The Senior Scholars Best Publications Committee of 2008 has selected Prof. Ravi Bapna’s paper ‘Consumer Surplus in Online Auctions’ as one of the five best Information Systems Papers published in 2008. The paper was published in Information Systems Research. CONGRATULATIONS!!!


ABSTRACT

Despite the growing research interest in Internet auctions, particularly those on eBay, little is known about quantifiable consumer surplus levels in such mechanisms. Using an ongoing novel field experiment that involves real bidders participating in real auctions, and voting with real dollars, we collect and examine a unique dataset to empirically quantify and understand determinants of consumer surplus in eBay auctions. The estimation procedure for private value auctions relies mainly on knowing the highest bid, which is not disclosed by eBay, but is available to us from our experiment. For common value auctions, where bidders bid strategically to avoid winner’s curse, we develop an estimation procedure that infers the bidders’ signals from their bids, and subsequently infers the item’s common value and resulting surplus, from the signals. Our analysis, based on a sample of 4514 eBay auctions, indicates that the median surplus level per eBay auction is $3.61, which roughly translates to $1.5 billion in accrued consumer surplus for the year 2003 alone. On a percentage basis, consumers are capturing at least 18.3% of the total surplus generated in eBay auctions. We find that consumer surplus is significantly different across currencies and item categories, negatively influenced by seller experience, auction duration and competition, and positively influenced by bidder experience, bidder aggressiveness and item price.

To read the complete paper, http://www.isb.edu/SRITNE/Image/WP-07-2004.pdf 

  SRITNE is back with yet another interesting issue of quarterly newsletter. This time the newsletter is theme-based. When the team was brain-storming on which theme to carry, we came up with several ideas. Then we came across a 2009 Gartner paper which predicted that by 2010, 20 per cent of organizations will have an industry-specific analytic application delivered via software as a service as a standard component of their business intelligence (BI) portfolio. We looked at the Indian scenario and realized the growing usage and demand for BI tools and applications. The companies are making strategies based on insights delivered from these tools.  Hence, we zeroed on the theme of BI usage in India. 

In the Industry Connect, you’ll find Mr. Arun O Gupta, Group Chief Technology Officer Shoppers Stop, talking about using the huge database in retail sector to avail competitive advantage. He recalls Shoppers Stop journey of using BI tools and how has been the ride so far. 

In Faculty Research, we are focusing on a case study developed by Prof. Ravi Bapna. The case talks about usage of data warehousing as a strategic tool at Bharati Airtel.  

The newsletter also covers the internationally renowned Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems. The conference was hosted by SRITNE, ISB. The conference carried the theme of ‘IT Services in a Global Environment’. The conference had 3 industry panels and various research papers with a wide range of topics.

 In the Student’s Corner, an Experiential Learning Programme (ELP) project is featured. The project targets to study the BI tools in retail sector – current usage and the need-gap analysis. 

Overall, we’ve tried to bring you an exciting newsletter. Do read it and let us know your feedback. The link to the newsletter is: http://www.isb.edu/sritne/File/SRITNEsQIII-Newsletter.pdf  

We save. We do save for making investments, for an acquisition, for building up our resources; we also make a contingency fund. But do we save the basic resources required to sustain our businesses. Do we save clean air? Do we save electricity? Do we save water? Do we save paper?

Optimum utilization of natural resources and using the available resources wisely, in short, GOING GREEN is the new mantra. It not only helps to protect environment, but also saves monetary resources and put across a company as ‘Environmental Friendly’.

ü      The data centre of Kotak Mahindra Bank has been consolidated into a new one which has smart cooling.

o       Result: Reduction of power consumption and a saving of Rs. 4.5 crore

ü      IBM has designed three green data centers for Religare Enterprise. Technologies used are – high density computing, virtualization and precision air-conditioning.

o       Result: Religare expects a saving of more than 3600 units (KWH) per day in power consumption. Approx. Rs. 1 crore per year.

ü      Thanks to virtualization, HP  has reduced its number of data centers from eighty five to three

o       Result: Data centre floor space has come down by 33%. Also a saving of $33 million and 380M KWH.

ü      HP has adopted duplex printing

o       Result: Saving of 800 ton paper per year. Approx. $7million per annum

Given the resources crunch, what these companies have done is commendable.

It isn’t required to be a big brand to go green. There are many SMEs which have adapted to green technology. Going green not only saved money, but also, helped sustaining them in this financial meltdown.