Tag Archives: big data

Robots Serve Humans: Does AI Robot Adoption Enhance Operational Efficiency and Customer Experience?

Lee, Myunghwan, Gene Moo Lee, Donghyuk Shin, Sang-Pil Han (2022) “Robots Serve Humans? Understanding the Economic and Societal Impacts of AI Robots in the Service IndustryWorking Paper.

  • Presented at WITS (2020), KrAIS (2020), UBC (2021), DS (2022)
  • Research assistants: Raymond Situ, Gallant Tang

Service providers, such as restaurants, have been adopting various robotics technologies to improve operational efficiency and increase customer satisfaction. AI Robotics technologies bring new restaurant experiences to customers by taking orders, cooking, and serving. While the impact of industrial robots has been well documented in the literature, little is known about the impact of customer-facing service robot adoption. To fill this gap, this work-in-progress study aims to analyze the impact of service robot adoption on restaurant service quality using 4,610 restaurants and their online customer reviews. We analyzed the treated effect of robot adoption using a difference-in-differences approach with propensity score and exact matching. Estimation results show that restaurant robot adoption has a positive impact on customer satisfaction, specifically on perceived service quality. This study provides both academic and practical implications on emerging AI robotics techniques.

What Fuels Growth? A Comparative Analysis of the Scaling Intensity of AI Start-ups

Schulte-Althoff, Matthias, Daniel Fuerstenau, Gene Moo Lee, Hannes Rothe, Robert Kauffman. “What Fuels Growth? A Comparative Analysis of the Scaling Intensity of AI Start-ups”. Working Paper. [ResearchGate]

  • Previous title: “A Scaling Perspective on AI startup”
  • Presented at HICSS 2021 (SITES mini-track), Copenhagen Business School 2021, FU Berlin 2021, University of Cologne 2021, University of Bremen 2021, Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society 2021, WITS 2022

We examine how firm revenue scales with labor for revenue-per-employee (RPE) and is moderated by firm-level AI investment. We compare AI start-ups, in which AI provides a competitive advantage, with digital platforms and service start-ups. We use propensity score matching to explain the scaling of start-ups and find evidence for sublinear scaling intensity for revenue as a function of labor. Our study suggests similar scaling intensities between AI and service start-ups, while platform start-ups produce higher scaling intensities. We show that an increase in employee counts is associated with major revenue increases for platform start-ups, while increases were modest for service and AI start-ups.

Corporate Social Network Analysis: A Deep Learning Approach

Cao, Rui, Gene Moo Lee, Hasan Cavusoglu. “Corporate Social Network Analysis: A Deep Learning Approach,” Working Paper.

Identifying inter-firm relationships is critical in understanding the industry landscape. However, due to the dynamic nature of such relationships, it is challenging to capture corporate social networks in a scalable and timely manner. To address this issue, this research develops a framework to build corporate social network representations by applying natural language processing (NLP) techniques on a corpus of 10-K filings, describing the reporting firms’ perceived relationships with other firms. Our framework uses named-entity recognition (NER) to locate the corporate names in the text, topic modeling to identify types of relationships included, and BERT to predict the type of relationship described in each sentence. To show the value of the network measures created by the proposed framework, we conduct two empirical analyses to see their impacts on firm performance. The first study shows that competition relationship and in-degree measurements on all relationship types have prediction power in estimating future earnings. The second study focuses on the difference between individual perspectives in an inter-firm social network. Such a difference is measured by the direction of mentions and is an indicator of a firm’s success in network governance. Receiving more mentions from other firms is a positive signal to network governance and it shows a significant positive correlation with firm performance next year.

IS Papers on Big Data, Analytics, and AI

Last update: Feb 27, 2022

My research involves Big Data Analytics and AI in Information Systems literature. This post tries to keep track of the editorial and seminal articles on the topic of Big Data, Data Science, Analytics, and AI in the Information Systems and Management literature. The papers are listed in chronological order:

  1. Bapna, Goes, Gopal, Marsden (2006) Moving from Data-Constrained to Data-Enabled Research: Experiences and Challenges in Collecting, Validating and Analyzing Large-Scale e-Commerce Data, Statistical Science 21(2): 116-130.
  2. Shmueli and Koppius (2011) Predictive Analytics in Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly 35(3): 553-572
  3. Chen, Chiang, Storey, (2012) Business Intelligence and Analytics: From Big Data to Big Impact, MIS Quarterly 36(4): 1164-1188
  4. Lin, Lucas Jr., Shmueli (2013) Research Commentary: Too Big to Fail: Large Samples and the p-Value Problem, Information Systems Research 24(4): 906-917.
  5. Agarwal, Dhar (2014) Editorial – Big Data, Data Science, and Analytics: The Opportunity and Challenge for IS Research, Information Systems Research 25(3): 443-448
  6. Varian (2014) Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics, Journal of Economic Perspectives 28(2): 3-28
  7. Goes (2014) Editor’s Comments: Big Data and IS Research, MIS Quarterly 38(3): iii-viii
  8. AMJ Editors (2016) From the Editors: Big Data and Data Science Methods for Management Research, Academy of Management Journal 59(5): 1493-1507
  9. Abbasi, Sarker, Chiang (2016) Big Data Research in Information Systems: Toward an Inclusive Research Agenda, Journal of the Association for Information Systems 17(2): i-xxxii
  10. Rai (2016) Editor’s Comments: Synergies Between Big Data and Theory, MIS Quarterly 40(2): iii-ix
  11. Baesens, Bapna, Marsden, Vanthienen, Zhao (2016) Transformational Issues of Big Data and Analytics in Networked Business, MIS Quarterly 40(4): 807-818
  12. Athey (2017) Beyond Prediction: Using Big Data for Policy Problems, Science 355(6324): 483-485
  13. Chiang, Grover, Liang, Zhang (2018) Special Issue: Strategic Value of Big Data and Business Analytics, Journal of Management Information Systems 35(2): 383-387
  14. Delen, Ram (2018) Research challenges and opportunities in business analytics, Journal of Business Analytics 1(1): 2-12.
  15. Maass, Parsons, Puraro, Storey, Woo (2018) Data-Driven Meets Theory-Driven Research in the Era of Big Data: Opportunities and Challenges for Information Systems Research, Journal of the Association for Information Systems 19(12): 1253-1273
  16. Yang, Adomavicius, Burtch, Ren (2018) Mind the Gap: Accounting for Measurement Error and Misclassification in Variables Generated via Data Mining, Information Systems Research 29(1): 4-24.
  17. Berente, Seidel, Safadi (2019) Research Commentary: Data-Driven Computationally Intensive Theory Development, Information Systems Research 30(1), 50-64.
  18. Johnson, Gray, Sarker (2019) Revisiting IS Research Practice in the Era of Big Data, Information and Organization 29(1): 41-56
  19. Grover, Lindberg, Benbasat, Lyytinen (2020) The Perils and Promises of Big Data Research in Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems 21(2): 268-291.
  20. Shmueli (2021) INFORMS Journal of Data Science (IJDS) Editorial #1: What is an IJDS paper?, INFORMS Journal of Data Science.
  21. Ram, Goes (2021) Focusing on Programmatic High Impact Information Systems Research, not Theory, to Address Grand Challenges, MIS Quarterly 45(1): 479-483.
  22. Burton-Jones, Boh, Oborn, Padmanabhan (2021) Editor’s Comments: Advancing Research Transparency at MIS Quarterly: A Pluralistic Approach, MIS Quarterly 45(2): iii-xviii.
  23. Berente, Gu, Recker, Santhanam (2021) Special Issue Editor’s Comments: Managing Artificial Intelligence, MIS Quarterly 45(3): 1433-1450.
  24. Jain, Padmanabhan, Pavlou, Raghu (2021) Editorial for the Special Section on Humans, Algorithms, and Augmented Intelligence: The Future of Work, Organizations, and Society, Information Systems Research 32(3): 675-687.
  25. Padmanabhan, Fang, Sahoo, Burton-Junes (2022) Editor’s Comments: Machine Learning in Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly 46(1): iii-xix.

 

When Does Congruence Matter for Pre-roll Video Ads? The Effect of Multimodal, Ad-Content Congruence on the Ad Completion

Park, Sungho, Gene Moo Lee, Donghyuk Shin, Sang-Pil Han. “When Does Congruence Matter for Pre-roll Video Ads? The Effect of Multimodal, Ad-Content Congruence on the Ad Completion, Working Paper [Last update: Jan 29, 2023]

  • Previous title: Targeting Pre-Roll Ads using Video Analytics
  • Funded by Sauder Exploratory Research Grant 2020
  • Presented at Southern Methodist University (2020), University of Washington (2020), INFORMS (2020), AIMLBA (2020), WITS (2020), HKUST (2021), Maryland (2021), American University (2021), National University of Singapore (2021), Arizona (2022), George Mason (2022), KAIST (2022), Hanyang (2022), Kyung Hee (2022), McGill (2022)
  • Research assistants: Raymond Situ, Miguel Valarao

Pre-roll video ads are gaining industry traction because the audience may be willing to watch an ad for a few seconds, if not the entire ad, before the desired content video is shown. Conversely, a popular skippable type of pre-roll video ads, which enables viewers to skip an ad in a few seconds, creates opportunity costs for advertisers and online video platforms when the ad is skipped. Against this backdrop, we employ a video analytics framework to extract multimodal features from ad and content videos, including auditory signals and thematic visual information, and probe into the effect of ad-content congruence at each modality using a random matching experiment conducted by a major video advertising platform. The present study challenges the widely held view that ads that match content are more likely to be viewed than those that do not, and investigates the conditions under which congruence may or may not work. Our results indicate that non-thematic auditory signal congruence between the ad and content is essential in explaining viewers’ ad completion, while thematic visual congruence is only effective if the viewer has sufficient attentional and cognitive capacity to recognize such congruence. The findings suggest that thematic videos demand more cognitive processing power than auditory signals for viewers to perceive ad-content congruence, leading to decreased ad viewing. Overall, these findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for understanding whether and when viewers construct congruence in the context of pre-roll video ads and how advertisers might target their pre-roll video ads successfully.

Price Competition and Active or Inactive Consumer Search

Koh, Yumi, Gea M. Lee, Gene Moo Lee (2023) “Price Competition and Active or Inactive Consumer Search”. Working Paper. [Latest version: May 31, 2023] [SSRN]

We propose a price-competition model in which prices are dispersed and a fraction of consumers decide whether to make an immediate purchase without actively searching for prices or to search sequentially. We use an incomplete-information setting with heterogeneous production costs and information frictions:  rms’ production cost types are drawn from an interval and are privately observed. The model includes active or inactive consumer search as an equilibrium outcome and allows a competition-induced switch between the two outcomes. We study how firms and consumers interact in determining prices and making an active or inactive search when competition intensifies with more firms.

Strategic Competitive Positioning: An Unsupervised Structural Hole-based Firm-specific Measure

Lee, Myunghwan, Gene Moo Lee, Hasan Cavusoglu, Marc-David L. Seidel. “Strategic Competitive Positioning: Unsupervised Operationalization of a Structural Hole-based Firm-specific Construct”, [Latest version: Aug 15, 2023]

  • doc2vec model of 10-K reports: Link
  • Presented at UBC MIS Seminar 2018, CIST 2019 (Seattle, WA), KrAIS 2019 (Munich, Germany), DS 2021 (online), KrAIS 2021 (Austin, TX), UT Dallas 2022, KAIST 2022, Korea Univ 2022, INFORMS 2022 (Indianapolis, IN)
  • Funded by Sauder Exploratory Grant 2019
  • Research assistants: Raymond Situ, Sahil Jain

In this paper, we build on the network structural hole concept of organizational theory to theorize an individual firm-specific strategic competitive positioning (SCP) construct. We use unsupervised document embedding approaches to operationalize the SCP construct by capturing each firm’s relative competitive and strategic positioning in a strategic similarity matrix of all existing U.S. publicly traded firms’ annual corporate filings. This approach enables us to construct a theoretically driven firm-level SCP measure with minimal human expert intervention. Our construct dynamically captures competitive positioning across different firms and years without using artificially bounded and often outdated industry classification systems. We illustrate how the dynamic measure captures industry-level and cross-industry strategic changes. Then, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our construct with an empirical analysis showing the imprinting and dynamic effects of SCP on firm performance. The results show that our dynamic SCP measure outperforms existing competition measures and successfully predicts post-IPO performance. This paper makes significant contributions to the information systems and organizations literatures by proposing an organizational theory-based unsupervised approach to dynamically conceptualize and measure firm-level strategic competitive positioning. The construct can be easily applied to firm-specific, industry-level, and cross-industry research questions in many contexts across many disciplines.

IT Risk and Stock Price Crash Risk (Working Paper)

Song, Victor, Hasan Cavusoglu, Mary L. Z. Ma, Gene Moo Lee (2023) “IT Risk and Stock Price Crash Risk,” Under 2nd round review at Information Systems Research.

IT risk, especially cybersecurity risk, has rapidly increased and become a top concern for researchers, regulators, firm managers, and investors. This study creates a novel firm-level IT risk measure applicable to all US-listed firms by applying the BERTopic topic modeling to risk factors reported in Item 1A of the 10-K annual reports. We validate the measure with multiple approaches including cross-validations, presenting illustrative excerpts of IT risk factors, conducting cross-sectional and over-time distribution analyses, and analyzing firm characteristics associated with IT risk. The measure is found to be heightened in IT-intensive industries and for firms with larger sizes, higher profits, and better growth potential, and it can predict future data breaches. Using this ex-ante IT risk measure, we examine the relation between IT risk and stock price crash risk, which reflects a firm’s propensity to stock price crashes. Our findings suggest that IT risk is positively associated with crash risk, and we also identify that downward operating risk and predictability for data breaches are two mechanisms for the crash risk effect of IT risk. By decomposing IT risk into cybersecurity risk and non-cybersecurity IT risk, we find that both types of IT risk increase crash risk, but the effect of cybersecurity risk is stronger than that of non-cybersecurity IT risk, consistent with their different risk natures. We further observe that the novelty and readability of IT risk factors strengthen the crash risk effects of IT risk, consistent with the notion that the novelty represents updated and increased IT risk, and readability improves the understanding of IT risk. Lastly, difference-in-differences analyses reveal that IT risk increases stock price crash risk, not the other way around. We conclude the paper by discussing academic contributions and practical implications in the context of the SEC’s directives on reporting and managing IT risk and cybersecurity risk.

Enhancing Social Media Analysis with Visual Data Analytics: A Deep Learning Approach (MISQ 2020)

Shin, Donghyuk, Shu He, Gene Moo Lee, Andrew B. Whinston, Suleyman Cetintas, Kuang-Chih Lee (2020) Enhancing Social Media Analysis with Visual Data Analytics: A Deep Learning Approach, MIS Quarterly, 44(4), pp. 1459-1492. [SSRN]

  • Based on an industry collaboration with Yahoo! Research
  • The first MISQ methods article based on machine learning
  • Presented in WeB (Fort Worth, TX 2015), WITS (Dallas, TX 2015), UT Arlington (2016), Texas FreshAIR (San Antonio, TX 2016), SKKU (2016), Korea Univ. (2016), Hanyang (2016), Kyung Hee (2016), Chung-Ang (2016), Yonsei (2016), Seoul National Univ. (2016), Kyungpook National Univ. (2016), UKC (Dallas, TX 2016), UBC (2016), INFORMS CIST (Nashville, TN 2016), DSI (Austin, TX 2016), Univ. of North Texas (2017), Arizona State (2018), Simon Fraser (2019), Saarland (2021), Kyung Hee (2021), Tennessee Chattanooga (2021), Rochester (2021), KAIST (2021), Yonsei (2021), UBC (2022), Temple (2023)

This research methods article proposes a visual data analytics framework to enhance social media research using deep learning models. Drawing on the literature of information systems and marketing, complemented with data-driven methods, we propose a number of visual and textual content features including complexity, similarity, and consistency measures that can play important roles in the persuasiveness of social media content. We then employ state-of-the-art machine learning approaches such as deep learning and text mining to operationalize these new content features in a scalable and systematic manner. For the newly developed features, we validate them against human coders on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Furthermore, we conduct two case studies with a large social media dataset from Tumblr to show the effectiveness of the proposed content features. The first case study demonstrates that both theoretically motivated and data-driven features significantly improve the model’s power to predict the popularity of a post, and the second one highlights the relationships between content features and consumer evaluations of the corresponding posts. The proposed research framework illustrates how deep learning methods can enhance the analysis of unstructured visual and textual data for social media research.

Understanding Security Vulnerability Awareness, Firm Incentives, and ICT Development in Pan-Asia (JMIS 2020)

Zhuang, Yunhui, Yunsik Choi, Shu He, Alvin Chung Man Leung, Gene Moo Lee, Andrew B. Whinston (2020) Understanding Security Vulnerability Awareness, Firm Incentives, and ICT Development in Pan-Asia. Journal of Management Information Systems, 37(3): 668-693.

This paper investigates how the awareness of a security vulnerability index affects firms’ security protection strategy and how the information awareness effect interacts with firm incentives and country-wide IT development level. The security index is constructed based on outgoing spams and phishing website hosting, which may serve as an indicator of a firm’s security controls. To study whether security vulnerability awareness causes firms to improve their security, we conducted a randomized field experiment on 1,262 firms in six Pan-Asian countries and regions. Among 631 randomly selected treated firms, we alerted them of their security vulnerability index and their relative rankings compared to their peers via advisory emails and websites. Difference-in-differences analyses show that compared with the controls, the treated firms improve their security over time, with a statistically significant reduction of outgoing spam volume according to one of the data sources but not phishing website hosting. However, a statistically significant reduction in phishing website hosting was observed among non-web hosting firms, suggesting that firms’ underlying incentives play an important role in the treatment effect. Lastly, exploiting the multi-country nature of the data, we found that firms in countries with high information and communications technology (ICT) development are more responsive to our intervention because they have higher IT capabilities and more resources to resolve security issues. Our study provides cybersecurity policymakers with useful insights on how firm incentives and ICT environments play roles in firms’ security measure adoption.