Stuck Online: When Online Engagement Gets in the Way of Offline Sales

MIS Quarterly ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 755-788
Author(s):  
Sagit Bar-Gill ◽  
Shachar Reichman
Keyword(s):  
Product Information ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Information Provision ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Website Design ◽  
Online Engagement ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Sales Funnel ◽  
High Engagement

In recent years, billions of dollars have been spent by both online and offline retailers on website design aimed at increasing consumers’ online engagement. We study the relationship between online engagement and offline sales, utilizing a quasi-experimental setting in which a leading premium automobile brand gradually launched a new interactive website across markets, allowing for a treatment-control comparison. This paper offers evidence of a causal effect of online engagement on offline sales, with the high-engagement website leading to a decline of approximately 12% in car sales. This negative effect is due to substitution between online and offline engagement; users of the high-engagement website exhibited a decreased tendency to seek out personal contact with a car dealer and proceed to offline engagement—a necessary stage in the car purchase funnel. We develop an analytical model of the online-to-offline sales funnel to generalize our findings and highlight the conditions under which online engagement substitutes for offline engagement and potentially decreases offline sales. Taken together, our findings suggest that while online engagement serves as a means for both product information provision and consumer persuasion, it may fall short in achieving the latter goal, as compared to the offline channel. For purely offline products, hands-on engagement is a necessary step toward purchase. Thus, increasing consumers’ online engagement may not be an optimal strategy if it has the potential to halt progression down the sales funnel and reduce offline engagement.

scholarly journals Identifying the Effects of Bank Failures from a Natural Experiment in Mississippi during the Great Depression

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas L Ziebarth
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Bank Failures ◽  
Liquidity Provision ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Plant Level ◽  
Physical Output ◽  
Large Decline

I examine the causal effect of bank failures during the Great Depression using the quasi-experimental setup of Richardson and Troost (2009). The experiment is based on Mississippi being divided into two Federal Reserve districts, which followed different policies for liquidity provision. This translated into variation in bank failures across the state. Employing a plant-level sample from the Census of Manufactures, I find that banking failures had a negative effect on revenue stemming from a fall in physical output. I find no effect on employment at the plant-level and a large decline at the county-level. (JEL E32, E44, G21, G33, N12, N22, N92)

The effects of social housing regeneration schemes on employment: The case of the Glasgow Stock Transfer

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110470
Author(s):  
Meng Le Zhang ◽  
George Galster ◽  
David Manley ◽  
Gwilym Pryce
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Social Housing ◽  
Housing Stock ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Housing Association ◽  
City Council ◽  
Heterogeneous Effects ◽  
Employment Multiplier ◽  
Capital Spending ◽  
Quasi Experimental

Regeneration is an internationally popular policy for improving distressed neighbourhoods dominated by large social housing developments. Stimulating employment is often touted as a secondary benefit, but this claim has rarely been evaluated convincingly. In 2003, Glasgow City Council transferred ownership of its entire social housing stock to the Glasgow Housing Association and over £4 billion was invested in physical repairs, social services and other regeneration activities. Using a linked census database of individuals (Scottish Longitudinal Study), we evaluate the causal effect of the Stock Transfer on employment in Glasgow through a quasi-experimental design that exploits idiosyncrasies and changes in Glasgow’s administrative boundaries. We find that the Stock Transfer had a positive effect on employment for Glasgow residents who were not living in transferred social housing stock. We establish that this effect was mainly accomplished through the local employment multiplier effect of capital spending rather than through any other programmatic elements of the Stock Transfer. Exploratory analysis shows heterogeneous effects: individuals who were over 21, female, living with dependent children and with less education were less likely to benefit from the intervention. We did not find significant subgroup effects by neighbourhood deprivation.

The Impact of Principal Attrition and Replacement on Indicators of School Quality

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Marcus A. Winters ◽  
Brian Kisida ◽  
Ikhee Cho
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
New Principal ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Leadership Transitions ◽  
Principal Attrition ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Transitions to a new principal are common, especially within urban public schools, and potentially highly disruptive to a school's culture and operations. We use longitudinal data from New York City to investigate if the effect of principal transitions differs by whether the incoming principal was hired externally or promoted from within the school. We take advantage of variation in the timing of principal transitions within an event-study approach to estimate the causal effect of principal changes. Changing principals has an immediate negative effect on student test scores that is sustained over several years regardless of whether hired internally or externally. However, externally hired principals lead to an increase in teacher turnover and a decline in perceptions of the school's learning environment, whereas transitions to an internally promoted principal have no such effects. This pattern of results raises important questions about leadership transitions and the nature of principal effects on school quality.

scholarly journals Fooled by Performance Randomness: Overrewarding Luck

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 658-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Romain Gauriot ◽  
Lionel Page
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effect ◽  
Experimental Situation ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
High Quality ◽  
High Quality Data ◽  
Economic Organizations ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Similar Location ◽  
Do So

We provide evidence of a violation of the informativeness principle whereby lucky successes are overly rewarded. We isolate a quasi-experimental situation where the success of an agent is as good as random. To do so, we use high-quality data on football (soccer) matches and select shots on goal that landed on the goal posts. Using nonscoring shots, taken from a similar location on the pitch, as counterfactuals to scoring shots, we estimate the causal effect of a lucky success (goal) on the evaluation of the player's performance. We find clear evidence that luck is overly influencing managers' decisions and evaluators' ratings. Our results suggest that this phenomenon is likely to be widespread in economic organizations.

Online information retrieval behaviour and economics of attention

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 779-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafa Utku Özmen
Keyword(s):  
Information Retrieval ◽  
Information Provision ◽  
General Information ◽  
Survival Duration ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Information Providers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse users’ attitudes towards online information retrieval and processing. The aim is to identify the characteristics of information that better capture the attention of the users and to provide evidence for the information retrieval behaviour of the users by studying online photo archives as information units. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyses a unique quasi-experimental data of photo archive access counts collected by the author from an online newspaper. In addition to access counts of each photo in 500 randomly chosen photo galleries, characteristics of the photo galleries are also recorded. Survival (duration) analysis is used in order to analyse the factors affecting the share of the photo gallery viewed by a certain proportion of the initial number of viewers. Findings – The results of the survival analysis indicate that users are impatient in case of longer photo galleries; they lose attention faster and stop viewing earlier when gallery length is uncertain; they are attracted by keywords and initial presentation and they give more credit to specific rather than general information categories. Practical implications – Results of the study offer applicable implications for information providers, especially on the online domain. In order to attract more attention, entities can engage in targeted information provision by taking into account people’s attitude towards information retrieval and processing as presented in this paper. Originality/value – This paper uses a unique data set in a quasi-experimental setting in order to identify the characteristics of online information that users are attracted to.

scholarly journals What explains the negative effect of unemployment on health? An analysis accounting for reverse causality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Krug ◽  
Andreas Eberl
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effect ◽  
Health Effect ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Dynamic Panel Data ◽  
Reverse Causality ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Loss Of Self ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Perceived Social Status ◽  
The Unemployed

The unemployed are often in poorer health than their employed counterparts. This cross-sectional correlation is often attributed to a causal effect of unemployment on health. Resent research analyzing longitudinal data, however, often supports alternative explanations, such as spurious correlation and/or selection of unhealthy workers into unemployment (i.e., reverse causality). In this paper, we apply a dynamic panel data estimator (system GMM) to account for both unobserved confounders and reverse causality. Despite some evidence for health selection, we still find strong support for the causality thesis. Furthermore, we show that the adverse health effect is partially explained by the loss of self-perceived social status due to unemployment but not by the loss of household income or social contacts.

scholarly journals Increasing the Willingness to Participate in Organ Donation Through Humorous Health Communication: (Quasi-)Experimental Evidence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Betsch ◽  
Nora Katharina Küpke ◽  
Leonie Otten ◽  
Eckart von Hirschhausen
Keyword(s):  
Health Communication ◽  
Organ Donation ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Entertainment Education ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Neutral Information ◽  
Willingness To Donate ◽  
Quasi Experimental

Increasing people’s willingness to donate organs after their death requires effective communication strategies. In two preregistered studies, we assessed whether humorous entertainment education formats on organ donation elicit positive effects on knowledge, fears, attitudes, and behavioral intentions – both immediately after the treatment and four weeks later. We test whether perceived funniness mediates expected effects on attitudes and intentions. Study 1 is a quasi-experiment which uses a live medical comedy show (N = 3,964) as an entertainment education format, which either contained or did not contain information about organ donation. Study 2, a lab experiment, tests humor’s causal effect in a pre-post design with a control group (N = 144) in which the same content was provided in either a humorous or non-humorous way in an audio podcast. Results showed that humorous interventions per se were not more effective than neutral information, but that informing people about organ donation in general increased donation intentions, attitudes, and knowledge. However, humorous interventions were especially effective in reducing fears related to organ donation. The findings are discussed regarding the opportunities for sensitive health communication through entertainment education formats, psychological processes that humor triggers, and humor’s role in health communication formats.

Influence of the perceived benefit of a social network-based sales promotion on the perceived quality of a heritage complex

2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esmeralda Crespo-Almendros ◽  
M. Belén Prados-Peña ◽  
Lucia Porcu ◽  
Juan Miguel Alcántara-Pilar
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Perceived Quality ◽  
Sales Promotion ◽  
Sales Promotions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
The Impact

Purpose This study seeks to analyze the influence of the consumer's perceived benefits deriving from two different promotional incentives offered via social media on the perceived quality of the heritage complex.Design/methodology/approach A quasi-experimental study was carried out among online users, implementing two different promotional stimuli. Facebook was selected as the social network through which the promotional incentives were offered in the experiment. The sample was obtained via a panel of Internet users provided by Sondea Internet SL.Findings The results showed that the benefits perceived by the tourists will depend on the sales promotion type offered. On the one hand, free VIP pass was found to be mostly related to hedonic benefits that positively affect perceived quality. On the other hand, 2 × 1 offer would be perceived as a utilitarian benefit and is likely to exert a fairly negative effect on perceived quality.Practical implications Tourism managers and practitioners are encouraged to analyze the characteristics of certain types of sales promotions, as each promotional incentive bears different values and associated benefits. The findings of this study suggest managers and practitioners to implement non-monetary promotions to enhance brand equity and perceived quality. Thus, it is paramount for the managers of cultural institutions and heritage sites to trust in sales promotions which can be very helpful if they are designed carefully.Originality/value This study pioneers the analysis of the impact of the benefits associated with different typologies of sales promotions on social networks on the perceived quality of a heritage site.

scholarly journals The Effect of the Intelligent Sepsis Management System on Outcomes among Patients with Sepsis and Septic Shock Diagnosed According to the Sepsis-3 Definition in the Emergency Department

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 1800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhyun Song ◽  
Hanjin Cho ◽  
Dae Won Park ◽  
Sejoong Ahn ◽  
Joo Yeong Kim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Department ◽  
Septic Shock ◽  
Management System ◽  
Protective Factor ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Surviving Sepsis Campaign ◽  
Sepsis Management ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Sepsis And Septic Shock ◽  
Post Period

We developed a novel computer program, the Intelligent Sepsis Management System, based on Sepsis-3 definitions and 2016 Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines and performed a quasi-experimental pre-post study to assess its effect on compliance with the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines and outcomes in patients with sepsis and septic shock. During the pre-period, patients were managed with usual care. During the post-period, patients were managed using the Intelligent Sepsis Management System upon arrival at the emergency department. A total of 631 patients were enrolled (pre-period, 316; post-period, 315). The overall compliance with the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines’ bundle improved (pre-period 10.8% vs. post-period 54.6%; p < 0.001). The post-period showed significantly lower 30-day mortality than the pre-period (pre-period 37.3% vs. post-period 29.5%; p = 0.037), but was not a protective factor for 30-day mortality, with an adjusted hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) of 0.75 (0.55–1.04) (p = 0.151). The associated factors for 30-day mortality were age, sequential organ failure assessment score, overall compliance, and lactate levels. The 30-day mortality was significantly lower in the compliance group than in the non-compliance group (27.2% vs. 36.5%; p = 0.002). After implementation of the Intelligent Sepsis Management System, overall compliance with the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines improved and was associated with reduced 30-day mortality. However, we could not verify the causal effect of this system on 30-day mortality.

scholarly journals Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irma Clots-Figueras
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Data ◽  
Female Leaders ◽  
Educational Levels ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Unique Dataset

This paper shows that the gender of politicians affects the educational levels of individuals who grow up in the districts where these politicians are elected. A unique dataset collected on politicians in India is matched with individual data by cohort and district of residence. The political data allow the identification of close elections between women and men, which yield quasi-experimental election outcomes used to estimate the causal effect of the gender of politicians. Increasing female political representation increases the probability that an individual will attain primary education in urban areas, but not in rural areas, and not in the sample as a whole. (JEL D72, I20, J16, 015, 017)

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