Each week, Daniels is featuring a researcher who conducts meaningful research that impacts their field and the wider community. Learn more about their work in Q&As with the Daniels Research team and email them to nominate yourself or a colleague for a future Q&A.
Young Kwark’s expertise is in computer science and statistics (BS) and information systems (MS). She worked at LG CNS Co., Ltd., as a system developer and IT/IS consultant. She also received MBA and PhD degrees. Her research interests encompass online retailing, user-generated content, health IT, uncertainty and information sharing, digital piracy, information security, anti-trust practices, regulatory issues related to technological advancement, and emerging phenomena in online platforms. Her papers have been published in top academic journals, including INFORMS Decision Analysis, Journal of Management Information Systems, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly and Management Science.
What do you study?
About sixteen years ago at the beginning of my doctoral studies, I started researching emerging technologies–mostly mobile or online platforms–to analyze online reviews and user-generated content. I also started to look at conflict between channel members, such as conflicts between Amazon and Amazon sellers. Those two sets are supposed to share interests but in fact they are often in competition. My main focus these days is on those big technology platforms and the effects of having a monopolistic power in the marketplace.
Can you share more about your recent work?
Amazon is an open marketplace and is supposed to sell other producers’ products, but in recent years it has begun to sell more and more of its own branded products. There’s a lot of criticism around this practice because Amazon uses sellers’ data to help sell its own product, while the sellers themselves do not have access to that full set of data. So they’re engaging in this anti-competitive behavior by becoming a direct competitor with its platform users.
The U.S. is still grappling with how to deal with this issue, but the EU is investigating and moving more quickly against Amazon’s behavior. Amazon meanwhile is responding proactively by saying that they are going to share all of the sellers’ data with them now, which sounds good, but the question remains as to whether or not this can work fairly without government intervention.
I’m also broadening how I look at health information technology (HIT) including electronic health records (EHRs), telemedicine, and health information exchanges (HIEs) by looking into the healthcare industry. Using a patient with a chronic disease as an example, doctors may recommend a therapy to the patient to manage it, and then maybe recommend a higher dosage if the results aren’t what they want to see. But when the patient wants to delay this intensified treatment, or when there is enough clinical uncertainty that the provider doesn’t move forward with the treatment, we call it therapeutic inertia. This can result in negative outcomes for patients. What I’m finding is that healthcare information platforms can actually be leveraged to provide good alarms and information that can improve this inertia.
What kind of impact do you want this work to have on society?
Ultimately, what I’ve found in relation to Amazon in particular is that antitrust issues don’t necessarily lie in the platforming of Amazon’s own products, but rather in the sellers’ contracts with Amazon which I think should be managed by regulating parties. So my main goal is to inform regulators as to what kinds of controls may actually help curb antitrust behavior. One of my papers, published in ISR in 2023, received the 2024 Antitrust Writing Award for Best Academic Article. This recognition highlights its substantial impact on antitrust issues and recent regulatory developments related to dominant e-platforms in the digital economy. I work on these regulatory issues that arise with new technological advancement.
How do you bring your research into the classroom?
I used to be a systems developer before I came into academia, and I designed and developed systems and e-platforms for companies across various industries. So I like to motivate students by talking with them about how these systems and e-platforms work, how these firms behave, and how all of this affects their lives. Now firms are incorporating AI very quickly too, so I also facilitate class discussion of how to prepare for their careers and the job market in this rapidly changing landscape.