Biography

Dongwon Lee is currently a doctoral candidate of MIS in the Information and Decision Sciences Department at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota . Prior to attending the University of Minnesota , he received his MS degree in MIS from the University of Arizona . He also earned his MBA and BBA degree in MIS from Seoul National University , Seoul , Korea . He is a recipient of doctoral dissertation fellowship from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota in 2004-5. He also represented the University of Minnesota at the 3rd Big 10 IS Doctoral and Junior Faculty Research Symposium, East Lansing , MI, May 2004. For more details, check out his virtual home.

Background: "The major goal driving my research is to provide a significant contribution to theory and practice in the IS field by obtaining usable solutions to the practical problems that arise in the real business world. With my education and related academic research experience in the field of MIS, I feel confident that I am well prepared to achieve this goal. First, I have a strong mathematical background in MIS, such as statistics, operations research, and economics through courses taken at Seoul National University where I graduated with honors. In addition, I have studied statistical and behavioral methodologies at the University of Arizona where one of my individual projects was accepted into the 22nd Internation Conference on Information Systems (ICIS-2001). Second, I have a strong technical background in MIS with an emphasis in database management systems (DBMS) such as Oracle 8/9(i), MS SQL Server, MS Access, Borland InterBase, etc. In addition, I utilize several programming languages and technologies such as Java, C#, Smalltalk, Perl, VB .NET, ASP .NET, HTML, XML, and object -oriented system development using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). In the University of Arizona 's Advanced Database Research Group, I developed a 'Reverse Engineering Agent' which is written in Java and interfaces with the CREAM ( Conflict Resolution Environment Autonomous Mediation) application. In addition, in order to empirically study firms' price changing behaviors, which is my current research area, I built a software agent with efficient algorithms for collecting price data from the web."

Research Interests: During my doctoral studies so far, I have worked on various problems involving very different application domains, referent theories, and empirical research methodologies. The problem domains that I have examined cover the three major streams of my research: the adoption of e-commerce, agent-based knowledge sharing and negotiation, and rigidities of price in the digital economy. The referent disciplines that I primarily draw upon for research include economics, marketing sciences, and computer science. Given this variety, the focus of my research may seem to be dispersed. However, my research work can be considered to fall under the broad areas of e-commerce associated with information systems (IS). The major goal driving my research is to provide a significant contribution to theory and practice in the IS field by obtaining usable solutions to the practical problems that arise in the real business world. Such research also inspires a wide variety of multi-disciplinary interest, ranging from information systems, marketing sciences, to economics. My research papers have appeared in major academic journals such as Information Systems Frontiers, Journal of Global Information Technology Management, Electronic Markets, ACM Crossroads, as well as academic conferences such as the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) and the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).

Current Research Project: The major and current stream of my research interests, which will be the focus area of my dissertation research, is the investigation of price rigidity in the digital economy. Price rigidity, a phenomenon where prices do not change with the regularity predicted by standard economic theory, is a topic of long-standing interest in firms, industries and the economy as a whole. I believe that the issue of price rigidity in the digital economy should be given more scrutiny than the literature has provided. There may be factors besides menu costs that can explain the price-changing behaviors that digital economy firms exhibit. For example, firms may make use of non-price elements, such as customer service, delivery lags or free shipping instead of price adjustments. In addition, there may be differences in price-changing behaviors that are observed for different firms relative to the different products. Similar explanations may also occur at the level of industries, as well as within or between sales channels. So with this concern about the pervasive expectation of declining price rigidity on the Internet, we address the following research questions: (1) Should we expect less price rigidity in e-commerce compared to traditional (non-Internet) channels? (2) Are there any differences in price changing behaviors within/between products, firms, channels, and industries? (3) Other than menu cost explanation, what theories can explain what we observe, and why? To answer these research questions, first, I developed a data collection software agent that since the end of March 2003 has mined information for multiple product categories (i.e., books, CDs, DVDs, video games, notebooks, PDAs, software, digital cameras/camcorders, DVD players, monitors, and hard drives) and more than 1,200 products. The collected information includes list prices, selling prices, shipping costs, production (or publication) dates, customers' ratings on products and stores, sales ranks, and the like. I have already collected more than 4,000,000 daily data observations. In addition, I designed a research framework to test different theories on price rigidity that will be observed at the different levels of analysis: product, firm, and industry.

General Impressions: "My experience in the doctoral program at the Carlson School of Management has enlarged my views on the IS research. As a doctoral student, I could be exposed to many different application domains, referent theories, and empirical research methodologies. In addition, I have a chance to be involved in the collaborative research with Mark Bergen (Marketing Professor at U of M) and Daniel Levy (Economics Professor at Emory University) who are experts in the area of price rigidity. I expect that this collaborative research will be one of my most unique experiences compared to that of my peers."