Paper Type

Complete

Paper Number

1769

Description

As product reviews have been important to consumers at e-marketplaces, the design of review systems is central to delivering information, for which, however, current works have long been neglecting the role of fairness. This study attempts to conceptualize the review fairness at e-marketplaces, investigate the fairness design of review systems, and to examine its impact on customers’ information seeking experience. Online experiments were conducted to test the model. By analyzing the data, we found significant impact of distributive review fairness and procedural review fairness on product diagnosticity. While procedural review fairness is shown to significantly influence satisfaction, no such effect is found for distributive fairness. This study is novel in conceptualizing and investigating the fairness in review system service, bringing new theoretical lens to studies of e-marketplaces. Our results also validated the role of IT-enabled designs in achieving review fairness, which sheds lights upon new research opportunities in designing e-markets.

Comments

E-Business

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Jul 2nd, 12:00 AM

Towards A Fair Design of Product Review Systems

As product reviews have been important to consumers at e-marketplaces, the design of review systems is central to delivering information, for which, however, current works have long been neglecting the role of fairness. This study attempts to conceptualize the review fairness at e-marketplaces, investigate the fairness design of review systems, and to examine its impact on customers’ information seeking experience. Online experiments were conducted to test the model. By analyzing the data, we found significant impact of distributive review fairness and procedural review fairness on product diagnosticity. While procedural review fairness is shown to significantly influence satisfaction, no such effect is found for distributive fairness. This study is novel in conceptualizing and investigating the fairness in review system service, bringing new theoretical lens to studies of e-marketplaces. Our results also validated the role of IT-enabled designs in achieving review fairness, which sheds lights upon new research opportunities in designing e-markets.

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