Virtual Quant Marketing Seminar - Malika Korganbekova
Marketplace Competition: The Role of Amazon Private Labels in Third-Party Seller Dynamics
Dear All,
Our next Virtual Quant Marketing Seminar for the semester is on Monday, March 10 at Noon ET. The speaker will be Malika Korganbekova (Chicago Booth).
The zoom link for all the talks is below, note that this is a new link: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/93394346729?pwd=SoVXVesbltpYbQxo9tbbPF6YgopDl3.1
Title: Marketplace Competition: The Role of Amazon Private Labels in Third-Party Seller Dynamics
Abstract: Amazon is alleged to replicate third-party seller products to guide the introduction of its private label offerings. In this paper, we empirically quantify the extent of potential imitation and study the impact of Amazon Private Label products on third-party sellers’ sales outcomes and entry and innovation incentives. First, we develop and train Deep Learning models on scraped 350 million products on amazon.com to create visual and textual similarity measures between Amazon’s private label products and those of third-party sellers. Our analysis confirms that Amazon’s private label products often closely resemble those of third-party sellers. Next, we use these similarity measures to conduct a quasi-experimental, matching-based analysis to assess the impact of Amazon’s entry on third-party sellers’ sales performance and innovation outcomes. We show that Amazon’s entry leads to significantly lower sales ranks and higher product discontinuation rates for the imitated products. Moreover, in certain product categories sellers’ innovation incentives, e.g., patented products, significantly decrease after Amazon entry. This work speaks towards the necessity of the data use regulation in certain product markets. Our results contribute to an ongoing discussion regarding competition in digital markets.
The schedule for the rest of the semester is:
Monday, March 24, Noon ET - Soheil Ghili (Yale)
Monday, April 7, Noon ET - Jacob Conway (Chicago Booth)
Monday, April 28, Noon ET - Srinivas Tunuguntla (Duke)
Monday, May 5, Noon ET - Ananya Sen (CMU)
Monday, May 12, Noon ET - Minkyung Kim (CMU)
We encourage you to use our google calendar to keep track of the talks.