Marketing Science

Looking for something online? Your 10-second search probably goes a lot like this: Type something into Google, scan the list of results and click one. A multibillion-dollar search engine marketing industry has sprung up to help companies figure how to make sure you click their link. But to click something, you first have to look at it. And how people look at search results might not happen the way advertisers think it does, according to new research from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Like so much else this year, campaigning in the runup to the 2020 presidential election will look very different, says Maryland Smith’s Lingling Zhang.

With social distancing guidelines, much of the typical grassroots push to reach voters in parking lots and with door-to-door canvassing – efforts that in the past have been some of most effective to get voters to the polls, according to Zhang’s latest research – can’t happen.

Everyone is looking for a good deal on sites like Groupon and LivingSocial – including the merchants who use the platforms to attract new customers and the daily deal sites themselves. The bigger the online platform, the more bargaining power it wields over merchants, new research from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business shows.