Steering Online Search using Big Data

Buying and selling products on the internet is affecting the lives of many people. This project studies the impact of digital search platforms, such as Google, Tripadvisor or Booking.com, to bring together supply and demand. Consumers search for certain keywords and these platforms present a ranking of firms that may be keyword relevant thereby steering consumers to search firms in a certain order, affecting their eventual purchases. Search platforms may use large datasets on consumer search activities and their purchases to produce personalizing rankings. Search platforms (as gateways to online markets) may rank the products in the order they think would best fit the consumer preferences, but they may also obfuscate the ranking. Many of these search platforms also have so-called sponsored positions at the top of their ranking where firms compete and pay to be included. To evaluate the welfare consequences of the behaviour of search platforms, the effects of steering search should be modelled explicitly. This project aims to evaluate the different incentives of platforms to steer consumer search and firm behaviour, and how this shapes the competitiveness of consumer markets and consumer well-being. By delving into the details of the online search process and how it is affected by search platforms, the project not only aims to make important innovations to the academic search literature, but also aims to address important policy concerns related to online markets that are at the core of the EU Digital Market and Digital Service Acts.