Start Date
16-8-2018 12:00 AM
Description
Reviews are a major source of post-purchase experiences and have a significant effect on consumer decision making but lack prospective consumer-to-past consumer interaction. QAs facilitates this interaction and provides ability to ask specific pre-purchase questions, and therefore, fills in the informational gaps in the online review systems. However, it’s not clear if the information contained in reviews and QAs is same or different. To answer this key question, we study the complementary and substitute informational content in reviews and QAs for different types of products. We employ a novel method by using measures borrowed from information and measure theory and using topic modeling technique of LDA and find that for high involvement product categories, the reviews and QAs complement each other by providing information on segregated thematic content. For low involvement products, we find that both reviews and QAs contain similar thematic content and might act as substitutes.
Recommended Citation
Jetley, Gaurav and Shivendu, Shivendu, "Q&As and Reviews: Substitutes or Complements?" (2018). AMCIS 2018 Proceedings. 28.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2018/DataScience/Presentations/28
Q&As and Reviews: Substitutes or Complements?
Reviews are a major source of post-purchase experiences and have a significant effect on consumer decision making but lack prospective consumer-to-past consumer interaction. QAs facilitates this interaction and provides ability to ask specific pre-purchase questions, and therefore, fills in the informational gaps in the online review systems. However, it’s not clear if the information contained in reviews and QAs is same or different. To answer this key question, we study the complementary and substitute informational content in reviews and QAs for different types of products. We employ a novel method by using measures borrowed from information and measure theory and using topic modeling technique of LDA and find that for high involvement product categories, the reviews and QAs complement each other by providing information on segregated thematic content. For low involvement products, we find that both reviews and QAs contain similar thematic content and might act as substitutes.