Modeling Behavioral Dynamics in Digital Content Consumption: An Attention-Based Neural Point Process Approach with Applications in Video Games

Marketing Science, Forthcoming

66 Pages Posted: 8 Aug 2022 Last revised: 17 Jan 2023

See all articles by Junming Yin

Junming Yin

Carnegie Mellon University

Zisu Wang

University of Arizona - Department of Management Information Systems

Yue (Katherine) Feng

Hong Kong Polytechnic University - Department of Management and Marketing

Yong Liu

University of Arizona

Date Written: July 24, 2022

Abstract

The consumption of digital content products (e.g., video games and live streaming) is often associated with multi-faceted, dynamically interacting consumer behavior that is subject to influence from pertinent external events. Inspired by these characteristics, we develop a novel attention-based neural point process approach to holistically capture the richness and complexity of consumer behavioral dynamics in modern digital content consumption. Our model features a new multi-representational, continuous-time attention mechanism that can flexibly model dynamic interactions between different types of behavior under external influence. Using learned representations as sufficient statistics of past events, we build a marked point process to efficiently characterize the occurrence time, behavior combination, and consumption quantity of consumers’ future activities. We illustrate our model development and applications in the empirical context of a sports video game, showing its superior predictive performance over a wide range of baseline methods. Leveraging individual-level parameter estimates, we further demonstrate our model’s utility for conducting segmentation analysis and evaluating the effects of past events on consumers’ future engagement. Our model provides managers and practitioners with a powerful tool for developing more effective and targeted marketing strategies and gaining insights into consumer behavioral dynamics in digital content consumption.

Keywords: digital content consumption, video game, behavioral dynamics, marked point process, attention mechanism, recurrent neural network

Suggested Citation

Yin, Junming and Wang, Zisu and Feng, Yue (Katherine) and Liu, Yong, Modeling Behavioral Dynamics in Digital Content Consumption: An Attention-Based Neural Point Process Approach with Applications in Video Games (July 24, 2022). Marketing Science, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4171244

Junming Yin (Contact Author)

Carnegie Mellon University ( email )

Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
United States

Zisu Wang

University of Arizona - Department of Management Information Systems ( email )

Tucson
AZ 85721
United States

Yue (Katherine) Feng

Hong Kong Polytechnic University - Department of Management and Marketing ( email )

Li Ka Shing Tower
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
China

Yong Liu

University of Arizona ( email )

1130 E Helen Street
Tucson, AZ 85721
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://eller.arizona.edu/people/yong-liu

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