Prof. Lin Liu
Beihang University, China

Title：

Why Do Firms Facilitate On-site Product Evaluation When Costs for Store Visits Decrease?

Abstract：

Improvements in communication infrastructure and information technology have strived to make both online and offline store visits better experiences and less costly for consumers. In addition, on-site product information search has been unprecedentedly facilitated by provisions of tools such as mobile store apps, search engines, screening/sorting aids, better in-store display, etc. With the decrease in the cost to visit stores, do firms have an incentive to facilitate consumers’ on-site information collection and evaluation on product attributes? This paper attempts to shed light on this important question with a parsimonious economic model that considers both travel cost (transportation cost between firm visits) and search cost (product inspection cost on-site) and explores how they affect consumer search behavior and firms’ pricing decisions.

Biography:

Dr. Lin Liu works as a full professor at the School of Economics and Management, Beihang University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, M.S. in Computer Science from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Emory University and B.E. in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University, China. His research interests focus on digital platforms and economy, information management, value of data in business. His papers are published in leading business and economics journals including Management Science, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Economics Letters, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, Managerial and Decision Economics. His research won Shankar-Spiegel Best Paper Award hosted by Northwestern University and TAMU, and NET Institute Grant from New York University. He serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Digital Economy and worked at the University of Central Florida before joined Beihang.