Webinars
MSI Webinar: Opposing Influences of YouTube Influencers: Purchase and Usage Effects in the Videogame Industry
Influencers promote firms’ products by posting content such as videos on social media platforms. For entertainment products, these posts could substitute or complement demand for the original entertainment product. We study video games, the largest entertainment product category comprising 1/3 of YouTube traffic, using a large daily panel data set on thousands of video games. Leveraging a supply shock on YouTube called the ”Adpocalypse”, we measure the impact of influencer videos on purchase and usage of games. We provide evidence that on average influencer video posts substitute to video games for purchases but complement for usage. We also find that influencer effects differ across firms. Managers can use these results to align the influencer effects they face with their revenue models, such as using in-game purchases or a subscription model when facing complements on usage.
speaker
Professor Lovett's research interests span many areas of quantitative marketing including pricing and retail strategy, targeted advertising, online and offline word-of-mouth, branding and social media, as well as firm and consumer learning. He develops and applies marketing models to address research questions in a range of domains from entertainment brands to CPG to retail to political marketing. Professor Lovett's research has been published in Marketing Science, Management Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and the International Journal of Research in Marketing among others. His paper “On Brands and Word of Mouth” was a finalist for the William F. O’Dell award for long-term impact and his research has been awarded the ISBM Study of Business Markets’ Research Grant Silver Medalist Award and multiple grants from the Marketing Science Institute (MSI). His research has earned him the prestigious MSI Young Scholar and Scholar distinctions, and his research has garnered national media attention in relevant publications such as Ad Age and Marketing News. Professor Lovett is an associate editor at Quantitative Marketing and Economics, on the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing Research, and was the chair of the ISMS Marketing Science Conference in 2021. Professor Lovett teaches graduate level courses in Advanced Marketing Strategy and PhD Quantitative Models, and since joining Simon in 2008 has taught a range of other courses including Analytics Design and Applications, Consumer Behavior, Advertising Strategy, and Marketing Research as well as Exec Ed and EMBA courses. He has won the Gerald and Deanne Gitner Prize for Teaching Excellence, the Superior Teaching Award for Master of Science in Marketing Analytics, and the Superior Teaching Award for the MBA program. In his research and teaching, he engages regularly with companies to solve problems such as evaluating social media impact, forecasting new product sales, designing rebate programs, and evaluating store redesigns.