Advertising and promotion · Randomized field experiment with econometric analysis of seller responses to alternative user-base disclosures.
Growing Two-Sided Networks by Advertising the User Base: A Field Experiment
Gary D. Lin, Erik Brynjolfsson, Michael D. Smith (2010). Growing Two-Sided Networks by Advertising the User Base: A Field Experiment. Marketing Science. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.1100.0560
Plain-English take
Advertising the size/composition of the user base changed seller participation; the effective message depended on which side of the market was being recruited.
How much weight to give this
4/5 Field evidence with bounded scope
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Randomized field experiment with econometric analysis of seller responses to alternative user-base disclosures.
Prospective sellers on a large business-to-business two-sided website.
Comparison details need confirmation in the full paper.
Only the publisher page was checked; full-text methods are not established.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the publisher page; this is not evidence that blinding was or was not used.
Research question
What the authors investigated
Growing Two-Sided Networks by Advertising the User Base: A Field Experiment?
Design
Randomized field experiment with econometric analysis of seller responses to alternative user-base disclosures.
Sample and setting
Prospective sellers on a large business-to-business two-sided website.
Reported result
What the study found
Advertising the size/composition of the user base changed seller participation; the effective message depended on which side of the market was being recruited.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The experiment concerns one platform and one recruitment decision, so effects may not generalize to other marketplaces, products, or long-run network growth. The accessible publisher page was used for this listing; correction history was not independently checked.
Possible founder application
Use as a bounded example of growing two-sided networks by advertising the user base: a field experiment; compare its context and design with your own market before applying its result.
Evidence access
Publisher article page; full-text availability varies and was not established in this review.
Crossref record and publisher DOI landing page identify this as a Marketing Science field experiment; the abstract reports randomized display-format treatments on a B2B website. Publisher page was directly retrieved; detailed full-text methods were not independently verified.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.