管理科学与工程系学术讲座系列2021年第13讲

主 题： Individual Sellers' Social Media Participation and Sales Activities in Social Marketplaces: A Natural Experiment

主讲人: 林志杰（清华大学经济管理学院）

时 间：2021-10-27 10:00

地 点：线上腾讯会议

语 言：中英文

地  点：腾讯会议室 https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/NhtaSR0B3X3k 

会议号：728 905 785

密  码：1027

讲座摘要：

Recent advancements in communication and social technologies have resulted in the growth of social marketplaces. Many of these marketplaces integrate social media features with peer-to-peer transactions, so that buyers and sellers may achieve trust through unstructured socialization. Despite ample evidence showing the positive effects of social media marketing and engagement on buyers' purchase intention and product usage, complementary evidence is lacking about the benefits to individual sellers from engaging via these channels. In this study, we examine the business impact of social media participation on individual seller's sales activities, exploiting a natural experiment wherein a large social marketplace for second-hand goods (Xianyu) unexpectedly removed its social media features (Fishponds). We leverage a novel dataset and employ a difference-in-differences design. Our results consistently demonstrate that sellers who initially participated in social media channel experienced a significant decline in their sales after the channel shutdown. Exploring heterogeneity in the effects around a variety of seller and product listing features, we find evidence consistent with the notion that the sellers who benefit most from social media participation are those who face the greatest difficulty establishing trust with buyers. Our work offers nontrivial managerial implications, both for marketplace operators and individual sellers.

主讲人简介：

林志杰，清华大学经济管理学院管理科学与工程系副教授，中国信息经济学会常务理事、青工委主任，中国信息经济学乌家培奖获得者，主持国家自科优秀青年科学基金项目。他从新加坡国立大学获得信息系统专业博士学位。研究兴趣包括信息系统经济学、共享经济、电子商务、社交媒体等，研究论文发表于MIS Quarterly、Information Systems Research、Journal of Marketing、Production and Operations Management等期刊。目前担任Journal of the Association for Information Systems副主编。