Manuscripts in Preparation

• “Mobile payment and in-store mobile purchase behavior” with Yuxin Chen, Minki Kim, and Wonjoon Kim (preparing for submission to Information Systems Research).
  [Abstract]

  A growing number of retailers have enabled in-store mobile purchases, which allow consumers to buy products they see anytime and anywhere in the offline store using their mobile phones. This practice is facilitated by the emerging mobile payment services (e.g., Google Pay, WeChat Pay, or Kakao Pay) that represent a substantial shift in the transaction experience as they require fewer tasks to complete than incumbent payment options such as credit cards. This paper investigates the behavioral consequences of mobile payment adoption in the context of in-store mobile purchase using data from a leading book retailer in Korea with the launch of the most popular mobile payment service in the country during the data period. The results show that the adoption of a mobile payment service not only increases the total spending and purchase frequency of the adopters but also increases their consumption variety. These findings are consistent with the predictions from the transaction cost theory and are supported and further verified by a series of additional empirical analysis. The implications of our results for retailers and consumers are also discussed.
  
  
• “Overcoming the Challenges of Mobile Marketing: Mobile Content Marketing in a Distracted World” with Seokjoon Yoon, Minki Kim, Wonjoon Kim, Minsok Lee (resubmission requested at Management Science).
  [Abstract]

  Mobile marketing, despite its popularity among marketers, has yet to overcome the persistent challenges of consumer apathy and short attention span, thus resulting in low engagement and conversion. Although mobile content marketing (MCM) has emerged as an alternative solution to such challenges in practice, academic research on the effectiveness and strategies of MCM is still in its infancy. This study aims to investigate the causal impact of MCM on customer engagement and sales. To this end, we conducted a randomized controlled trial in close collaboration with both a book retailer and a large number of publishers. We empirically confirm the effectiveness of MCM by showing that it is capable of increasing both customer engagement (e.g., higher check-in rate) and sales revenue (e.g., higher click-through and sales conversion), but its success is largely determined by the quality of the content being used. Our findings confirm that MCM can backfire if not implemented properly. While informative and entertaining content is consumed more, entertaining content that better sustains readers’ attention can be even more effective.
  
  
• “Helping Hands to Bear the Burden of Choice: Recommendations from Similar, but Not Close, Others Reduce Choice Difficulty” with Wonjoon Kim and Joshua Ackerman (resubmission requested at Journal of Marketing).
  [Abstract]

  The introduction of the Internet generated two significant developments for consumers—the emergence of social network services and relentlessly increasing product variety. However, recent research has highlighted the negative consequences of extensive choice variety and how it overloads cognition. Three experimental studies and a pilot study show that social recommendations appearing in the choice context mitigate assortment-driven choice difficulty, thereby eliminating choice overload effects. Interestingly, this effect is moderated by the similarity, but not by the felt social distance, between the recommendation provider and the chooser. In other words, consumers who are burdened by choice difficulty are more likely to choose the alternative recommended by similar others, which allows them to reduce the difficulty of evaluating other options available in the assortment – an activity that can produce dissatisfaction and choice deferral.
  
  

Work-in-Progress

• “From What Ifs to Insights: Counterfactuals in Causal Inference vs. Explainable AI” with G. Shmueli, D. Martens, and T. Greene
  [Abstract]

  Counterfactuals play a pivotal role in the two distinct data science fields of causal inference (CI) and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). While the core idea behind counterfactuals remains the same in both fields—the examination of what would have happened under different circumstances—there are key differences in how they are used and interpreted. We introduce a formal definition that encompasses the multi-faceted concept of the counterfactual in CI and XAI. We then discuss how counterfactuals are used, evaluated, generated, and operationalized in CI vs. XAI, highlighting conceptual and practical differences. By comparing and contrasting the two, we hope to identify opportunities for cross fertilization across CI and XAI.
  
  

• “Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Childhood Racial Adversities and Minority Entrepreneurship” with D. H. Yoon and C. Boudreaux

• “Empirical Investigation of The Impact of Online Platforms on Charitable Giving” with N. Kim and H. Yoon

• “Unexpected Consequences of Product Sales Bans: An Empirical Investigation” with Y. Chen and N. Kim
  • Conceptualization and data collection completed. Data analysis in progress.
• “The Dark Side of Digitization: Last Mile Mobility and Traffic Fatality” with M. Kim
  • Recipient of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd CSES best paper awards. Data analysis in progress.
  [Abstract]

  Incorporating a combination of emerging technologies such as global positioning system sensors, smart locks, mobile payments, and the dockless feature, last mile mobility services such as Lime, Mobike, and Kick-Going are gathering a strong customer base. As the name suggests, these newly emerging mobility services are effective means to solving the `last mile problem' by providing a convenient option to its users to move from (to) a transportation hub to (from) their final destination using a moble app. This means that the emergence of last mile mobility is likely to alleviate the inefficiency inherent in the public transit systems thereby allowing its users to save both money and time spent to travel. Despite the expected welfare gains, there is an increased concern regarding its potential effects to traffic accidents and the fatality associated with it. In this paper, we exploit a unique data, which puts together the FARS traffic accident recordings across different cities in the U.S. and Lime's individual ridership data such as the average miles traveled, using a standard generalized difference-in-differences approach at the neighborhood level. We expect that our findings will provide empirical evidence of the negative effect of last mile mobility services in terms of traffic fatality. This, in part, is likely driven by the lack of policies and regulations that are yet to follow up with the changing landscape within the mobility market due to the introduction of last mile mobility services. The relevant implications will also be discussed.
  
  

Publications

• Yoo, Jaewon, Hyunsik Park, and Wonjoon Kim. “Compromise Effect and Consideration Set Size in Consumer Decision-Making.” Applied Economics Letters 25, no. 8 (2018): 513-517. SSCI.

• Kang, Minjeong, Jaewon Yoo, Wonjoon Kim, and Namil Kim. “The Effect of Alliance Activity on Patent Litigation.” Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society 21, no. 1 (2018): 265-299. KCI.

• Yoo, Jaewon and Wonjoon Kim. “To What Extend does Social Effect has Influence on Choice Overload?” Proceedings of the 2013 International Symposium on Education, Psychology, Society, and Tourism. Seoul, Republic of Korea. June 27 - 29, 2013.