Presents a dynamic, multi-stage framework that reconceptualizes privacy as an evolving customer experience, not a one-time data disclosure or breach event, to help firms anticipate customer responses, tailor interventions, and maintain trust over time.
What happens when governments regulate how platforms recommend products? A new study examining Amazon's compliance with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority rule—banning the use of Prime eligibility to determine “Featured Offers”—finds both gains and trade-offs. While the regulation did reduce self-preferencing and boosted price competition, it also led to fewer consumer purchases and lower product ratings, especially in niche markets.
Member Only AccessProhibiting self-preferencing by an online retailer’s recommendation algorithm aims to protect consumers but may have unintended consequences depending on how sellers and buyers respond. The UK’s regulation of Amazon’s algorithm did promote price competition, but primarily in lower-rated niche markets while reducing overall variety, consumer purchases and average product ratings.
Uses UK regulation of Amazon’s recommendation algorithm as a natural experiment for a difference-in-differences analysis of its impact on product variety, quality, price and purchase in niche markets.
Replacing products too early creates unnecessary waste; waiting risks consumers’ health and safety. Displaying a product’s lifespan with more rather than fewer stages signals that it is no longer safe and useful. This retrospective perception of “usage sufficiency” encourages timely replacement more than does the prospect of insufficient remaining value.
Analyzes a series of pre-registered experiments to determine how the number of discrete stages used to depict “acceptable usage period” influences consumers’ product replacement decisions.
Plastic bag regulations can have positive spillover effects such as reduced purchase of plastic bottled water. Increasing the stringency of regulations, however, may create at least a temporary backlash from consumers. Policymakers must consider—and manufacturers and retailers anticipate—how sequential changes in regulations will affect consumer preferences and behavior.
Analyzes the impact of changes over two decades in English plastic bag regulations on consumer purchase of water products in plastic bottles.