Yu Ma, Laurette Dubé and Nathan Yang awarded 2018 SSHRC Insight Grant

Congratulations to Yu Ma, Associate Professor in Marketing, Laurette Dubé, Professor in Marketing and Nathan Yang, Assistant Professor in Marketing, on being awarded the 2018 SSHRC Insight Grant “An Empirical Investigation of Digital Goods Consumption and Its Impact on Word-of-Mouth Marketing”.

The emergence of digital goods is creating new challenges and opportunities for business. Digital goods have some unique characteristics that make selling, buying and consuming to be significantly different from physical goods. They have near zero marginal cost of production and distribution, and once purchased, most digital goods can be consumed without wear and tear.

We aim to examine the consumption behaviour of digital goods in a large digital distribution platform, and investigate its impact on future purchase, consumption, and word of mouth. Our research will provide empirical insights on consumption behaviour and help managers design more effective digital goods marketing strategies.

Prof. Ma is principal investigator on this team grant with co-investigators Andrew Ching of University of Toronto, Laurette Dube of McGill University and Nathan Yang of McGill University.