Business & Management Research Centre: Andrei Hagiu

Andrei Hagiu

Professor of Information Systems
Questrom School of Business
Boston University

Personalization, data portability and competitive dynamics

Date: Friday, October 3rd, 2025
Time: 10:30 am - 12:00 pm EDT
Location: Armstrong Building, Room 375

All are cordially invited to attend.

About:

We study data portability in a model of dynamic price competition where product quality improves for each customer as personal data builds up with usage. This can reflect AI-driven personalisation based on customer data or customers that embed their own data into the firm's product via their usage. We show that when consumers are forward looking and the firm can personalize its prices, data portability unambiguously harms consumers and benefits firms, reflecting that it softens price competition. Indeed, if they could, firms would commit to allow their customers to take their data with them if they switch firms in the future. By contrast, consumers gain and the leading firm may lose from data portability when (i) consumers are myopic, (ii) firms can no longer personalize pricing, or (iii) data portability is applied retroactively to data already held.