Streaming platform and strategic recommendation bias

Marc Bourreau and Germain Gaudin

Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2022, vol. 31, issue 1, 25-47

Abstract: We consider a platform that carries content from two upstream content providers and presents personalized recommendations to participating customers. We focus on streaming platforms in media markets, where users pay a subscription fee to join the platform but no usage fee, and consume a mix of content originating from each provider. We characterize the bias in the user‐specific recommendations offered by the platform when one content provider charges lower royalties than the other. We establish that if consumers are sufficiently insensitive to bias, the recommendation system allows the platform to credibly threaten upstream providers to steer consumers away from their content, which reduces their market power. We also investigate the effects of vertical integration by the platform and show the robustness of our results to nonlinear (personalized) streaming services.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jems.12452

Related works:
Working Paper: Streaming platform and strategic recommendation bias (2021)
Working Paper: Streaming Platform and Strategic Recommendation Bias (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:31:y:2022:i:1:p:25-47

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... ref=1058-6407&site=1

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().