Related papers: A Large-Scale Study of Online Shopping Behavior
Urban income segregation is a widespread phenomenon that challenges societies across the globe. Classical studies on segregation have largely focused on the geographic distribution of residential neighborhoods rather than on patterns of…
In the early age of the internet users enjoyed a large level of anonymity. At the time web pages were just hypertext documents; almost no personalisation of the user experience was o ered. The Web today has evolved as a world wide…
We live in a computerized and networked society where many of our actions leave a digital trace and affect other people's actions. This has lead to the emergence of a new data-driven research field: mathematical methods of computer science,…
This dissertation examines three distinct big data analytics problems related to the social aspects of consumers' choices. The main goal of this line of research is to help two sided platform firms to target their marketing policies given…
Conversational AI models are becoming increasingly popular and are about to replace traditional search engines for information retrieval and product discovery. This raises concerns about monetization strategies and the potential for subtle…
E-commerce users may expect different products even for the same query, due to their diverse personal preferences. It is well-known that there are two types of preferences: long-term ones and short-term ones. The former refers to user'…
Recommender systems have become a ubiquitous part of modern web applications. They help users discover new and relevant items. Today's users, through years of interaction with these systems have developed an inherent understanding of how…
Most online services (Google, Facebook etc.) operate by providing a service to users for free, and in return they collect and monetize personal information (PI) of the users. This operational model is inherently economic, as the "good"…
In the last decade, the digital age has sharply redefined the way we study human behavior. With the advancement of data storage and sensing technologies, electronic records now encompass a diverse spectrum of human activity, ranging from…
Web search is among the most ubiquitous online activities, commonly used to acquire new knowledge and to satisfy learning-related objectives through informational search sessions. The importance of learning as an outcome of web search has…
The technological revolution of the Internet has digitized the social, economic, political, and cultural activities of billions of humans. While researchers have been paying due attention to concerns of misinformation and bias, these…
Online shopping platforms, such as Amazon, offer services to billions of people worldwide. Unlike web search or other search engines, product search engines have their unique characteristics, primarily featuring short queries which are…
Amazon is the world number one online retailer and has nearly every product a person could need along with a treasure trove of product reviews to help consumers make educated purchases. Companies want to find a way to increase their sales…
We analyze a coupled anonymized dataset collecting the mobile phone communication and bank transactions history of a large number of individuals. After mapping the social structure and introducing indicators of socioeconomic status,…
Understanding the customers' high level shopping intent, such as their desire to go camping or hold a birthday party, is critically important for an E-commerce platform; it can help boost the quality of shopping experience by enabling…
Large-scale e-commerce sites can collect and analyze a large number of user preferences and behaviors, and thus can recommend highly trusted products to users. However, it is very difficult for individuals or non-corporate groups to obtain…
As the sociological theory of homophily suggests, people tend to interact with those of similar preferences. Motivated by this well-established phenomenon, today's online sellers, such as Amazon,~seek~to learn a new buyer's private…
We consider a setting where $n$ buyers, with combinatorial preferences over $m$ items, and a seller, running a priority-based allocation mechanism, repeatedly interact. Our goal, from observing limited information about the results of these…
We propose a new efficient online algorithm to learn the parameters governing the purchasing behavior of a utility maximizing buyer, who responds to prices, in a repeated interaction setting. The key feature of our algorithm is that it can…
In this study, the authors develop a structural model that combines a macro diffusion model with a micro choice model to control for the effect of social influence on the mobile app choices of customers over app stores. Social influence…