research examines whether, how, and when initial cues demonstrating individuals’ uniqueness, meaning rare and distinct features in a social environment, influence perceivers’ intention to collaborate with them on creative projects. Drawing from the associative-propositional evaluation (APE) theory and the signaling perspective, I propose that people are likely to gravitate towards collaborators who display cues of uniqueness in initial interactions. When seeking collaborators for creative endeavors based on limited information in early interactions, initial cues of uniqueness may trigger positive associations and thus liking for the displayer and signal creative potential, leading to perceivers’ greater creative collaboration intention. Furthermore, the perceiver’s need for uniqueness, the displayer’s competence-based status, and cultural tightness in the social environment can influence the effectiveness of cues of uniqueness. This research leverages experimental methodology to test the psychological mechanisms and examines the phenomenon using large-scale archival data of scientists’ publication and collaboration records. The experimental studies generally support the hypotheses except for the moderating effect of cultural tightness. Analyses based on the archival data yield mixed findings regarding the relationship between an initial cue of uniqueness (i.e., name uniqueness) and scientists’ likelihood of building creative collaborations. Theoretical implications on the interpersonal outcomes of uniqueness and creative collaborations and practical implications for leveraging cues of uniqueness are discussed.
The Effect of Accessibility of Status-Confirming Information on Investor Reactions to the Pay-Ratio Disclosure

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-07-29) Menon, Anish

The SEC provides companies with considerable flexibility in the disclosure of the ratio between CEO and median employee compensation (pay-ratio). Prior research suggests that pay-ratio disclosures negatively affect investors’ support for executive compensation (SoP). Using two experiments, I find that accessibility of information that helps justify the gap between CEO and median employee compensation (status-confirming information) increases nonprofessional investors’ support for executive compensation (SoP support). Drawing on research in psychology, in experiment 1, I predict that accessibility of status-confirming information increases investors’ perceptions of meritocracy especially when the pay-ratio is higher than the peer companies which helps investors rationalize the compensation gap made salient by the pay-ratio. I find that investors’ perceptions of meritocracy positively influence their SoP support. However, accessibility of status-confirming information does not increase perceptions of meritocracy when pay-ratio is higher than peer companies. Additional analysis reveals that accessibility of status-confirming information does not significantly increase SoP support and perceptions of meritocracy in higher income participants’, suggesting that participants income levels could potentially affect their evaluation of the pay-ratio disclosure when status-confirming information is accessible. Since the analysis including income levels was conducted ex-post in Experiment 1, I conduct a second experiment to confirm my findings. In Experiment 2 I investigate whether participants’ perceptions of wealth impact their responses when the pay ratio is higher than peer companies. I find that investors’ perceptions of wealth and accessibility of status-confirming information affect both investors’ perceptions of meritocracy and SoP support when pay-ratio is higher than peer companies. Together, my findings provide evidence that the content of the pay-ratio disclosure apart from the disclosure itself could systematically affect investor decisions.
The Aftermath of Humblebragging: Examining the Paradoxical Effects of Humblebragging on Individual’s Job Search

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-07-29) Lee, Min Young

Humblebragging has become a widely recognized form of self-promotion that has permeated our everyday interactions. Although research has largely deemed this ubiquitous strategy as ineffective, wherein humblebragging elicits dislike and negative emotions in observers, little is known about the emotional experience of humblebraggers or why they continue to engage in this form of erroneous impression management. Leveraging an approach-avoidance framework and appraisal theory of emotions, I focus on the aftermath of humblebragging in a job search context (which provides fertile ground for impression management) and propose that humblebragging elicits feelings of pride that enhance subsequent engagement in job search for individuals high in approach motivation. Alternatively, I propose that humblebragging engenders feelings of dirtiness that discourage subsequent engagement in job search for individuals high in avoidance motivation. A multi-study approach was utilized to test these propositions. The results from Study 1 (scale development study) provide evidence for the validity and reliability of a 6-item humblebragging scale across four different samples (N = 1050). Study 2 (experimental study) results revealed that humblebragging did not predict feelings of pride and dirtiness. In contrast, Study 3 (a multi-wave field study of job seekers in the United States) revealed a more complex pattern of relationships than previously theorized. Humblebragging was positively related to hubristic pride and feelings of dirtiness, but negatively related to authentic pride. Approach-avoidance motivation operated in a direction contrary to hypothesized where it enhanced the negative effect on authentic pride and attenuated the positive effect on hubristic pride. Support for the proposed moderated mediation relationship on job search behaviors was not found. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.
Three essays on strategic digital initiatives in modern organizations

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-07-28) Siamionava, Katsiaryna

As companies embark on digital transformations, the role of information technology (IT) has evolved from backend operations to the forefront of digital strategy through mobile channels, digital customer engagement, and platform ecosystems. As they make this transition, modern organizations face three key strategic questions – how do they form effective IT/business partnerships, how do they merge traditional and emerging digital channels, and how do they leverage digital technology to engage better with customers? My dissertation focuses on these three vital questions. In my first essay, I show the importance of IT and business-focused conversations for the development of trust and shared understanding between IT and business leaders. In my second essay, I use data from a large US media company to explore how a new mobile channel interacts with and complements traditional channels and then assess its implications for customer engagement and retention. In my third and final essay, I analyze challenges related to the evaluation of customer-chatbot interaction using transfer learning for customer satisfaction prediction in the context of customer care chats.
Knowledge Sharing: The Spillover Effects of Process versus Outcome Accountability

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-07-13) Wu, Suyun

Whereas prior literature has examined how process and outcome accountability affect task performance, in this paper, I experimentally investigate the spillover effects of these accountability requirements on employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior. Because outcome accountability draws attention to task output, employees who produce higher output may be more confident in their performance and, therefore, are more willing to share task-specific knowledge. In contrast, process accountability focuses attention on exploring new task strategies, which may negatively affect short-term output. As a result, employees who engage more in exploration may produce lower output, yet these employees may be more confident in their performance and more willing to share knowledge. As predicted, experimental results show that employees with higher output are more willing to share their knowledge under outcome accountability but are less willing to share knowledge under process accountability. Mediation analysis confirms that employees’ confidence in performance underlies these results. The influences of knowledge sharing on the productivity of coworkers who receive the shared knowledge are also examined.
Trust versus Rewards: Revisiting Managerial Discretion in Incomplete Contracts

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-05-02) Hu, Wenqian

Incentive compensation is often characterized by incomplete contracts. While managerial opportunism has been documented as one of the most pronounced problems with managerial discretion in incomplete contracts, prior work has not investigated the underlying mechanisms driving a loss of productivity. In this study, I experimentally investigate whether replacing human managers’ decision making with algorithm-generated bonus schemes that mimic managers’ decision making improves employee productivity. I find that compensation determined by algorithms generate higher productivity without sacrificing the residual profits. Further, the productivity-inducing effect of algorithms is stronger when the rewards are not contingent on the performance signal. These results are consistent with the idea that it is hard for managers to establish credibility for rewarding employees for their performance in incomplete contracts. Employee productivity can be improved by enhancing their trust in the rewarding mechanism, even when they are not paid a more generous bonus scheme. This study advances our understanding of the behavioral factors influencing employee productivity in incomplete contracts and the potential ways algorithm-based evaluations can be used to improve firm outcomes.
ESSAYS ON FUNDING AND PATENTING IN THE INNOVATION PROCESS

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-01-14) Chhabra, Param Pal Singh

Inventors often translate their ideas into commercially viable new products through a sequential process called innovation value chain. First, I revisit the innovation value chain and study various innovation platforms, such as crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and hackathons, highlighting the roles and challenges of utilizing these platforms that create value by decoupling the different stages of the innovation value chain. Next, I delve deeper into reward-based crowdfunding, which provides a signal of future demand, and focus on an inventor's critical decision of reward-structure design, affecting the funding success of the product. To test the hypotheses, I collect data from Kickstarter, the US's preeminent reward-based crowdfunding platform. I find that a crowdfunding campaign's success improves with the number of rewards but at a diminishing rate. Finally, inventors seek patents for technical viability that undergo a patent examination for a long duration. I study the effect of longer patent pendency on the inventor's effort allocation to innovative and routine activities through a multi-period analytical model, where belief update about the expected patent pendency happens in a Bayesian framework. The analytical model's results motivate the hypotheses, and I test it using patent data published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The empirical tests show significant evidence that patent pendency negatively affects the future patenting activities of inventors.
Essays on International Finance: Stock Market Wealth Creation, Sovereign CDS Spreads, and Currency Comovement

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-08-11) Jang, Ernest S.

Using the wealth creation measure developed by Bessembinder (2018), we estimate stock market wealth creation around the world and show the importance of national culture in explaining wealth creation. The 88 stock markets in our sample create $76.6 trillion net wealth from 1973 to 2019, with the U.S. contributing the most (52.5%). Among industries, finance creates the most wealth (17.6%). We find that countries with individualistic, less masculine, and less uncertainty avoidant cultures have comparative advantages in stock market wealth creation. We also show that culture influences wealth creation through multiple channels, such as innovation, governance, information, education, and sustainability. In this paper, we first document that the degree of co-movement of currencies varies a great deal across different base (measurement) currencies. In estimating the co-movement, we use the average of R2s from regressions of exchange rate changes of each of our 27 floating-rate sample currencies against the base currency on the currency market factor. Over our sample period 1999–2018, the average R2 is found to range from 22.1% for the Singapore dollar to 71.8% for the South African rand, with the average of 51.5% across sample base currencies. This implies that the extent to which the currency risk is diversifiable critically depends on the investor’s home currency; for instance, the currency risk would be highly diversifiable for Singapore dollar-based investors but largely systematic for South African rand-based investors. Motivated by our novel currency clustering analysis utilizing a base-currency independent metric, we then set forth and provide strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that the idiosyncratic (connected) currencies influenced weakly (strongly) by the major global currencies, i.e., the U.S. dollar and the euro, face high (low) degrees of co-movements of other currencies This paper analyzes the impact of the Federal funds rate surprises on the sovereign CDS spreads of 83 countries by using 138 FOMC announcements from 2002 to 2018. We document that sovereign CDS spreads tend to increase on the day after the announcements of unexpected reduction in federal fund rates. On average, a hypothetical 100 basis point negative Federal funds target rate shock is associated with about seven basis points increase in sovereign CDS spreads on the day after the FOMC announcement. We also find that the impact of Federal funds rate shock on sovereign CDS spread varies depending on macroeconomic conditions. Specifically, the impact is more pronounced for countries with higher external debts, lower foreign reserves, higher proportions of primary commodities in their exports, heavier dependency on the U.S. economy, and lower exchange rate volatility against U.S. dollar. We also find that countries with higher than median CDS spread mainly drive these results. Our findings in this paper suggest that U.S. monetary policy shock is an important determinant of the sovereign credit spread.