Publication

1. Singh, Jasjit, Teng, Nina and Netessine, Serguei. (2019) Philanthropic Campaigns and Customer Behavior: Field Experiments on an Online Taxi Booking Platform. Management Science, 65(2): 913–932. (Download PDF here)

   • Nominated for Best Paper Award, Strategic Management Society 2016 Annual Meeting

   • Nominated for Carolyn Dexter Award, Academy of Management 2016 Annual Meeting

     
     Abstract

     Firms commonly undertake philanthropic campaigns as a means of attracting and retaining customers. Such campaigns often take the form of charity-linked promotions, whereby a firm donates a specific amount to a charitable cause when a customer takes up the promotion through a related purchase. We carried out three field experiments to study such promotions in the context of an online taxi-booking platform. Customers were randomly assigned to different treatment groups, which received either a charity-linked or a discount-based promotion from a range of monetary amounts. Take-up rates for charity-linked promotions were not only much smaller than for discount-based promotions but also less sensitive to the exact amount involved, consistent with a view that the decision to take up a charity-linked promotion was driven in part by a “warm glow” from mere association with giving. We also find a selection effect in promotion take-up: charity-linked promotions were disproportionately taken up by people who had already been more active customers. Although a promotion take-up does seem to represent new demand rather than mere substitution of a booking that would have occurred anyway, longitudinal data analysis reveals little evidence of a lasting treatment effect on long-term demand beyond the promotion period for either kind of promotion. Given the high cost relative to benefit for the promotional bookings themselves, this finding raises concerns regarding the prevalent practice of firms devoting significant funds for short-term promotions without rigorously examining their exact impact.

     
     

     Working Paper

     
     

2. Teng, Nina and Jacobides, Michael G. The Shape-Shifting Dynamics of a Digital Platform Entrant: How Grab Navigated and Changed the Industry Architecture of Mobility in Southeast Asia.

Abstract

Our inductive case study of the mobility industry in Southeast Asia shows how an innovative digital platform entrant, Grab, first tried to coopt existing actors and then, faced with competition, morphed both itself and ultimately the entire industry architecture. Grab repositioned its business model with little regard for the focal industry or its incumbents, who ultimately clamored to support it, even as it expanded beyond mobility into other sectors. Drawing on real-time direct observation and archival sources, we trace the process of Grab’s evolution and engagement with the architecture of its industry. We distinguish between proximate and distant incumbents, show how Grab used the ambiguity about its complementary offerings to enlist incumbents’ support, and discuss how happenstance shaped its own choice of platform boundaries.