We are pleased to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminars and are delighted to welcome Jura Liaukonyte (Cornell University). Professor Liaukonyte’s research interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics, industrial organization, and quantitative marketing. Her current investigations seek to uncover actionable insights from Big Data, quantify advertising impact on consumer choice (particularly advertising content), understand the impact of food labels, and incorporate insights from behavioral economics into traditional choice models. She holds a PhD from the University of Virginia, and published in journals such as Management Science, American Journal of Agricultural Economics and International Journal of Industrial Organization among others.
More about the speaker: https://dyson.cornell.edu/faculty-research/faculty/jl2545/
Speaker: Jura Liaukonyte (Cornell University)
Title: Browsing the Aisles or Browsing the App? How Online Grocery Shopping is Changing What We Buy (with Sai Chintala and Nathan Yang)
Abstract: This paper studies the impact of online grocery retail channels on the variety and diversity of items purchased during regular shopping trips. We leverage unique big data that captures both offline (i.e., purchases made at brick-and-mortar grocery outlet) and online (i.e., purchases made via the Instacart platform) shopping behavior for the same household and the same retailer. For comparability of within-household offline and online shopping trips, we use machine learning techniques to identify characteristic shopping trips. Our empirical analysis reveals that shopping cart diversity is noticeably lower for online shopping trips when online trips are considered to be a replacement of offline shopping trips (as opposed to fill-in or stockpiling online trips). We also find that online shopping baskets typically have significantly fewer fruits and vegetables, which are not picked up via alternative shopping channels by most households. To better understand the drivers behind our results, we find that online trips are more similar to each other than offline trips, potentially suggesting a recommendation system design or past-orders-shortcut mechanism behind our results. Finally, we explore the broader health implications of online shopping by assessing its impact on the types of foods purchased.
Date: Thursday, September 30
Time: 16:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn
Moderator: Linas Tarasonis
Join Zoom Meeting
https://sseriga-edu.zoom.us/j/89443319742?pwd=MEtwaktweTVybDFQQ3hyUXNiTi9RZz09
Meeting ID: 894 4331 9742
Passcode: 432940