Traditional Marketing, Online Communication and Market Outcomes Essay 1: Marketing Activity, Blogging and Sales Essay 2: Consumers' Social Learning about Videogame Consoles through Multi-Website Browsing Essay 3: Co-Evolution of Network Growth and Group F

Abstract

The scope of my dissertation is to understand how consumers’ online communication affects consumers’ behavior and market outcomes. The recent growth of consumer generated media (CGM), also known as “new” media, has provided consumers easier interaction, both to search for product information and to obtain evaluations and opinions from peers. This dissertation addresses two key issues (a) Does the new media affect consumer behavior and market outcomes? (b) Is there any relationship between traditional marketing activity and new media? In the first essay, we assemble a unique data set from Japan containing market outcomes (sales), new media (blogs) and traditional media (TV ads) for three product categories. We specify a simultaneous equation log-log system for market outcomes and the blogging volume. Results suggest that blogs are predictive of market outcomes, traditional and new media have a synergistic effect, and pre-launch TV ads lead blogging activity but become less effective in inducing blogging activity post-launch. A novel text mining analysis provides “process” explanation for these results. In the second essay, we examine the micro-level correlation between traditional media (TV ads and public relations) and consumers’ social learning about new videogame consoles (Wii and PS3). We propose consumers’ learning processes via perusal of information in online communities by using “pageview” data of multiple websites from a clickstream panel as indicators. We propose a bivariate Bayesian learning model combined with complementary purchase choices. Results show that companies’ traditional media have positive impact on social learning. This suggests that by optimizing marketing actions, firms can enhance consumers’ learning and promote higher engagement of the products. In the third essay, we investigate whether the introduction of a “group” function in a social networking website changes the engagement level of current website users. We expect that the "stickiness" effect of the group function motivates group members to increase networking activity (numbers of visits, connections and messages). In addition, group growth may contribute to enlarging the entire network and vice versa (“co-evolution” effect). We use data from a professional job-search social network website and find that introducing the group function can promote both stickiness and co-evolution effects.