How Video Rental Patterns Change as Consumers Move Online

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zentner, Alejandro; Smith, Michael; Kaya, Cuneyd
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas; Carnegie Mellon University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2013.1731
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 2622-2634
• 关键词: long tail; movie rentals; natural experiment; empirical estimation

摘要

How will consumption patterns for popular and long-tail products change when consumers move from brick-and-mortar to Internet markets? We address this question using customer-level panel data obtained from a national video rental chain as it was closing many of its local stores. These data allow us to use the closure of a consumer's local video store as an instrument, breaking the inherent endogeneity between channel choice and product choice. Our results suggest that when consumers move from brick-and-mortar to online channels, they are significantly more likely to rent niche titles relative to blockbusters. This suggests that a significant amount of niche product consumption online is due to the direct influence of the channel on consumer behavior, not just due to selection effects from the types of consumers who decide to use the Internet channel or the types of products that consumers decide to purchase online.