WIMI/Expedia Research Opportunity
Introduction
The Wharton Interactive Media Initiative invites interested faculty and doctoral students to attend a research opportunity webinar with Expedia on 12-1p 29 Jul 2010 (US East Coast time)
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WIMI/Expedia Research Opportunity
Predicting & optimizing consumer response to product search results
The Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI) invites interested faculty and doctoral students to attend a research opportunity webinar with Expedia on Thursday, July 29th.
Expedia (www.expedia.com), the largest online travel company in the world and a WIMI Corporate Partner, seeks new approaches to determining which hotels to display when a consumer searches for a hotel on Expedia.com. By tailoring search results according to characteristics of the user session, the search query and the user profile, Expedia hopes to dramatically improve the proportion of customers who ultimately book a hotel through Expedia websites. To model consumer response, Expedia will provide a data set that details events leading up to conversion (or failure to convert) for approximately 10,000 US-based users searching for hotels in each of four geographic markets (Cancun, NYC, Paris and Budapest). The data will include information about how the user arrived at Expedia, what promotional pages they have viewed, details of their search query such as dates and number of travelers, which hotels were displayed in search results, which hotels were clicked on and which hotels were purchased.
While the focus of this research opportunity is on predicting and optimizing search results to increase consumer conversion, it may also be useful to consider strategic issues such as how search results can be used by Expedia to manage relationships with hotels (where hotels typically set prices and service quality while Expedia controls search results). Researchers may also consider issues related to consumer behavior and user-interface design, such as how consumers will react to search results that might change from one session to another.
The business issues and data will be described in detail during the webinar and participants will be able to ask questions to the team at Expedia that is responsible for managing user data, conducting statistical analysis and managing product search results. After the webinar, interested researchers are invited to submit proposals to WIMI by August 15th. Data could be in the hands of researchers by the end of August! To learn more all interested faculty and doctoral students can attend the webinar from 12-1 Eastern / 9-10 Pacific on Thursday, July 29th by registering at If you can not attend the live event, a complete archive of the webinar will be available at forresearchers.asp. Questions can be sent to WIMI Research Director, Elea McDonnell Feit, at efeit@wharton.upenn.edu.
Eric T. Bradlow
The K.P. Chao Professor
Professor of Marketing, Statistics, and Education
Co-Director, Wharton Interactive Media Initiative
Vice-Dean, Wharton Doctoral Programs
Peter S. Fader
Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor
Professor of Marketing
Co-Director, Wharton Interactive Media Initiative