Sharing Economy, Platforms and Crowds

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Paper Type

Complete

Paper Number

2336

Description

Online consumer reviews have been found to be highly important sources of information for online shoppers, yet an increasing number of available reviews hampers customers’ processing of all review information. To overcome this information overload, researchers have proposed design features like review filtering, sorting, or featuring. However, the effects of such design features on economic outcomes remain fairly unstudied. We focus on featured consumer reviews (FCRs) and analyse their impact on customers’ willingness to pay. Our findings suggest that participants observing positive (negative) FCRs exhibit a higher (lower) willingness to pay, despite presented with constant product information, review metrics and basic set of all reviews. We extend our analysis to multiple product visits and changing valence of FCRs. According to interference theory, we find strong retroactive interference where participants base their purchase decisions only on FCRs they have observed during their last product visit and neglect FCRs observed earlier.

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Dec 14th, 12:00 AM

Do Featured Consumer Reviews Matter?

Online consumer reviews have been found to be highly important sources of information for online shoppers, yet an increasing number of available reviews hampers customers’ processing of all review information. To overcome this information overload, researchers have proposed design features like review filtering, sorting, or featuring. However, the effects of such design features on economic outcomes remain fairly unstudied. We focus on featured consumer reviews (FCRs) and analyse their impact on customers’ willingness to pay. Our findings suggest that participants observing positive (negative) FCRs exhibit a higher (lower) willingness to pay, despite presented with constant product information, review metrics and basic set of all reviews. We extend our analysis to multiple product visits and changing valence of FCRs. According to interference theory, we find strong retroactive interference where participants base their purchase decisions only on FCRs they have observed during their last product visit and neglect FCRs observed earlier.

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