Marketplace Dynamics Research Articles

Detect Your Fingerprint in Your Photographs: Photography-based Multi-Feature Sybil Detection

A darknet market is an online marketplace typically implemented over Tor, where vendors sell illegal products or criminal services. Due to dramatic growth in the popularity of such markets, there is a recognized need for automatic investigation of the market’s ecosystem and identification of anonymous vendors. However, as they often create multiple accounts (or Sybil accounts) within or across different marketplaces, detecting Sybil accounts becomes the key to understanding the ecosystem of darknet markets and identifying the actual relationship between the vendors. This study presents a novel Sybil detection method that extracts multiple features of vendors from photographs in a fine-grained level (e.g., image similarity, main category, subcategory, and text data), and reveals the multiple Sybil accounts of them simultaneously. Each feature is extracted from multiple rich sources using an image hash algorithm, Deep Neural Network (DNN) classifier, image restoration, and text recognition tool; and merged using a weighted feature embedding model. The matching score of each vendor is then calculated to identify not only the exact Sybil accounts, but multiple potential accounts suspected of being associated to a single operator. We evaluate the efficacy of our method using real-world datasets from four large darknet markets (i.e., SilkRoad2, Agora, Evolution, Alphabay) from 2014 to 2015. Because of the anonymity of darknet market, we construct the ground-truth of Sybil accounts by randomly splitting the dataset of vendors into two even parts. We used the first set to train the model, and linked the second set to the original vendor in the first set to evaluate performance. Our experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method outperforms the existing photography-based system with an accuracy of 98%, identifying up to 700% more candidate Sybil accounts than prior work. Additionally, our method detects multiple Sybil accounts for 90% of evaluated test cases, presenting a very different picture of darknet marketplace dynamics than methods that can only detect a single Sybil account for each target vendor. Due to its fine-grained multiple feature extraction from photographs, our method can be more generically applied to various darknet markets for Sybil detection regardless of their languages or categories of items.

Market positioning in food industry in response to public health policies

Public health agencies have designed and implemented interventions to control the global obesity epidemic using healthfulness messaging and policy changes such as taxation. These changes in the policy environment and marketplace dynamics have shifted consumer trends and have challenged food producers in the industry. The following questions are considered in the food industry in such a context: (i) Should firms offer similar or very different quality offerings? (ii) How should a firm's positioning strategies change as consumers' perceptions of healthful messaging and taxation change? and (iii) How do these factors impact firm profits and social welfare (SW)? Using an analytical model of duopolistic competition, we highlight that both firm profits as well as SW could increase when the importance of healthfulness messaging to consumers increases. Furthermore, we show that increased taxation could reduce the quality gap between alternatives in the market, forcing firms to lower prices. In contrast, when healthfulness messaging becomes more important to consumers, the quality gap between both firms increases. Our results provide important implications for public policy as well as firm profits as a consequence of the strategic decisions of firms in a health policy context.

Dysplacement and the Professionalization of the Home

AbstractThis research directs our attention to the dynamics surrounding the changing cultural understanding of the place we call home. Traditionally, the home is regarded as a place of singularization that is to be aligned with the homeowner’s unique identity. This traditional meaning has come to be confronted with a contradictory understanding of the home as a marketplace asset. Homeowners come to experience a market-reflected gaze that shuns singularization while driving homeowners to exhibit expertise in aligning their homes with marketplace standards. Professionalization of the home, through marketplace expertise and standardization, discourages personalization, leading to an experience of disorientation with the place of home. In this ethnography of the home renovation marketplace, we build on the concept of ‘dysplacement’ whereby this contradictory cultural understanding of the home disrupts the homeowner’s ability to achieve implacement. The concept of dysplacement and the corresponding place disorientation experience has the potential to enrich our theoretical understanding of place by integrating the cultural meaning of place as a domain with marketplace dynamics and individual consumer practices surrounding place.

Virtual Marketplace Dynamics Data, Spatial Analytics, and Customer Engagement Tools in a Real-Time Interoperable Decentralized Metaverse

Virtual Marketplace Dynamics Data, Spatial Analytics, and Customer Engagement Tools in a Real-Time Interoperable Decentralized Metaverse

Biometric Sensor Technologies, Virtual Marketplace Dynamics Data, and Computer Vision and Deep Learning Algorithms in the Metaverse Interactive Environment

Biometric Sensor Technologies, Virtual Marketplace Dynamics Data, and Computer Vision and Deep Learning Algorithms in the Metaverse Interactive Environment

Deep Learning Computer Vision Algorithms, Customer Engagement Tools, and Virtual Marketplace Dynamics Data in the Metaverse Economy

Deep Learning Computer Vision Algorithms, Customer Engagement Tools, and Virtual Marketplace Dynamics Data in the Metaverse Economy

Human Possibilities in Bridging to the Prevalent Market Dynamics of the New Normal

Although unwelcome, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have and will become a core predictor of marketplace dynamics and consumer behavior. But with the prevailing coronavirus preventive measures like lockdowns, travel restrictions, movement controls, and social distancing among others are all new to humanity. In fact, the pandemic and its propagated preventive measures have culminated in market scarcities, trade restrictions, joblessness, reduced consumer purchasing power, and unprecedented price escalations. To adapt to the above precarious environment of the new normal, consumers should carryout significant information search to make rational choices so as to spend wisely during the spiraling global price indices. Humanity ought to willingly lessen on their demand for luxuries, social events, along with holiday travels or adopt e-tourism fantasies for now. It’s additionally suggested that payroll tax cuts and increase government spending on health strategies will reduce out-of-pocket expenditure and boost citizens’ demand for the much-needed health insurance products in the new normal. Lastly, provision of reliable internet infrastructure will enhance online exchange of value to curb scarcity tendencies of the new era.

Multi-layered market forecast framework for hotel revenue management by continuously learning market dynamics

With the rising wave of travelers and changing market landscape, understanding marketplace dynamics in commoditized accommodations in the hotel industry has never been more important. In this research, a machine learning approach is applied to build a framework that can forecast the unconstrained and constrained market demand (aggregated and segmented) by leveraging data from disparate sources. Several machine learning algorithms are explored to learn traveler’s booking patterns and the latent progression of the booking curve. This solution can be leveraged by independent hoteliers in their revenue management strategy by comparing their behavior to the market.

Operationalizing Critical Race Theory in the Marketplace

Race is integral to the functioning and ideological underpinnings of marketplace actions yet remains undertheorized in marketing. To understand and transform the insidious ways in which race operates, the authors examine its impact in marketplaces and how these effects are shaped by intersecting forms of systemic oppression. They introduce critical race theory (CRT) to the marketing community as a useful framework for understanding consumers, consumption, and contemporary marketplaces. They outline critical theory traditions as utilized in marketing and specify the particular role of CRT as a lens through which scholars can understand marketplace dynamics. The authors delineate key CRT tenets and how they may shape the way scholars conduct research, teach, and influence practice in the marketing discipline. To clearly highlight CRT’s overall potential as a robust analytical tool in marketplace studies, the authors elaborate on the application of artificial intelligence to consumption markets. This analysis demonstrates how CRT can support an enhanced understanding of the role of race in markets and lead to a more equitable version of the marketplace than what currently exists. Beyond mere procedural modifications, applying CRT to marketplace studies mandates a paradigm shift in how marketplace equity is understood and practiced.

Here’s something I prepared earlier: a review of the time to publication of cross-sectional reviews of smartphone health apps

ObjectivesAcross a range of health conditions, apps are increasingly valued as tools for supporting the delivery and coordination of healthcare. Research-led cross-sectional reviews of apps are a potential resource to...

Application of Marketing 4.0 Principles By the Indian Mutual Fund Industry

The competitive Indian Mutual Fund Industry requires the use of Marketing 4.0 principles owing to changing marketplace dynamics and increased competition. Traditional advertising forms got saturated with mutual funds, and the new redefined marketing principles reinforced the need to move to digital media. The recent addition of the fifth A (Advocacy) to the marketing jargon became necessary because of the increased connectedness and social nature of the customers (investors). The O-Zone factor increasingly influences investor decision making and helps in driving loyal investors from Aware to Advocate. This article discusses the social media marketing of Indian Asset Management Companies (AMCs). Improving brand curiosity and extending product reach to prospective clients are some potential advantages of the activity. Engagement marketing practices, marketing expense impact, four C's marketing mix, and online customer care are some new marketing principles. AMCs can use these to build better marketing campaigns for building investor-centric financial products. Different dimensions of social media usage are specified, and their utilization by various Indian mutual fund houses is measured. This understanding can help in better marketing of financial products and services, particularly that of mutual funds.

Measurement framework for assessing disruptive innovations

Assessing potential disruptiveness of innovations is an important but challenging task for incumbents. However, the extant literature focuses only on technological and marketplace aspects, and most of the documented methods tend to be case specific. In this study, we present a multidimensional measurement framework to assess the disruptive potential of product innovations. The framework is designed based on the concept that the nature of disruptive innovations is multidimensional. Three aspects are considered, i.e., technological features, marketplace dynamics and external environment. Ten indicators of the three categories are proposed and then connected based on the conceptual and literature analysis. Three innovations, namely, WeChat (successful), Modularised Mobile Phone (failed) and Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (ongoing), are selected as case studies. A panel of industrial experts with PhD degree in engineering is surveyed. The survey results are calculated and analysed according to the framework and then compared against the developments of the innovations. We also check the robustness of this framework by surveying other groups of people, and the results are nearly identical to the previous findings. This study enables a systematic assessment of disruptive potential of innovations using the framework, providing insights for decisions in product launch and resource allocation.

How Do Marketplaces Compete? The View From Stripe Connect

Do online marketplaces compete mainly on product quality like traditional businesses? Or do network effects yield winner-take-all outcomes to early entrants even if their product quality is low? To explore this question we analyze a new sample of 212 online marketplaces over their first two years on Stripe. We find that winning marketplaces exhibit large quality advantages from their very first months, and these quality advantages focus on sellers rather than buyers. First-mover advantage does emerge, but not in a form implying winner-take-all. Other marketplace growth dynamics also lack winner-take-all properties. Typical marketplaces in our sample appear to compete on product quality against persistent rivals, much like traditional businesses without substantial network effects.

An analysis of the disruptive impact of the entry of Free Mobile into the French mobile telecommunications market

The issue of disruptive operators has recently gained interest among researchers and regulators. From a regulator's perspective, disruptive operators can increase competitive rivalry in markets dominated by a handful of large companies, thereby allowing consumers to obtain more benefits in terms of price and quality. Largely overlooked in this discussion has been the impact that the specific identity, complementary assets of operators, and their strategies have on the marketplace dynamics. In this paper we explore the impact that one such operator – Free Mobile – has had on the French mobile telecommunications market. Drawing on a wide range of secondary sources, our analysis finds that the entry and subsequent growth of Free Mobile has had a complex and multi-faceted impact on the market. Their growth has been at the expense of the other three mobile network operators active in the French market, while their innovative business model, which enables it to compete on the basis of low costs, has been copied by its rivals. The specific characteristics of Free Mobile and of its strategy have contributed to a significantly alteration to how competition occurs in this market. This, in turn, triggers a strong incentive for restructuring, which is actually restrained by regulatory concerns.

Three years in \u2013 changing plan features in the U.S. health insurance marketplace

BackgroundA central objective of recent U.S. healthcare policy reform, most notably the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Health Insurance Marketplace, has been to increase access to stable, affordable health insurance. However, changing market dynamics (rising premiums, changes in issuer participation and plan availability) raise significant concerns about the marketplaces’ ability to provide a stable source of healthcare for Americans that rely on them. By looking at the effect of instability on changes in the consumer choice set, we can analyze potential incentives to switch plans among price-sensitive enrollees, which can then be used to inform policy going forward.MethodsData on health plan features for non-tobacco users in 2512 counties in 34 states participating in federally-facilitated exchanges from 2014 to 2016 was obtained from the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services. We examined how changes in individual plan features, including premiums, deductibles, issuers, and plan types, impact consumers who had purchased the lowest-cost silver or bronze plan in their county the previous year. We calculated the cost of staying in the same plan versus switching to another plan the following year, and analyzed how costs vary across geographic regions.ResultsIn most counties in 2015 and 2016 (53.7 and 68.2%, respectively), the lowest-cost silver plan from the previous year was still available, but was no longer the cheapest plan. In these counties, consumers who switched to the new lowest-cost plan would pay less in monthly premiums on average, by $51.48 and $55.01, respectively, compared to staying in the same plan. Despite potential premium savings from switching, however, the majority would still pay higher average premiums compared to the previous year, and most would face higher deductibles and an increased probability of having to change provider networks.ConclusionWhile the ACA has shown promise in expanding healthcare access, continued changes in the availability and affordability of health plans are likely to result in churning and switching among enrollees, which may have negative ramifications for their health going forward. Future healthcare policy reform should aim to stabilize marketplace dynamics in order to encourage greater care continuity and limit churning.

Two paths to organizational effectiveness – Product advantage and life-cycle flexibility

Successful organizations develop marketplace advantages over rivals. To do so, many companies strive to develop processes and routines that allow them to regularly develop innovative offerings. However, due to marketplace dynamics, product advantage is often fleeting. To cope, some organizations concentrate on developing an ability to quickly modify existing products in response to marketplace changes (i.e., life-cycle flexibility). Both new product development (NPD) and product adaptation provide ways in which organizations can deliver value to consumers. However, research suggests that they may require different sets of resources. As a result, managers are faced with a formidable task—how to use their limited resources to develop new market offerings and to adapt existing ones to changing environments. We propose that an organization's NPD capability provides a mechanism by which firms can improve both product advantage and life-cycle flexibility. To examine this thesis, we develop and test a model, using data from over 180 hotels, that hypothesizes two routes by which an organization's NPD capability enables it to improve organizational effectiveness, i.e., by improving its product advantage and its life-cycle flexibility. The findings provide support for the hypothesized role of NPD capability.

Understanding workers, developing effective tasks, and enhancing marketplace dynamics

We conduct an experimental analysis of a dataset comprising over 27 million microtasks performed by over 70,000 workers issued to a large crowdsourcing marketplace between 2012--2016. Using this data---never before analyzed in an academic context---we shed light on three crucial aspects of crowdsourcing: (1) Task design---helping requesters understand what constitutes an effective task, and how to go about designing one; (2) Marketplace dynamics --- helping marketplace administrators and designers understand the interaction between tasks and workers, and the corresponding marketplace load; and (3) Worker behavior --- understanding worker attention spans, lifetimes, and general behavior, for the improvement of the crowdsourcing ecosystem as a whole.

Academic Medical Centers and Community Hospitals Integration: Trends and Strategies

Academic medical centers are widely recognized as vital components of the American health care system, generally differentiated from their community hospital peers by their tripartite mission of clinical care, education, and research. Community hospitals fill a critical and complementary role, serving as the primary sites for health care in most communities. Health care reform initiatives and economic pressures have created incentives for hospitals and health systems to integrate, resulting in a nationwide trend toward consolidation with academic medical centers leveraging their substantial assets to merge, acquire, or establish partnerships with their community peers. As these alliances accelerate, they have and will continue to affect the radiology groups providing services at these institutions. A deeper understanding of these new marketplace dynamics, changing relationships and potential strategies will help both academic and private practice radiologists adapt to this ongoing change.

Brand selfies: consumer experiences and marketplace conversations

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the brand selfie phenomenon on two different levels. On the level of consumer brand experiences, the focus is on how brand selfie practices add new features to brand experiences and consumer–brand relationships. On the level of marketplace brand image, the authors explore how consumers contribute to marketplace conversations by posting brand selfies in social media and how this practice shapes and changes brand image. Design/methodology/approach The researchers conducted an extensive search on different social media platforms to collect various types of brand selfies. The authors approach brand selfies as rich visual texts and their analysis comprises four key steps: descriptive analysis, response analysis, formal analysis and polytextual thematic analysis. Findings On the level of consumer brand experiences, the findings illuminate how different types of brand selfies extend the brand experience in space and time and transfer it into the hybrid space of the consumer-defined social networks. On the level of marketplace brand image, it is illustrated how brand selfies contribute to the process of co-creating brand meaning in the social media. Originality/value The study proposes a typology of brand selfie assemblages showing how consumers contribute to the visual production and consumption of brand meanings. The brand selfie is a unique material and expressive reality enabling us to theorise new perspectives on how consumers consume brands and how aggregates of brand selfie production and dissemination affect marketplace dynamics.

A Mixed Blessing

This research explores how marketplace dynamics affect religious authority in the context of Neopagan religion. Drawing on an interpretivist study of Wiccan practitioners in Italy, we reveal that engagement with the market may cause considerable, ongoing tensions, based on the inherent contradictions that are perceived to exist between spirituality and commercial gain. As a result, market success is a mixed blessing that can increase religious authority and influence, but is just as likely to decrease authority and credibility. Using an extended case study method, we propose a theoretical framework that depicts the links between our informants’ situated experiences and the macro-level factors affecting religious authority as it interacts with market-mediated dynamics at the global level. Overall, our study extends previous work in macromarketing that has looked at religious authority in the marketplace) and how the processes of globalization are affecting religion.