scholarly journals Online reviews generated through product testing: can more favorable reviews be enticed with free products?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Garnefeld ◽  
Tabea Krah ◽  
Eva Böhm ◽  
Dwayne D. Gremler
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Sales Volume ◽  
Product Testing ◽  
Free Products ◽  
Testing Program ◽  
Product Ratings ◽  
Product Rating

AbstractOnline reviews have profound impacts on firm success in terms of sales volume and how much customers are willing to pay, yet firms remain highly dependent on customers’ voluntary contributions. A popular way to increase the number of online reviews is to use product testing programs, which offer participants free products in exchange for writing reviews. Firms that employ this practice generally hope to increase review quality and secure higher product rating scores. However, a qualitative study, experimental study, and multilevel analysis of a field study dataset of more than 200,000 online reviews by product testers combine to reveal that product testing programs do not necessarily generate higher quality reviews, nor better product ratings. Only in certain circumstances (e.g., higher priced products) does offering a product testing program generate these benefits for the firm. Therefore, companies should consider carefully if and when they want to offer product testing programs.

‘Asymmetric revelation’ effect: The influence of an increased number of photos on mental imagery and behavioural responses depending on target market

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-60
Author(s):  
Fabrice Larceneux ◽  
Marjolaine Bezançon ◽  
Thomas Lefebvre
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Mental Imagery ◽  
Target Market ◽  
Property Market ◽  
Lower Range ◽  
Revelation Effect ◽  
Behavioural Responses ◽  
Negative Effect

There has been little research exploring the effect of the number of photographs used to present a product, and the studies that have been carried out relate to experiments with a reduced number of non-informative photos. This article provides a first field study conducted on 3,658 real estate ads and shows that an increase in the number of photos decreases favourable behavioural responses for lower range properties, but has no effect in the case of higher range properties. This result is replicated and explained in an experimental study: for lower range properties, the addition of photos deteriorates the valence of mental images, decreases mental self-imagery and increases perceived worry. These variables explain the negative effect of the number of photos on behavioural responses. However, for higher range properties, the addition of photos – informative or not – does not improve behavioural responses. This ‘asymmetric revelation’ effect depending on the segment of the property market being targeted is discussed.

scholarly journals Modeling the Assimilation-Contrast Effects in Online Product Rating Systems: Debiasing and Recommendations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoying Zhang ◽  
Hong Xie ◽  
Junzhou Zhao ◽  
John C.S. Lui
Keyword(s):  
Product Quality ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Contrast Effects ◽  
Rating Systems ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Online Product Ratings ◽  
Product Ratings ◽  
Product Rating

The unbiasedness of online product ratings, an important property to ensure that users’ ratings indeed reflect their true evaluations to products, is vital both in shaping consumer purchase decisions and providing reliable recommendations. Recent experimental studies showed that distortions from historical ratings would ruin the unbiasedness of subsequent ratings. How to “discover” the distortions from historical ratings in each single rating (or at the micro-level), and perform the “debiasing operations” in real rating systems are the main objectives of this work. Using 42 million real customer ratings, we first show that users either “assimilate” or “contrast” to historical ratings under different scenarios: users conform to historical ratings if historical ratings are not far from the product quality (assimilation), while users deviate from historical ratings if historical ratings are significantly different from the product quality (contrast). This phenomenon can be explained by the well-known psychological argument: the “Assimilate-Contrast” theory. However, none of the existing works on modeling historical ratings’ influence have taken this into account, and this motivates us to propose the Histori- cal Influence Aware Latent Factor Model (HIALF), the first model for real rating systems to capture and mitigate historical distortions in each single rating. HIALF also allows us to study the influence patterns of historical ratings from a modeling perspective, and it perfectly matches the assimilation and contrast effects we previously observed. Also, HIALF achieves significant improvements in predicting subsequent ratings, and accurately predicts the relationships revealed in previous empirical measurements on real ratings. Finally, we show that HIALF can contribute to better recommendations by decoupling users’ real preference from distorted ratings, and reveal the intrinsic product quality for wiser consumer purchase decisions.

scholarly journals Understanding Persuasion Cascades in Online Product Rating Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 5490-5497
Author(s):  
Hong Xie ◽  
Yongkun Li ◽  
John C.S. Lui
Keyword(s):  
Product Quality ◽  
Estimation Error ◽  
Opinion Dynamics ◽  
Estimation Accuracy ◽  
Matrix Perturbation ◽  
Rating Systems ◽  
Quality Estimation ◽  
Scoring Rule ◽  
Product Ratings ◽  
Product Rating

Online product rating systems have become an indispensable component for numerous web services such as Amazon, eBay, Google play store and TripAdvisor. One functionality of such systems is to uncover the product quality via product ratings (or reviews) contributed by consumers. However, a well-known psychological phenomenon called “messagebased persuasion” lead to “biased” product ratings in a cascading manner (we call this the persuasion cascade). This paper investigates: (1) How does the persuasion cascade influence the product quality estimation accuracy? (2) Given a real-world product rating dataset, how to infer the persuasion cascade and analyze it to draw practical insights? We first develop a mathematical model to capture key factors of a persuasion cascade. We formulate a high-order Markov chain to characterize the opinion dynamics of a persuasion cascade and prove the convergence of opinions. We further bound the product quality estimation error for a class of rating aggregation rules including the averaging scoring rule, via the matrix perturbation theory and the Chernoff bound. We also design a maximum likelihood algorithm to infer parameters of the persuasion cascade. We conduct experiments on the data from Amazon and TripAdvisor, and show that persuasion cascades notably exist, but the average scoring rule has a small product quality estimation error under practical scenarios.

Measuring Product Type and Purchase Uncertainty with Online Product Ratings: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Application

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peiyu Chen ◽  
Lorin M. Hitt ◽  
Yili Hong ◽  
Shinyi Wu
Keyword(s):  
Product Category ◽  
Product Type ◽  
Horizontal Differentiation ◽  
Review System ◽  
Product Positioning ◽  
Rating Data ◽  
Business Operations ◽  
Online Product Ratings ◽  
Product Ratings ◽  
Product Rating

Search and experience goods, as well as vertical and horizontal differentiation, are fundamental concepts of great importance to business operations and strategy. In our paper, we propose a set of theory-grounded data-driven measures that allow us to measure not only product type (search vs. experience and horizontal vs. vertical differentiation) but also sources of uncertainty and to what extent consumer reviews help resolve uncertainty. We used product rating data from Amazon.com to illustrate the relative importance of fit in driving product utility and the importance of search for determining fit for each product category at Amazon. Our results also show that, whereas ratings based on verified purchasers are informative of objective product values, the current Amazon review system appears to have limited ability to resolve fit uncertainty. Industry practitioners could utilize our approaches to quantitatively measure product positioning to support marketing strategy for retailers and manufacturers, covering an expanded group of products.

Revisiting the service recovery paradox in the restaurant industry

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jong-Hyeong Kim ◽  
Wenxuan Du ◽  
Hyewon Youn
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Service Management ◽  
Service Recovery ◽  
Restaurant Industry ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Service Failures ◽  
Service Recovery Paradox ◽  
Practical Implications

PurposeThe service recovery paradox (SRP) refers to a particular effect whereby an excellent recovery can turn angry and frustrated customers into loyal ones. Researchers who have studied the SRP have reported mixed findings, with some providing evidence in its support and others not finding any such evidence. To address this discrepancy, this study aims to investigate the SRP.Design/methodology/approachThis study re-examined the phenomenon of the SRP with a field study and provided further evidence in a subsequent experimental study in which the failure and recovery conditions were carefully manipulated.FindingsThe results of this study suggest that the SRP was observed in neither the field study nor the scenario experiment.Practical implicationsThis study can influence the current service management of restaurants with regard to service failures in several ways.Originality/valueThis research is a pioneering effort to examine the SRP by conducting both a field study and a scenario experiment.

CSR in sport sponsorship consumers' perceptions of a sponsoring brand's CSR

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Apollo Demirel
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Consumer Response ◽  
Professional Sport ◽  
Socially Responsible ◽  
Sport Sponsorship ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sport Team ◽  
Sport Teams

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between sponsorship of professional sport teams and consumers' socially responsible perceptions of a sponsoring brand. More specifically, this research investigates if sponsorship of professional sport teams in itself leads consumers to perceive a sponsoring brand as socially responsible, and what factors may produce CSR perceptions and subsequent consumer response.Design/methodology/approachAn experimental study was conducted to examine the impact of sponsorship of professional sport teams on consumers' CSR perceptions of a sponsoring brand. Further, a field study was used to explore the role of sponsorship fit in generating CSR perceptions.FindingsThe results from the experimental study indicated that brand sponsorship of professional sport teams contributes to the socially responsible image of that brand, and sponsorship fit induces consumers' CSR perceptions of a sponsoring brand. Additionally, the results from the field study identified CSR perceptions as an underlying process driving the effect of sponsorship fit on consumers’ behavioral intentions toward a sponsoring brand. Lastly, the role of team identification was shown as a boundary condition shaping the effects of sponsorship fit.Practical implicationsBrands specifically seeking to create a socially responsible image, thanks to sponsoring a sport team, should consider the importance of perceived fit between their brand and the sponsored sport team as it is a key predictor of CSR perceptions.Originality/valueThis paper provides empirical evidence for the sport sponsorship and CSR perceptions link and sheds light on important predictors for consumer response.

Effect of over-milking on teat condition

2002 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. ERIC HILLERTON ◽  
J. W. PANKEY ◽  
P. PANKEY
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Experimental Model ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Intramammary Infection

Unsatisfactory milking conditions, including high milking vacuum, ineffective pulsation, heavy clusters, unsuitable liners, poor teat preparation and over-milking, are known to create poor, but undefined, teat conditions and pose a risk to an increased probability of intramammary infection (IDF, 1994). It has been shown that poor teat condition, seen as discolouration, abnormal firmness or thickened rings of tissue distally, after cluster removal may be common in a variety of commercial milking operations (Hillerton et al. 2000). That field study was observational and teat conditions were influenced by a number of variables. A small experimental study has been undertaken to develop an experimental model, under controlled milking conditions, to allow investigation of potential causes of teat trauma. Over-milking was suggested as highly important in the field observations and so has been examined in this study.

Different Interactional Injustice, Different Organizational Remedy? Evidence from China

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (9) ◽  
pp. 1521-1535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanhan Zhu ◽  
Yan Kou
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Workplace Aggression ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Chinese Universities ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Practical Implications

We conducted two studies in which we examined the contingent relationships among interactional injustice, workplace aggression, and organizational remedy. In the field study (Study 1) involving 192 full-time employees in Mainland China we found that different types of interactional injustice had very different effects in terms of the form of workplace aggression triggered. In the experimental study (Study 2) with 189 graduate and undergraduate students at 2 Chinese universities, the results revealed that the effectiveness of the organizational remedy in mitigating workplace aggression depended on the matching of the type of remedy offered by the organization or its agents with the type of interactional injustice the aggrieved employee perceived that he or she had suffered. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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