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Essays on Marketing and Information Acquisition
Essays on Marketing and Information Acquisition
상세정보
- 자료유형
- 학위논문 서양
- 최종처리일시
- 20260202103210
- ISBN
- 9798315797432
- DDC
- 320
- 저자명
- Zhao, Jason.
- 서명/저자
- Essays on Marketing and Information Acquisition
- 발행사항
- [Sl] : Northwestern University, 2025
- 발행사항
- Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025
- 형태사항
- 183 p
- 주기사항
- Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 86-12, Section: B.
- 주기사항
- Advisor: Gordon, Brett;Tuchman, Anna.
- 학위논문주기
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--Northwestern University, 2025.
- 초록/해제
- 요약As consumers gain increasing access to vast quantities of information, a key challenge becomes where and how individuals should choose to acquire information. Consumers must decide among themselves not just which news outlets to trust, but how much attention to allocate across competing messages from firms in advertising and marketing communications. When consumer attention is increasingly pulled among many directions, it is valuable to understand what drives individuals to search for information from one source and not another, and how firms vie to be heard over the competition.This dissertation comprises three chapters that examine different aspects of these issues. First, I examine how both partisan differences in local news demand and newspapers' decisions on topic selection and political slant contribute to ideological segregation in news consumption. Second, I examine what incentives drive television viewers to choose to pay attention to political advertising. Third, I study the role of pharmaceutical marketing when medical practitioners increasingly prefer to acquire information from peer-to-peer sources compared to information provided by pharmaceutical firms. I show that physician gifts remain effective as a promotional tool because they ameliorate limited consideration in physicians, potentially improving prescription choices even without providing new information about treatment efficacy.The first chapter studies how local newspapers differentiate their news content, and how these editorial choices affect ideological segregation in news consumption. Specifically, I examine how firms position their products when Republicans and Democrats may differ in preferences for both ideologically slanted reporting as well as different topic coverage. To do so, I create a measure of partisan slant that separates politicized rhetoric from different topic selection between Democrats and Republicans. I use this measure to estimate a demand model in which Republican and Democratic consumers have separate, party-specific tastes for partisan slant and topic coverage. I find that consumers in both parties prefer partisan slant that favors their own ideological positions, with Democrats displaying a greater mean preference for like-minded slant. However, while Democrats prefer topic selection that mirrors that of major national papers, Republicans prefer more specialized reporting. I then model how firms choose slant and topic coverage in a simultaneous-move game. I show that because firms may differentiate over not just how but what they report on, policies aimed at limiting political slant in reporting are not sufficient to address polarization in news consumption. Moreover, I find in a counterfactual simulation that government subsidies promoting increased entry in local news may lead to both more extreme slant and increased ideological segregation in consumption.The second chapter examines viewers' choices to pay attention to advertising in order to shed light on mechanisms underlying advertising effects. Using data on viewer attention to political ads on television, I find evidence for both an informational and a complementary consumption role of advertising. During the primary election season, consumers pay more attention to political ads when their statewide electoral outcomes are more uncertain and information is thus more valuable, consistent with an informative effect. However, during the general election, the opposite is true, with attention higher in states where presidential polling strongly favors one candidate over the other. This is especially true for viewers who watch more television news, consistent with the idea that political ads are complementary to other forms of political behavior. I find further evidence of advertising complementarities during general election season: exposure to political ads increases consumption of TV news programs in the subsequent 24 hours. However, these effects are stronger when information does not drive political advertising consumption: during the general election, and more so in less-competitive races. This further suggests that consumption complementarities are more likely to drive political ad consumption during the general election, compared to an information acquisition motive.Finally, the third chapter studies physician gifts, which are a routine promotional practice of pharmaceutical firms. These gifts frequently raise concerns from regulators, as critics argue that the value of information provided by drug representatives is limited, while gifts could instead sway physicians towards inappropriate treatment options. I find that gifts are both prevalent and effective in increasing prescriptions, but their impact on patient well-being depends on the mechanisms through which gifts affect prescription behavior. Gifts could potentially distort choice by directly impacting physicians' preferences for drugs, but they could also improve limited consideration, leading to better patient outcomes. This consideration nudge may improve prescribing even if critics are correct in arguing that the informational role of pharmaceutical marketing has been superseded by other easily-accessible information sources. To disentangle these effects, I estimate a structural model of discrete choice under limited consideration in the market for atypical antipsychotics. The model estimates imply that on average physicians consider only 2.4 of the 8 most popular branded drugs, and that gifts primarily impact consideration with a near-zero impact on utility. I find that, across drugs, an additional gift of average value ($24) increases consideration probability by 14.5% on average, leading to a 0.22 standard deviation increase in prescribing. Since higher rates of consideration weakly benefit patients, strict regulation could lead to adverse outcomes by worsening limited consideration. However, because firms tend to target physicians that are more likely to consider the promoted drug, banning gifts only leads to small aggregate changes in prescribing despite the effectiveness of gifts in prompting consideration. In contrast, policies that place yearly caps on gifting encourage firms to reallocate gifts to a wider array of physicians, leading physicians to consider 26% more drugs on average.
- 일반주제명
- Political science
- 일반주제명
- Pharmaceutical sciences
- 키워드
- Consumers
- 키워드
- Local news
- 키워드
- Demand
- 기타저자
- Northwestern University Marketing
- 기본자료저록
- Dissertations Abstracts International. 86-12B.
- 전자적 위치 및 접속
- 로그인 후 원문을 볼 수 있습니다.
MARC
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■020 ▼a9798315797432
■035 ▼a(MiAaPQ)AAI32000829
■040 ▼aMiAaPQ▼cMiAaPQ
■0820 ▼a320
■1001 ▼aZhao, Jason.▼0(orcid)0009-0001-6797-0664
■24510▼aEssays on Marketing and Information Acquisition
■260 ▼a[Sl]▼bNorthwestern University▼c2025
■260 1▼aAnn Arbor▼bProQuest Dissertations & Theses▼c2025
■300 ▼a183 p
■500 ▼aSource: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 86-12, Section: B.
■500 ▼aAdvisor: Gordon, Brett;Tuchman, Anna.
■5021 ▼aThesis (Ph.D.)--Northwestern University, 2025.
■520 ▼aAs consumers gain increasing access to vast quantities of information, a key challenge becomes where and how individuals should choose to acquire information. Consumers must decide among themselves not just which news outlets to trust, but how much attention to allocate across competing messages from firms in advertising and marketing communications. When consumer attention is increasingly pulled among many directions, it is valuable to understand what drives individuals to search for information from one source and not another, and how firms vie to be heard over the competition.This dissertation comprises three chapters that examine different aspects of these issues. First, I examine how both partisan differences in local news demand and newspapers' decisions on topic selection and political slant contribute to ideological segregation in news consumption. Second, I examine what incentives drive television viewers to choose to pay attention to political advertising. Third, I study the role of pharmaceutical marketing when medical practitioners increasingly prefer to acquire information from peer-to-peer sources compared to information provided by pharmaceutical firms. I show that physician gifts remain effective as a promotional tool because they ameliorate limited consideration in physicians, potentially improving prescription choices even without providing new information about treatment efficacy.The first chapter studies how local newspapers differentiate their news content, and how these editorial choices affect ideological segregation in news consumption. Specifically, I examine how firms position their products when Republicans and Democrats may differ in preferences for both ideologically slanted reporting as well as different topic coverage. To do so, I create a measure of partisan slant that separates politicized rhetoric from different topic selection between Democrats and Republicans. I use this measure to estimate a demand model in which Republican and Democratic consumers have separate, party-specific tastes for partisan slant and topic coverage. I find that consumers in both parties prefer partisan slant that favors their own ideological positions, with Democrats displaying a greater mean preference for like-minded slant. However, while Democrats prefer topic selection that mirrors that of major national papers, Republicans prefer more specialized reporting. I then model how firms choose slant and topic coverage in a simultaneous-move game. I show that because firms may differentiate over not just how but what they report on, policies aimed at limiting political slant in reporting are not sufficient to address polarization in news consumption. Moreover, I find in a counterfactual simulation that government subsidies promoting increased entry in local news may lead to both more extreme slant and increased ideological segregation in consumption.The second chapter examines viewers' choices to pay attention to advertising in order to shed light on mechanisms underlying advertising effects. Using data on viewer attention to political ads on television, I find evidence for both an informational and a complementary consumption role of advertising. During the primary election season, consumers pay more attention to political ads when their statewide electoral outcomes are more uncertain and information is thus more valuable, consistent with an informative effect. However, during the general election, the opposite is true, with attention higher in states where presidential polling strongly favors one candidate over the other. This is especially true for viewers who watch more television news, consistent with the idea that political ads are complementary to other forms of political behavior. I find further evidence of advertising complementarities during general election season: exposure to political ads increases consumption of TV news programs in the subsequent 24 hours. However, these effects are stronger when information does not drive political advertising consumption: during the general election, and more so in less-competitive races. This further suggests that consumption complementarities are more likely to drive political ad consumption during the general election, compared to an information acquisition motive.Finally, the third chapter studies physician gifts, which are a routine promotional practice of pharmaceutical firms. These gifts frequently raise concerns from regulators, as critics argue that the value of information provided by drug representatives is limited, while gifts could instead sway physicians towards inappropriate treatment options. I find that gifts are both prevalent and effective in increasing prescriptions, but their impact on patient well-being depends on the mechanisms through which gifts affect prescription behavior. Gifts could potentially distort choice by directly impacting physicians' preferences for drugs, but they could also improve limited consideration, leading to better patient outcomes. This consideration nudge may improve prescribing even if critics are correct in arguing that the informational role of pharmaceutical marketing has been superseded by other easily-accessible information sources. To disentangle these effects, I estimate a structural model of discrete choice under limited consideration in the market for atypical antipsychotics. The model estimates imply that on average physicians consider only 2.4 of the 8 most popular branded drugs, and that gifts primarily impact consideration with a near-zero impact on utility. I find that, across drugs, an additional gift of average value ($24) increases consideration probability by 14.5% on average, leading to a 0.22 standard deviation increase in prescribing. Since higher rates of consideration weakly benefit patients, strict regulation could lead to adverse outcomes by worsening limited consideration. However, because firms tend to target physicians that are more likely to consider the promoted drug, banning gifts only leads to small aggregate changes in prescribing despite the effectiveness of gifts in prompting consideration. In contrast, policies that place yearly caps on gifting encourage firms to reallocate gifts to a wider array of physicians, leading physicians to consider 26% more drugs on average.
■590 ▼aSchool code: 0163.
■650 4▼aPolitical science
■650 4▼aPharmaceutical sciences
■653 ▼aConsumers
■653 ▼aInformation acquisition
■653 ▼aMarketing communications
■653 ▼aLocal news
■653 ▼aDemand
■690 ▼a0338
■690 ▼a0501
■690 ▼a0615
■690 ▼a0572
■71020▼aNorthwestern University▼bMarketing.
■7730 ▼tDissertations Abstracts International▼g86-12B.
■790 ▼a0163
■791 ▼aPh.D.
■792 ▼a2025
■793 ▼aEnglish
■85640▼uhttp://www.riss.kr/pdu/ddodLink.do?id=T17357337▼nKERIS▼z이 자료의 원문은 한국교육학술정보원에서 제공합니다.


