Paper ID
2274
Paper Type
short
Description
Popularity information is usually thought to have a great impact on individual’s decision making and choice. However, most of the websites are displaying products by its popularity. This could potentially result in the popularity effect being overestimated because popularity is confounded with position when they are sorted in the descending order. In this paper, we try to fill this gap in the literature by bridging together popularity effect and position effect to understand whether popularity effect overcomes position effect. By conducting a series of lab experiments, our results suggest that popularity effect is overestimated in prior studies, and its effect becomes less salient when we consider the position effect. Our results have both theoretical implication and practical implication for the website designer.
Recommended Citation
Jin, Qianran; Animesh, Animesh; and Pinsonneault, Alain, "When Popularity Meets Position" (2019). ICIS 2019 Proceedings. 7.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2019/business_models/business_models/7
When Popularity Meets Position
Popularity information is usually thought to have a great impact on individual’s decision making and choice. However, most of the websites are displaying products by its popularity. This could potentially result in the popularity effect being overestimated because popularity is confounded with position when they are sorted in the descending order. In this paper, we try to fill this gap in the literature by bridging together popularity effect and position effect to understand whether popularity effect overcomes position effect. By conducting a series of lab experiments, our results suggest that popularity effect is overestimated in prior studies, and its effect becomes less salient when we consider the position effect. Our results have both theoretical implication and practical implication for the website designer.