Advertising is central to e-commerce. In a world of choice, ads drive consumption by informing consumers about available products. New insights into the influence of online advertising on e-shopping behavior come from a study led by Ralf van der Lans of HKUST. The team used eye-tracking experiments to probe how ad features and site design can help or hinder ... Read More

For fledgling ventures, part of the growth process is to develop key systems, both external (such as marketing and sales) and internal (such as accounting and human resources). To date, most researchers have assumed that these systems develop uniformly as ventures scale and complete developmental milestones. According to HKUST’s Pavel I. Zhelyazkov and ... Read More

Online product review platforms have become popular places for consumers to share their opinions on and experiences of the products and services they buy. In online marketplaces, the quality of a new product or service is initially unknown, but reviews posted by buyers inform subsequent customers. By reducing uncertainty about product quality, this type of ... Read More

Data-driven technology has the potential to not only predict how people will behave but also to predict what actions might encourage desirable behaviors. For example, the music app Spotify uses this technology to encourage its users to upgrade their accounts and engage with the platform. Focusing on Spotify’s playlist generation systems, HKUST’s Carlos ... Read More

Employee creativity is vital for organizational success, so sustaining it during a crisis—such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic—is essential. In a study with important implications for how organizations should react to crises to maintain employee creativity, HKUST researcher Yaping Gong and two colleagues show that an employee’s mindset and goal orientation ... Read More

Policymakers are deeply concerned about the impact of hiring workers from different locations on firm profitability and the substitution or complementarity of domestic and foreign workers. But assuming that these workers are interchangeable is a myth that may not lead to productive directives and policies for everyone involved. Despite the critical nature of ... Read More

Recent decades have seen extraordinary growth in cross-border debt financing as financial systems become more globally integrated and companies take advantage of foreign markets to share risk, increase liquidity, and obtain cheaper capital. In the first study to comprehensively identify corporate rating patterns for a broad set of international firms, HKUST ... Read More

Understanding the factors that drive stakeholders’ sense of fulfillment and satisfaction (known as their “utility”) can help businesses maintain good relationships. Traditionally, stakeholder utility was believed to be based merely on the direct benefits derived from the relationship. More recently, scholars have taken a more socialized perspective on how ... Read More

Research by the HKUST’s Charles Hsu shows that disclosures of non-GAAP earnings numbers are associated with a greater risk of stock price crashes. Working with international collaborators, Hsu found that non-GAAP disclosures enable managers to divert investors’ attention from bad news included in GAAP earnings. This mechanism, which is substitutive to ... Read More

In the early days of online retailing, many online retail platforms operated as “reselling channels”—purchasing goods from manufacturers and reselling them to consumers. Over time, some platforms (notably Amazon and JD) established “agency channels” (also known as “marketplace channels”) that allowed manufacturers to sell directly to consumers. Through their ... Read More