In the realm of multichannel digital retailing, free shipping has gained popularity as a promotion strategy. However, few studies have investigated how retailers make decisions regarding free shipping. Furthermore, concerns have arisen regarding the sustainability of free shipping promotions for manufacturers. This research employs a simultaneous equation model with fixed effects to explore the determinants of market structure concerning the proportion of retailers offering free shipping and its impact on manufacturers’ product sales. As per our current knowledge, this research is pioneering in establishing a causal relationship between the percentage of free-shipping retailers and manufacturers’ product sales. Specifically, an increase in the percentage of retailers employing free shipping leads to higher product sales, while lower product sales drive increased retailers to adopt free shipping. Our findings indicate that competition among products has a significant positive effect on the percentage of retailers offering free shipping in the interactive relationship. Furthermore, increased competition among retailers results in more retailers adopting free shipping strategies. These results affirm the efficacy of free shipping as a promotional approach to increase manufacturers’ product sales, particularly in highly competitive markets.

Consumer privacy information is used to target persuasive advertising in E-commerce, which raises consumer privacy concern. Consumer privacy concern is relative to consumer’s intrinsic privacy concern and social concern over the application of consumer privacy information, known as the anchoring effect of privacy. The anchoring effect of privacy influences targeted persuasive advertising competition. With a game-theoretical model, this paper studies how asymmetric duopolistic firms compete with targeted persuasive advertising considering the anchoring effect of privacy. The results indicate that when the advantageous firm increases its advertising level, the advantageous firm gets more profit, and the disadvantageous firm gets less profit only if the anchoring effect of privacy is greater than zero. Otherwise, the disadvantageous firm gets more profit, but the advantageous firm gets less profit. Then, in equilibrium, the increase in the expected anchoring effect of privacy, expected consumer’s intrinsic privacy concern, and advertising influence power reinforce the competition asymmetry. Whereas, the increase in social concern over the application of consumer privacy information weakens the competition asymmetry.

While data-driven targeted advertisement enhances content platform profitability, it exacerbates consumer privacy concerns. Transferring privacy control rights to consumers is considered effective in alleviating consumer privacy concerns but risks reducing data disclosure and subsequently weakening personalized-service utility and advertisement effectiveness. This paper investigates a platform’s strategic motivation to transfer privacy control rights and evaluates its economic implications for platform advertisement strategies, platform profit, consumer surplus and platform–consumer welfare. Our findings show that transferring privacy control rights to consumers increases the advertisement intensity targeted to non-privacy-sensitive consumers, while the advertisement intensity targeted to privacy-sensitive consumers may increase or decrease, depending on the utility loss of personalized service caused by non-disclosure. More importantly, the effects of transferring privacy control rights depend jointly on the utility loss of personalized service and the advertisement-efficiency reduction caused by non-disclosure. When both effects are limited, transferring privacy control rights simultaneously increases platform profit, consumer surplus, and platform–consumer welfare. When the utility loss remains limited but the advertisement-efficiency reduction becomes moderate, consumer surplus and platform–consumer welfare increase while platform profit decreases, indicating that the platform lacks a profit incentive to transfer privacy control rights voluntarily. When either effect becomes sufficiently large, retaining privacy control rights increases platform profit, consumer surplus, and platform–consumer welfare. These findings indicate that transferring privacy control rights can serve as a strategic governance mechanism, but it is not a one-size-fits-all solution to solve the privacy-personalization paradox in data-driven marketing.