Platform Search Design: The Roles of Precision and Price

Zemin (Zachary) Zhong
Zemin (Zachary) Zhong
[email protected]
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4374-6964
University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, ON M5S3E6, Canada
Search for more papers by this author

University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, ON M5S3E6, Canada

Search for more papers by this author

Published Online:27 May 2022https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.1370

References

Anderson SP, Renault R (1999) Pricing, product diversity, and search costs: A Bertrand-Chamberlin-Diamond model. RAND J. Econom. 30(4):719–735.Crossref, Google Scholar
Arbatskaya M (2007) Ordered search. RAND J. Econom. 38(1):119–126.Crossref, Google Scholar
Armstrong M (2006) Competition in two-sided markets. RAND J. Econom. 37(3):668–691.Crossref, Google Scholar
Armstrong M, Zhou J (2011) Paying for prominence. Econom. J. 121(556):F368–F395.Google Scholar
Armstrong M, Zhou J (2022) Consumer information and the limits to competition. Amer. Econom. Rev. 112(2):534–577.Crossref, Google Scholar
Armstrong M, Vickers J, Zhou J (2009) Prominence and consumer search. RAND J. Econom. 40(2):209–233.Crossref, Google Scholar
Bagnoli M, Bergstrom T (2005) Log-concave probability and its applications. Econom. Theory 26(2):445–469.Crossref, Google Scholar
Bar-Isaac H, Caruana G, Cuñat V (2012) Search, design, and market structure. Amer. Econom. Rev. 102(2):1140–1160.Crossref, Google Scholar
Chen Y, He C (2011) Paid placement: Advertising and search on the Internet. Econom. J. 121(556):F309–F328.Google Scholar
Chen Y, Iyer G (2002) Research note consumer addressability and customized pricing. Marketing Sci. 21(2):197–208.Link, Google Scholar
Chen Y, Yao S (2016) Sequential search with refinement: Model and application with click-stream data. Management Sci. 63(12):4345–4365.Link, Google Scholar
Chen Y, Narasimhan C, Zhang ZJ (2001) Individual marketing with imperfect targetability. Marketing Sci. 20(1):23–41.Link, Google Scholar
De Corniere A (2016) Search advertising. Amer. Econom. J. Microeconom. 8(3):156–188).Crossref, Google Scholar
Dewan R, Jing B, Seidmann A (2003) Product customization and price competition on the Internet. Management Sci. 49(8):1055–1070.Link, Google Scholar
Diamond PA (1971) A model of price adjustment. J. Econom. Theory 3(2):156–168.Crossref, Google Scholar
Dukes A, Liu L (2015) Online shopping intermediaries: The strategic design of search environments. Management Sci. 62(4):1064–1077.Link, Google Scholar
Edelman B, Ostrovsky M, Schwarz M (2007) Internet advertising and the generalized second-price auction: Selling billions of dollars worth of keywords. Amer. Econom. Rev. 97(1):242–259.Crossref, Google Scholar
Eliaz K, Spiegler R (2011) A simple model of search engine pricing. Econom. J. 121(556):F329–F339.Google Scholar
Ghose A, Ipeirotis PG, Li B (2014) Examining the impact of ranking on consumer behavior and search engine revenue. Management Sci. 60(7):1632–1654.Link, Google Scholar
Guo J, Cai Y, Fan Y, Guo J, Sun F, Zhang R, Cheng X (2022). Semantic models for the first-stage retrieval: A comprehensive review. ACM Trans. Inform. Systems (TOIS) 40(4):1–42.Google Scholar
Hagiu A, Jullien B (2011) Why do intermediaries divert search? RAND J. Econom. 42(2):337–362.Crossref, Google Scholar
Hagiu A, Jullien B (2014) Search diversion and platform competition. Internat. J. Indust. Organ. 33:48–60.Crossref, Google Scholar
Haldar M, Abdool M, Ramanathan P, Xu T, Yang S, Duan H, Zhang Q, et al. (2019) Applying deep learning to Airbnb search. Proc. 25th ACM SIGKDD Internat. Conf. Knowledge Discovery Data Mining (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 1927–1935.Google Scholar
Hu Y, Da Q, Zeng A, Yu Y, Xu Y (2018) Reinforcement learning to rank in e-commerce search engine: Formalization, analysis, and application. Proc. 24th ACM SIGKDD Internat. Conf. Knowledge Discovery Data Mining (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 368–377.Google Scholar
Jeuland AP, Shugan SM (1983) Managing channel profits. Marketing Sci. 2(3):239–272.Link, Google Scholar
Jullien B, Pavan A (2019) Information management and pricing in platform markets. Rev. Econom. Stud. 86(4):1666–1703.Crossref, Google Scholar
Karmaker Santu SK, Sondhi P, Zhai C (2017) On application of learning to rank for e-commerce search. Proc. 40th Internat. ACM SIGIR Conf. Res. Development Inform. Retrieval (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 475–484.Google Scholar
Katz ML (1989) Vertical contractual relations. Schmalensee R, Willig R, eds. Handbook of Industrial Organization (Elsevier), vol. 1, 655–721.Google Scholar
Kuksov D (2004) Buyer search costs and endogenous product design. Marketing Sci. 23(4):490–499.Link, Google Scholar
Li R, Jiang Y, Yang W, Tang G, Wang S, Ma C, He W, Xiong X, Xiao Y, Zhao EY (2019) From semantic retrieval to pairwise ranking: Applying deep learning in e-commerce search. Proc. 42nd Internat. ACM SIGIR Conf. Res. Development Inform. Retrieval (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 1383–1384.Google Scholar
Magnani A, Liu F, Xie M, Banerjee S (2019) Neural product retrieval at walmart.com. Companion Proc. 2019 World Wide Web Conf. (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 367–372.Google Scholar
McGuire TW, Staelin R (1983) An industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration. Marketing Sci. 2(2):161–191.Link, Google Scholar
Rochet J-C, Tirole J (2003) Platform competition in two-sided markets. J. Eur. Econom. Assoc. 1(4):990–1029.Crossref, Google Scholar
Rochet J-C, Tirole J (2006) Two-sided markets: A progress report. RAND J. Econom. 37(3):645–667.Crossref, Google Scholar
Rysman M (2009) The economics of two-sided markets. J. Econom. Perspect. 23(3):125–143.Crossref, Google Scholar
Sorokina D, Cantu-Paz E (2016) Amazon search: The joy of ranking products. Proc. 39th Internat. ACM SIGIR Conf. Res. Development Inform. Retrieval (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 459–460.Google Scholar
Sriram S, Manchanda P, Bravo ME, Chu J, Ma L, Song M, Shriver S, Subramanian U (2015) Platforms: A multiplicity of research opportunities. Marketing Lett. 26(2):141–152.Crossref, Google Scholar
Tsagkias M, King TH, Kallumadi S, Murdock V, de Rijke M (2020) Challenges and research opportunities in ecommerce search and recommendations. SIGIR Forum (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), vol. 54, 1–23.Google Scholar
Ursu RM (2018) The power of rankings: Quantifying the effects of rankings on online consumer search and choice. Marketing Sci. 37(4):530–552.Link, Google Scholar
Wolinsky A (1986) True monopolistic competition as a result of imperfect information. Quart. J. Econom. 101:493–511.Crossref, Google Scholar
Wu L, Hu D, Hong L, Liu H (2018) Turning clicks into purchases: Revenue optimization for product search in e-commerce. 41st Internat. ACM SIGIR Conf. Res. Development Inform. Retrieval (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 365–374.Google Scholar
Yang H (2013) Targeted search and the long tail effect. RAND J. Econom. 44(4):733–756.Crossref, Google Scholar
Zhang H, Wang S, Zhang K, Tang Z, Jiang Y, Xiao Y, Yan W, Yang W-Y (2020) Toward personalized and semantic retrieval: An end-to-end solution for e-commerce search via embedding learning. Proc. 43rd Internat. ACM SIGIR Conf. Res. Development Inform. Retrieval (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 2407–2416.Google Scholar

Volume 42, Issue 2

March-April 2023

Pages 213-427, iii

Article Information

Supplemental Material

Metrics

Information

Received:September 21, 2018
Accepted:April 14, 2022
Published Online:May 27, 2022

Cite as

Zemin (Zachary) Zhong (2022) Platform Search Design: The Roles of Precision and Price. Marketing Science 42(2):293-313.

https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.1370

Keywords

Acknowledgments

This paper, previously titled “Targeted Search and Platform Design,” is based on the author’s dissertation for his PhD in business administration at the University of California, Berkeley. The author dedicates the paper to the memory of John Morgan, the co-chair of his dissertation committee, who was a constant inspiration throughout the author’s years of graduate school. He is indebted to his other dissertation committee members, Ganesh Iyer (co-chair), Zsolt Katona, and Ben Handel. The author thanks the senior editor, associate editor, two anonymous reviewers, Yuichiro Kamada, Steve Tadelis, Przemyslaw Jeziorski, and Heski Bar-Isaac for their comments, as well as seminar participants at the University of Florida, University of Texas, Dallas, University of Minnesota, University of Rochester, University of Toronto, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, Northwestern University, New York University, Shanghai, the 2016 NET Institute Conference, and the 2017 Marketing Science conference for helpful suggestions. All errors are the author’s own.

PDF download

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Available Issues

Platform Search Design: The Roles of Precision and Price

References

Volume 42, Issue 2

Article Information

Supplemental Material

Metrics

Information

Cite as

Keywords

Sign Up for INFORMS Publications Updates and News