Leveraging economics to evaluate how video length on TikTok impacts profits

Welcome to today’s episode! We have an exciting discussion lined up as we dive into a fascinating study on TikTok, the wildly popular consumer-to-consumer media platform. My guests today explore how the length of videos impacts their performance on the platform. By modeling viewer behavior and analyzing market performance, they uncover intriguing insights including different optimal video lengths for maximizing viewer traffic. Stay tuned as we unpack these findings and their implications for content creators and platforms alike!

I’m excited to introduce Xuying Zhao with Texas A&M University and Jane Gu with the University of Connecticut, to discuss their study in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research, called Content Length Limit: How Does It Matter for a Consumer-to-Consumer Media Platform?

For the younger generation, the Gen Z kids who are in middle school or high school, a very large percentage say they want their career to be Influencer, so that definitely shows how profitable this industry can be and how attractive this could be as well in terms of attracting content providers to TikTok. That’s obviously also contributed to the success of TikTok.

Interviewed this episode:

Xuying Zhao

Texas A&M University

Xuying Zhao is an associate professor at Texas A&M University. She conducts research on supply chain management and interface between operations management and marketing, especially for platform economy, video game, and retail industries. In recent papers, she has investigated theoretical models of video game design and pricing, social media content length and variety control, advance selling strategy, and inventory management with machine learning. Xuying has published many papers in journals such as MSOM, POM, Decision Science, and IEEE. She won 2009 eBusiness Best Paper Award from INFORMS. Xuying is an editorial review board member and a senior editor for POM. She has been a track chair or cluster chair of the interface between OM and Marketing for numerous INFORMS and POMS annual conferences. After gaining a BA in Computer Science from ZheJiang University in China, Xuying has worked for Microsoft. She subsequently earned an M.S. and Ph.D in Management Science from University of Texas at Dallas. Before joining Texas A&M University, Xuying has worked at University of Notre Dame. She has designed and taught many MBA courses, including Process Analytics, Supply Chain Analytics, Digital Supply Chain Innovations, and International Operations.

Jane Gu

University of Connecticut

Professor Jane Gu obtained Ph.D. in Marketing from NYU, Stern School of Business. Professor Gu’s research focuses on investigating how consumers gather information and make purchase decisions in digital environments and how marketers effectively devise digital strategies to cope with such consumer behaviors. Professor Gu has published in leading marketing and other business journals, including Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, and Management Information Systems Quarterly.

Professor Gu has taught at the undergraduate and MBA level including courses in Marketing Strategy, Marketing Management, Marketing Research, International Marketing, and New Media Marketing. At UConn, Professor Gu teaches Digital Marketing.

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