Social and Public Policy Issues in Marketing: Two Essays Concerning Gender, Public Safety and Marketing Outcomes

Across two essays, this research analyzes various social and public policy issues in marketing. In the first essay, the research contributes to the academic literature on workplace gender diversity by examining the impact of gender diverse development teams within the context of the video game industry. By using a dataset of over 2,800 games, we find that there is a curvilinear relationship between the measure of gender diversity on a video game development team and the subsequent total revenues that the video game generates. Our analysis shows that revenue maximization occurs at 35.38 percent women on a development team, which is well above the average percent women of 12.14 on a development team within the dataset. This research demonstrates that a more gender diverse team could produce items that bring in higher revenues. In the second essay, the research analyzes the effect of ridesharing on both sales of alcohol and instances of drunk driving. The authors find that when ridesharing enters a market, sales revenues of alcoholic beverages for on-site consumption increase. Additionally, the authors find that ridesharing is associated with a decrease in the number of daily drunk driving arrests. These studies show that the sharing economy can have a positive effect on both adjacent industries and public safety. In these two research projects, we examine how marketing intersects with issues of diversity, public policy, and social welfare, to contribute to a more holistic view in the academic literature.