Posted Content•
What Makes a Helpful Review? A Study of Customer Reviews on Amazon.com
TL;DR: Drawing on the paradigm of search and experience goods from information economics, a model of customer review helpfulness is developed and tested and indicates that review extremity, review depth, and product type affect the perceived helpfulness of the review.
Abstract: Customer reviews are increasingly available online for a wide range of products and services. They supplement other information provided by electronic storefronts such as product descriptions, reviews from experts, and personalized advice generated by automated recommendation systems. While researchers have demonstrated the benefits of the presence of customer reviews to an online retailer, a largely uninvestigated issue is what makes customer reviews helpful to a consumer in the process of making a purchase decision. Drawing on the paradigm of search and experience goods from information economics, we develop and test a model of customer review helpfulness. An analysis of 1,587 reviews from Amazon.com across six products indicated that review extremity, review depth, and product type affect the perceived helpfulness of the review. Product type moderates the effect of review extremity on the helpfulness of the review. For experience goods, reviews with extreme ratings are less helpful than reviews with moderate ratings. For both product types, review depth has a positive effect on the helpfulness of the review, but the product type moderates the effect of review depth on the helpfulness of the review. Review depth has a greater positive effect on the helpfulness of the review for search goods than for experience goods. We discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and practice.
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: The continuing convergence of the digital marketing and sales funnels has created a strategic continuum from digital lead generation to digital sales, which identifies the current composition of this digital continuum while providing opportunities to evaluate sales and marketing digital strategies.
Abstract: MKT 6009 Marketing Internship (0 semester credit hours) Student gains experience and improves skills through appropriate developmental work assignments in a real business environment. Student must identify and submit specific business learning objectives at the beginning of the semester. The student must demonstrate exposure to the managerial perspective via involvement or observation. At semester end, student prepares an oral or poster presentation, or a written paper reflecting on the work experience. Student performance is evaluated by the work supervisor. Pass/Fail only. Prerequisites: (MAS 6102 or MBA major) and department consent required. (0-0) S MKT 6244 Digital Marketing Strategy (2 semester credit hours) Executive Education Course. The course explores three distinct areas within marketing and sales namely, digital marketing, traditional sales prospecting, and executive sales organization and strategy. The continuing convergence of the digital marketing and sales funnels has created a strategic continuum from digital lead generation to digital sales. The course identifies the current composition of this digital continuum while providing opportunities to evaluate sales and marketing digital strategies. Prerequisites: MKT 6301 and instructor consent required. (2-0) Y MKT 6301 (SYSM 6318) Marketing Management (3 semester credit hours) Overview of marketing management methods, principles and concepts including product, pricing, promotion and distribution decisions as well as segmentation, targeting and positioning. (3-0) S MKT 6309 Marketing Data Analysis and Research (3 semester credit hours) Methods employed in market research and data analysis to understand consumer behavior, customer journeys, and markets so as to enable better decision-making. Topics include understanding different sources of data, survey design, experiments, and sampling plans. The course will cover the techniques used for market sizing estimation and forecasting. In addition, the course will cover the foundational concepts and techniques used in data visualization and \"story-telling\" for clients and management. Corequisites: MKT 6301 and OPRE 6301. (3-0) Y MKT 6310 Consumer Behavior (3 semester credit hours) An exposition of the theoretical perspectives of consumer behavior along with practical marketing implication. Study of psychological, sociological and behavioral findings and frameworks with reference to consumer decision-making. Topics will include the consumer decision-making model, individual determinants of consumer behavior and environmental influences on consumer behavior and their impact on marketing. Prerequisite: MKT 6301. (3-0) Y MKT 6321 Interactive and Digital Marketing (3 semester credit hours) Introduction to the theory and practice of interactive and digital marketing. Topics covered include: online-market research, consumer behavior, conversion metrics, and segmentation considerations; ecommerce, search and display advertising, audiences, search engine marketing, email, mobile, video, social networks, and the Internet of Things. (3-0) T MKT 6322 Internet Business Models (3 semester credit hours) Topics to be covered are: consumer behavior on the Internet, advertising on the Internet, competitive strategies, market research using the Internet, brand management, managing distribution and supply chains, pricing strategies, electronic payment systems, and developing virtual organizations. Further, students learn auction theory, web content design, and clickstream analysis. Prerequisite: MKT 6301. (3-0) Y MKT 6323 Database Marketing (3 semester credit hours) Techniques to analyze, interpret, and utilize marketing databases of customers to identify a firm's best customers, understanding their needs, and targeting communications and promotions to retain such customers. Topics
5,537 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce a new "pinball" framework of new media's impact on relationships with customers and identify key new media phenomena which companies should take into account when managing their relationships with customer in the new media universe.
Abstract: Recent years have witnessed the rise of new media channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, and Twitter, which enable customers to take a more active role as market players and reach (and be reached by) almost everyone anywhere and anytime. These new media threaten long established business models and corporate strategies, but also provide ample opportunities for growth through new adaptive strategies. This paper introduces a new ‘‘pinball’’ framework of new media’s impact on relationships with customers and identifies key new media phenomena which companies should take into account when managing their relationships with customers in the new media universe. For each phenomenon, we identify challenges for researchers and managers which relate to (a) the understanding of consumer behavior, (b) the use of new media to successfully manage customer interactions, and (c) the effective measurement of customers’ activities and outcomes.
1,285 citations
Cites background from "What Makes a Helpful Review? A Stud..."
...Extreme and deep reviews are considered more helpful by consumers, but this differs between products (Mudambi and Schuff 2010)....
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TL;DR: A rigorous survey on sentiment analysis is presented, which portrays views presented by over one hundred articles published in the last decade regarding necessary tasks, approaches, and applications of sentiment analysis.
Abstract: With the advent of Web 2.0, people became more eager to express and share their opinions on web regarding day-to-day activities and global issues as well. Evolution of social media has also contributed immensely to these activities, thereby providing us a transparent platform to share views across the world. These electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) statements expressed on the web are much prevalent in business and service industry to enable customer to share his/her point of view. In the last one and half decades, research communities, academia, public and service industries are working rigorously on sentiment analysis, also known as, opinion mining, to extract and analyze public mood and views. In this regard, this paper presents a rigorous survey on sentiment analysis, which portrays views presented by over one hundred articles published in the last decade regarding necessary tasks, approaches, and applications of sentiment analysis. Several sub-tasks need to be performed for sentiment analysis which in turn can be accomplished using various approaches and techniques. This survey covering published literature during 2002-2015, is organized on the basis of sub-tasks to be performed, machine learning and natural language processing techniques used and applications of sentiment analysis. The paper also presents open issues and along with a summary table of a hundred and sixty-one articles.
1,011 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a multi-dimensional analysis of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication has been conducted based on a systematic review of 190 studies and the key issues in current and emerging literature and propose important questions for future research.
800 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify the factors affecting the perceived usefulness of online consumer reviews by investigating two aspects of online information: (1) the characteristics of review providers, such as the disclosure of personal identity, the reviewer's expertise and reputation, and (2) reviews themselves including quantitative (i.e., star ratings and length of reviews) and qualitative measurements (e.g., perceived enjoyment and review readability).
692 citations
Cites background or methods or result from "What Makes a Helpful Review? A Stud..."
...This study used the TOBIT regression model to analyse the data due to the specific feature of useful votes (dependent variable) and the censored nature of the sample (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010)....
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...…not only quantitative (i.e., length of reviews and star ratings) elements of information but also qualitative/textual (i.e., perceived enjoyment and readability of reviews) aspects to better explain the perceived usefulness of online reviews (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010; Van der Heijden, 2003)....
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...Mudambi and Schuff (2010) investigated the helpfulness of reviews based on the statement that helpfulness as a measure of perceived value in the decision-making process reflects information (i.e., online review) diagnosticity....
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...From the online retailers’ perspective, review usefulness can be used as the primary way of measuring how consumers evaluate a review (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010)....
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...…identity and previous experiences in the online community and also message related attributes (such as the quantitative elements and features representing the quality of online reviews) improves the perceived usefulness (i.e., perceived information diagnosticity) (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010)....
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References
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Book•
01 Jan 1974TL;DR: The authors described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: representativeness, availability of instances or scenarios, and adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available.
Abstract: This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.
31,082 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors pointed out that there is a strong functional tie between opinions and abilities in humans and that the ability evaluation of an individual can be expressed as a comparison of the performance of a particular ability with other abilities.
Abstract: Hypothesis I: There exists, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and his abilities. While opinions and abilities may, at first glance, seem to be quite different things, there is a close functional tie between them. They act together in the manner in which they affect behavior. A person’s cognition (his opinions and beliefs) about the situation in which he exists and his appraisals of what he is capable of doing (his evaluation of his abilities) will together have bearing on his behavior. The holding of incorrect opinions and/or inaccurate appraisals of one’s abilities can be punishing or even fatal in many situations. It is necessary, before we proceed, to clarify the distinction between opinions and evaluations of abilities since at first glance it may seem that one’s evaluation of one’s own ability is an opinion about it. Abilities are of course manifested only through performance which is assumed to depend upon the particular ability. The clarity of the manifestation or performance can vary from instances where there is no clear ordering criterion of the ability to instances where the performance which reflects the ability can be clearly ordered. In the former case, the evaluation of the ability does function like other opinions which are not directly testable in “objective reality’. For example, a person’s evaluation of his ability to write poetry will depend to a large extent on the opinions which others have of his ability to write poetry. In cases where the criterion is unambiguous and can be clearly ordered, this furnishes an objective reality for the evaluation of one’s ability so that it depends less on the opinions of other persons and depends more on actual comparison of one’s performance with the performance of others. Thus, if a person evaluates his running ability, he will do so by comparing his time to run some distance with the times that other persons have taken. In the following pages, when we talk about evaluating an ability, we shall mean specifically the evaluation of that ability in situations where the performance is unambiguous and is known. Most situations in real life will, of course, present situations which are a mixture of opinion and ability evaluation. In a previous article (7) the author posited the existence of a drive to determine whether or not one’s opinions were “correct”. We are here stating that this same drive also produces behavior in people oriented toward obtaining an accurate appraisal of their abilities. The behavioral implication of the existence of such a drive is that we would expect to observe behaviour on the part of persons which enables them to ascertain whether or not their opinions are correct and also behavior which enables them accurately to evaluate their abilities. It is consequently
16,927 citations
"What Makes a Helpful Review? A Stud..." refers background in this paper
...According to social comparison theory (Festinger 1954), individuals have a drive to compare themselves to other people....
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Book•
09 Jan 1997TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose Continuous Outcomes Binary Outcomes Testing and Fit Ordinal Outcomes Numeric Outcomes and Numeric Numeric Count Outcomes (NOCO).
Abstract: Introduction Continuous Outcomes Binary Outcomes Testing and Fit Ordinal Outcomes Nominal Outcomes Limited Outcomes Count Outcomes Conclusions
7,306 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1979
TL;DR: The fourth edition of "A Guide to Econometrics" provides an overview of the subject and an intuitive feel for its concepts and techniques without the notation and technical detail often characteristic of econometric textbooks.
Abstract: "Peter Kennedy's book, which provides intuitive, narrative explanations for a wide range of topics covered in undergraduate and graduate econometrics courses, occupies a unique position in the econometrics textbook market." -- David Ribar, Department of Economics, the George Washington University "A Guide to Econometrics" has established itself as the first-choice text for teachers and students throughout the world. It provides an overview of the subject and an intuitive feel for its concepts and techniques without the notation and technical detail often characteristic of econometrics textbooks. The fourth edition updates the contents and references thoughout, while retaining the basic structure and flavor of earlier editions. New material has been added on several topics, such as bootstrapping, count data, duration models, generalized method of moments, instrumental variable estimation, linear structural relations, Monte Carlo studies, neural nets, time series analysis, and VARs. A new appendix and a new type of exercise underline the importance of the sampling distribution concept.
6,008 citations
Additional excerpts
...According to Kennedy (1994), if the probability of being included in the sample is correlated with an explanatory variable, the OLS and GLS estimates can be biased....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that consumers lack full information about the prices of goods, but their information is probably poorer about the quality variation of products simply because the latter information is more difficult to obtain.
Abstract: Consumers are continually making choices among products, the consequences of which they are but dimly aware. Not only do consumers lack full information about the prices of goods, but their information is probably even poorer about the quality variation of products simply because the latter information is more difficult to obtain. One can, for example, readily determine the price of a television set; it is more difficult to determine its performance characteristics under various conditions or its expected need for repairs. This article contends that limitations of consumer information about quality have profound effects upon the market structure of consumer goods. In particular, monopoly power for a consumer good will be greater if consumers know about the quality of only a few brands of that good. This is a significant departure from the literature. Economists have long been interested in the determinants of monopoly power, but studies have always concentrated on the production function or market-size variables. I try to show that consumer behavior is also relevant to the determination of monopoly power in consumer industries. Location theory has also ignored the consumer's lack of information. Since many trips to a store are, in part, quests for information, the location of retail stores can be profoundly affected by consumer efforts to acquire information. I shall also try to show that advertising and inventory policy are affected by consumer ignorance about quality differences among brands. All of these impacts of consumer ignorance have remained unexplored because economists have not developed a systematic analysis of consumer quests for information about quality differences. Information about quality differs from information about price because the former is usually more expensive to buy than the latter. Indeed this is one reason we expect the variance in the utility of quality facing a consumer to be greater than the variance in the utility of price. This difference in the price of information can lead to fundamentally
5,548 citations
"What Makes a Helpful Review? A Stud..." refers background or methods in this paper
...Like our experience goods, these are representative of search goods used in previous research (see Bei et al. 2004; Nelson 1970; Weathers et al. 2007)....
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...Reviews have the potential to attract consumer visits, increase the time spent on the site (“stickiness”), and create a sense of community among frequent shoppers....
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...Examples of search goods include cameras (Nelson 1970) and natural supplement pills (Weathers et al. 2007), and examples of experience goods include music (Bhattacharjee et al. 2006; Nelson 1970) and wine (Klein 1998)....
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...According to Nelson (1970, 1974), search goods are those for which consumers have the ability to obtain information on product quality prior to purchase, while experience goods are products that require sampling or purchase in order to evaluate product quality....
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...Through the application of the paradigm of search and experience goods (Nelson 1970), we offer a conceptualization of what contributes to the perceived helpfulness of an online review in the multistage consumer decision process....
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