Gil Appel CV, June 2015 Marketing Department Mobile: +972-544-570507 Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business & Management gil.appel@gmail.com Ben Gurion University of the Negev www.gilappel.com P.O.B. 653 Beer-Sheva, 8410501 Israel Education Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management: Ph.D. Candidate (Proposal defended), Marketing Department Summer 2016 (expected) Tel Aviv University, The Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration: M.B.A., Magna cum Laude 2009 B.A., Economics & Management 2003 Research Interests Digital Goods, Word-of Mouth, Marketing Analytics, Customer Relationship Management Papers in Progress and Working Papers Job Market Paper: Gil Appel, Barak Libai, and Eitan Muller, How Free Products Grow: Adoption Patterns in Fast Moving Digital Goods, Currently being revised for re-submission to Marketing Science - Also available as part of MSI s working paper series (2015) [15-100] and MSI Insights (2015-2). Paper in Progress: Gil Appel, Barak Libai, and Eitan Muller, The Financial Impact of Knockoffs on the Original Fashion Design, Currently being revised for re-submission to Journal of Marketing - Also available as part of MSI s working paper series (2013) [13-108] Gil Appel - June 2015 Page 1 of 6
Work in Progress Gil Appel, Barak Libai, and Eitan Muller, Freemium Monetization in the Presence of Customer Attrition, Work in Progress, in preparation for submission to Marketing Science Gil Appel, and Oded Lowengart, The Desire for Here and Now: The Information Era s Impact on Aggregate Consumer Behavior, data collection and preliminary analysis completed, in preparation for submission to the Journal of Marketing Research Yaniv Shani, Gil Appel, Ron Shachar, and Shai Danziger, Accidentally on purpose: How consumers manage to detach from owned products, In preparation for submission to the Journal of Marketing Research Conference Presentations and Invited Seminars Growth and Popularity in the Market for Free Digital Products, with Barak Libai and Eitan Muller 37 th INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, Baltimore, MD June, 2015 Design Piracy: The Extensive Impact of a Fashion Knockoff, with Barak Libai and Eitan Muller 36 th INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, Atlanta, GA June, 2014 The Cost of Uniqueness and Design Piracy, with Barak Libai and Eitan Muller 12 th Marketing in Israel Conference, Haifa, Israel December, 2012 Invited Seminar, Tel Aviv University, Israel July, 2012 34 th INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, Boston, MA June, 2012 41 st European Marketing Academy Annual Conference (EMAC), Lisbon, Portugal May, 2012 Research Experience Founding lab resident at the 1 st cycle of the Big Data Lab at ebay Inc. 2013-2014 Selected by ebay to be a founding member at ebay's Big Data Lab to derive new marketing insights from huge datasets of millions of consumer behaviors, decisions and transactions over time. Teaching Experience Courses Developed Workshop in social networks, developed with Prof. Barak Libai and Prof. Jacob Goldenberg, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC). Herzliya, Israel 2011-2015 Courses Taught Interdisciplinary Center (IDC). Herzliya, Israel, Adjunct Lecturer - Customer Centric Marketing 2014 Instructor Rating - 4.88/5 2015 Instructor Rating - (grades not yet received) Gil Appel - June 2015 Page 2 of 6
Executive Education Interdisciplinary Center (IDC). Herzliya, Israel A Guided Tour in a Dynamic New World 2014, 2015 This is a short workshop on free web based tools for marketing analytics (starting with Google Trends and advancing in complexity), also given as several guest lectures for Global MBA and MBA classes T.A. Experience Interdisciplinary Center (IDC). Herzliya, Israel, Global MBA, MBA,BA 2011-2015 Core Marketing 2, Customer Centric Marketing, Workshop in Social Networks, Brand Management, Empirical Research in Marketing, Marketing Consultant With Prof. Barak Libai, Prof. Jacob Goldenberg, Prof. Zvi Gilula and Prof. Oded Netzer Tel-Aviv University. Tel-Aviv, Israel, Executive MBA and MBA 2008-2012 Core Marketing, CRM, Customer Centric Marketing, Brand Management With Prof. Barak Libai and Dr. Irit Nitzan Ad-hoc Reviewer International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) Workshops Workshop on Quantitative Marketing and Structural Econometrics at Duke University, 2013 Graduate Level Courses Taken Advanced Mathematics for Economists Econometrics I for Research and M.A. Students Advanced Econometrics II Advanced Econometrics III Micro Economic Theory A Bayesian Inference Social and Economic Networks Marketing Research Seminar for PhD Students Doctoral Seminar on Big Data in Social Systems Yoni Stancescu Saul Lach Alma Cohen, Josh Angrist, Daniele Paserman (Joined) Alon Eizenberg Ariel Rubinstein Daniel Yekutiely Andrea Galeotti Jacob Goldenberg Lev Muchnik Gil Appel - June 2015 Page 3 of 6
Awards and Extracurricular Activities Member of the Leadership Forum: 2009-2010 Tel-Aviv University s forum for outstanding future leaders, founded in cooperation with Globes magazine. Member of the Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society Since 2009 Dean's List, The Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration (twice) 2008-2010 Representative of the Management Faculty at the Tel-Aviv University students union 2000-2002 Elected unanimously, three years in a row Professional Experience Zivion Construction Ltd. Tel-Aviv, Israel 1998-2009 Executive Positions References Barak Libai Professor of Marketing Arison School of Business Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel 4610101 Phone: +972-9-960-2407 libai@idc.ac.il Oded Lowengart Dean, Professor of Marketing, Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer Sheva, Israel 8410501 Phone: +972-8-647-2783 odedl@bgu.ac.il Eitan Muller Professor of Marketing Stern School of Business New York University, New York, NY 10012 and Professor of Marketing Arison School of Business Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel 4610101 Ron Shachar Professor of Marketing Arison School of Business Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel 4610101 Phone: +972-9-960-2408 (Israel) ronshachar@idc.ac.il Phone: +972-9-960-2428 (Israel) emuller@stern.nyu.edu Gil Appel - June 2015 Page 4 of 6
Appendix: Selected Abstracts Gil Appel, Barak Libai, and Eitan Muller, How Free Products Grow: Adoption Patterns in Fast Moving Digital Goods, Working on submission for 2 nd round in Marketing Science, Job Market Paper Free product offerings, or freeware, dominate online markets yet our knowledge and theories about their growth originate mainly from conventional goods. We demonstrate that growth dynamics of freeware are different for those observed for conventional new products. Using a large-scale dataset that documents the growth of close to sixty thousand free digital products, and supported by an additional analysis of thousands of mobile apps, we find that freeware products display three distinct patterns of growth: bell-shaped pattern ( Diffuse ) which are largely left skewed, exponential-type decline ( Slide ), and a combination of the two ( Slide and Diffuse ). We further show a robust relationship between freeware popularity and growth pattern ubiquity, providing the first evidence on a relationship between products popularity and growth patterns. We define two critical effects idiosyncratic to freeware that help to explain the patterns observed: Reliance on recent adoptions - distinct from cumulative adoption - which we label the recency effect; and the disproportional effect of early period external effect which we label the inception effect. Indeed we find that it is recent adoption, more than cumulative adoptions that were historically highlighted in the new product growth literature, that help to explain the difference in popularity among freeware. Overall, we highlight the need to adapt our knowledge on new product growth and its modeling to the fast moving world of free digital products. Gil Appel, Barak Libai, and Eitan Muller, The Financial Impact of Knockoffs on the Original Fashion Design, Working on submission for 2 nd round in the Journal of Marketing Whether to legally protect original fashion designs against knockoffs is an ongoing debate among US legislators, industry groups, and legal academic circles, with a disagreement even on the fundamental question of whether the effect of a knockoff on the profits of an original design is positive or negative. Yet to-date this discussion has not utilized marketing knowledge and formal approaches, which are very relevant to questions raised. We combine data collected on the growth of fashion items with industry statistics, to create the first formal analysis of the essential questions in the base of the public debate. Our results highlight the negative role of ubiquity of the design, which can affect the original design demand due to consumers quest for uniqueness, and show how it can have an extensive impact on original design profitability. We explore the contribution of the opposing forces that constitute the knockoff financial effect on original designs, and discuss the implications of a suggested legal protection period on this effect. Gil Appel - June 2015 Page 5 of 6
Gil Appel, Barak Libai, and Eitan Muller, Freemium Monetization in the Presence of Customer Attrition, Work in Progress, In preparation for submission to Marketing Science Free product offerings dominate online markets, yet firms struggle to monetize such products and make profits relying on both advertising income and content sold to consumers. We highlight the importance of retention considerations in determining optimal firm behavior in digital markets involving free products. We look at product stickiness consumers tendency to re-use the product in future periods and consider a case, based on a prevalent business model, in which the firm offers a free, advertising-based version of a product alongside an ad-free version that customers can purchase out-of-pocket. We show that in such markets, stickiness largely drives the dynamics that emerge with different equilibria based on stickiness level. Stickiness drives the firm s optimal decisions regarding advertising intensity and price, as well as the composition of the customer base. Specifically, price for the paid version increases with stickiness, while optimal advertising intensity is non-monotonic. Beyond a certain level of stickiness, both price and advertising increase, with price increasing more rapidly, and the proportion of free users increases at the expense of the proportion of paying users. Gil Appel - June 2015 Page 6 of 6