Trade-Offs in Leveraging External Data Capabilities: Evidence from a Field Experiment in an Online Search Market
中文摘要
企业日益借助外部实体的数据能力来提升其产品与服务,但衡量此类能力的影响颇具挑战。我们与一家科技公司的搜索团队合作,分析了一项大规模实地实验:在该实验中,我们在108天内对两百多万用户随机分配了外部领先搜索引擎自动补全应用程序接口(API)的访问权限。我们衡量了取消API访问对焦点公司搜索产品两项绩效指标的因果效应:(a) 搜索建议的点击率(CTR);(b) 搜索引擎结果页面的点击率。我们发现,平均而言,与保留API访问的基准相比,取消API访问使搜索建议点击率降低4.6%。此外,我们利用实验变异,采用工具变量方法证明:搜索建议点击率提高(降低)10%,会使头部位置搜索结果的点击率提高(降低)1.85%。然而,取消API访问的负面效应随时间推移而减弱,长期效应的量级仅为短期实验所得效应的一半。我们为长期效应提供了启发性机制证据:焦点公司对领先搜索引擎数据能力的依赖削弱了其内部数据的积累,进而限制了其自动补全预测的改进。本研究向管理者揭示了利用外部数据能力时的一个关键权衡,并为《数字市场法》等强制大型数字平台共享数据的监管提供了启示。
Abstract
Firms increasingly leverage external entities’ data capabilities to unlock improvements in their offerings, but measuring the impact of such capabilities is challenging. Collaborating with the search team at a technology company, we analyzed a large-scale field experiment in which we randomized access to an external, leading search engine’s autocomplete application programming interface (API) for more than two million users over 108 days. We measure the causal effects of removing API access on two performance metrics of the focal company’s search product: (a) clickthrough rate (CTR) on search suggestions and (b) CTR on the search engine results page. We find that, on average, compared with the baseline with API access, removing API access reduces the search suggestion CTR by 4.6%. Further, exploiting the experimental variation, we use an instrumental variables approach to establish that a 10% increase (decrease) in CTR on search suggestions leads to a 1.85% increase (decrease) in CTR on top-slot search results. However, the negative effect of removing API access becomes less negative over time with the effect magnitude in the longer term being half what we would have obtained with a short-term experiment. We provide suggestive mechanism evidence of the longer term effect: the focal company’s reliance on the leading search engine’s data capability tapers off the accumulation of internal data and then limits the improvement of its autocomplete predictions. This research informs managers of a critical trade-off in leveraging external data capabilities and sheds light on regulations, such as the Digital Markets Act, that mandate data sharing by large digital platforms.