In Search of Negativity Bias: An Empirical Study of Perceived Helpfulness of Online Reviews

A basic tenet of psychology is that the psychological effects of negative information outweigh those of positive information. Three empirical studies show that the negativity bias can be attenuated or even reversed in the context of electronic word of mouth (eWoM). The first study analyzes a large sample of customer reviews collected from Amazon.com and concludes that negative reviews are no more helpful than positive ones when controlling for review quality The second study follows up with a virtual experiment that confirms the lack of negativity bias in evaluating the helpfulness of online reviews. The third study demonstrates that the negativity effect can be reversed by manipulating the baseline valences. This work challenges the conventional wisdom of “bad is stronger than good” and contributes to the understanding of the eWoM phenomenon.     

How Online Product Reviews Affect Retail Sales: A Meta-analysis

A growing body of research has emerged on online product reviews and their ability to elicit performance outcomes desired by retailers; yet, a common understanding of the performance implications of online product reviews has eluded us. Scholars continue to navigate an array of studies assessing different design elements of online product reviews, and various research settings and data sources. We undertake a meta-analysis of 26 empirical studies yielding 443 sales elasticities to examine how these variables relate to retail sales. Building on well-established meta-analytical methods, we address the following questions: How does review valence influence the elasticity of retailer sales? What about review volume? For which product types and usage situations do online product reviews have a greater impact on retailer sales elasticity? Which types of online reviewers and websites exert the greatest influence on retailer sales elasticity? Our study answers these important questions and provides a much needed quantitative synthesis of this burgeoning stream of research.     

Online Review Helpfulness: Role of Qualitative Factors

Consumers are increasingly reading online reviews before making any purchasing decisions. The significance of online reviews has only grown over the years. Though in the past, scholars have emphasized the impact of quantitative factors (e.g., review ratings) on online reviews, only recently have they begun to explore the role of qualitative aspects of online reviews. Content readability and associated sentiments in text provide two important qualitative cues that influence the helpfulness of online reviews. However, the extant literature has overemphasized the linear association between these aspects and the helpfulness of reviews. Using the elaboration likelihood model and the classic ideal point concept, the current work asserts that after an ideal point is attained, lucid and sentimental reviews diminish in utility (i.e., helpfulness of an online review for consumers decreases). This may happen because consumers are wary of fraudulent reviews. This study proposes that if experienced reviewers give such extreme reviews, then consumers might still draw utility from these reviews. In other words, this study explains the moderating role of reviewer experience, which heuristically influences consumers’ trust of online reviews, thus making even too simplistic or extremely sentimental reviews helpful.     

中国证券市场信息不对称研究

一、信息不对称的一般原理 新古典经济学完全竞争模型假定市场参与者具有关于所交易商品和价格的完全的信息,缺乏完全信息的情况称为不完全信息.信息不对称是信息不完全的一种情况,即一些人比另一些人具有更多、更及时的有关信息.信息不对称不仅是由于人们常常限于认识能力不足,不可能知道在任何时候、任何地方发生或将要发生的任何情况,更重要的是,由于行为主体为充分了解信息所花费的成本太大,不允许其掌握完全的信息.因此,信息不对称其实就是信息分布或信息获得的不公平性,其主要来源一是信息的不公平性,二是市场内幕交易.     

TOOR: A Novel Product Title Optimization Method Based on Online Reviews in E-commerce

Titles of online products play an important role in attracting consumers and promoting product sales in e-commerce. However, current online product titles only cover basic features and cannot reflect the preferences of consumers exactly. To address this problem, this research proposed an online title optimization method based on the analysis of online reviews, which is called TOOR (Title Optimization based on Online Reviews). In this research, we analyzed and compared product features extracted from online product titles and online reviews from the point of view of consumers and applied features extracted from reviews to title optimization. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, two experiments were conducted in this paper, selecting four typical smartphones as experiment samples and Taobao.com as the data resources. The experimental results indicated that features extracted from online reviews can better reflect the consumers’ concern, and the titles optimized by the TOOR method are more appealing to consumers and have higher click-through rates.     

基于广义虚拟经济的国际不平等交换案例研究

本文从广义虚拟经济的视角揭示了在北京高档酒吧2001年相同容量的一瓶百威啤酒售价是青岛啤酒的4倍,而到2011年差价变为1.4倍现象的深层原因是国人对百威啤酒的心理需求产生变化,即两者虚拟价值变化必然带来价格差距的缩小,这也使中国在啤酒行业的国际交换中不平等的程度减弱。     

Attitudes Towards Product Website Design: A Study of the Effects of Gender

The research of the Internet2 project has resulted in the introduction of new technologies and has set the stage for another round of Internet growth. These technologies will enhance interactivity and allow for the delivery of greater amounts of information through richer communication. With these new options, World Wide Web‐based retailers must now rethink the design of their sites, the amount of information to deliver and the degree of media richness to provide. This article sets forth an overview of the evolution of the Internet, presents relevant media richness theory, gives a review of the literature with regard to gender and the Internet and presents an empirical illustration of the effects of gender on attitudes towards website design. The results suggest that, overall, males have more positive attitudes than females with regard to both rich and lean websites. The study details the development of an experimental instrument for measuring user attitudes and discusses the impact of the results.     

普通消费者口碑和专家评论对消费者购买决策的影响研究

在线评论作为营销信息中新的要素,已成为当下消费者购买产品或服务时的重要因素。文章根据获得诊断性模型和调节导向理论,引入自我调节导向作为调节变量,探讨在线评论信息源对品牌评价和购买意愿的影响。文章采用情境模拟实验方法,考察了普通消费者口碑和专家评论对消费者的品牌评价和购买意愿具有不同的影响。具体来说当消费者处于促进调节导向时,普通消费者口碑比专家评论更容易使消费者产生良好的品牌评价和购买意愿;当消费者处于预防调节导向时,专家评论比普通消费者口碑更容易使消费者产生良好的品牌评价和购买意愿,其中感知诊断性在这个过程中起到中介作用。文章整合了不同领域的理论,拓宽了不同来源的在线评论对消费者影响的理解力,而且研究结论对网站的营销人员如何管理在线评论有一定的启示意义。     

Born globals: A cross-country survey on high-tech start-ups

The paper empirically investigates what drivers affect the decisions of high-tech start-ups to internationalize from the outset, and their degree of born-globalness. The empirical data have been obtained from a cross-country survey on internationalized high-tech start-ups operating in the ICT and electronics sectors. The present findings show that the presence of a small domestic market and the scalability of the product put on sale have a positive effect on the probability of a start-up internationalizing from its inception. We have also observed that the niche strategy and the network relationships built up by the entrepreneur are key drivers for both an early internationalization and the scope of international expansion. The experiential knowledge and international commitment of an entrepreneur, as well as the diversity of team competences and organizational flexibility of a firm, have a significant impact on a born global's degree of born-globalness, although it is not a fundamental precondition for early internationalization.     

eWOM Watchdogs: Ego‐Threatening Product Domains and the Policing of Positive Online Reviews

Suspicion regarding dishonest electronic word‐of‐mouth is a growing concern for consumers online. Individual consumers are occasionally seen acting as product review forum “watchdogs” within the websites they visit, posting vigilante comments against reviews they perceive to be fraudulent. This multimethod set of studies investigates consumer “watchdog comments,” and the way in which ego‐threatening product categories themselves may actually induce a prosecutorial mindset, leading to greater levels of suspicion toward positive online product reviews and the impulse to prosecute potential fraudsters. In Study 1, laboratory‐induced ego threat increased punitive severity against the act of falsifying online product reviews. In Study 2, a content analysis of actual Amazon.com reviews and consumer commentary indicates that the occurrence of watchdog comments is more common within ego‐threatening product categories.     

User Reviews Variance,Critic Reviews Variance,and Product Sales: An Exploration of Customer Breadth and Depth Effects

Online user reviews constitute a new element of the marketing communication mix that can significantly affect product sales. A general consensus holds that positive user reviews valence benefits product sales, yet the effect of variance is less intuitive and current findings are mixed. We propose that user reviews variance actually constitutes a double-edged sword that can either hurt or help product sales, depending on the variance of critic reviews and other quality signals. Three complementary studies in multiple industries (movies, digital cameras, and books) with multiple methods (secondary data analysis and behavioral experiment) reveal three key insights in this setting. First, after recognizing a high variance in user reviews, many potential buyers may simply exclude the focal product from their consideration sets for fear that it does not match their needs and preferences, which is termed the customer breadth effect. Second, high user reviews variance, in combination with high critic reviews variance, can elicit a sense of uniqueness and thus enhance purchase intentions of some consumers, which is termed the customer depth effect. Third, quality signals (e.g., product cost and product extension) can strengthen the positive customer depth effect. The overall effects of user reviews variance, therefore, can be negative, insignificant, or even positive. These findings have important theoretical and managerial implications.     

Price Elasticity Dynamics over the Product Life Cycle: A Study of Consumer Durables

Extending the work of Parker (1992), which considers only firstpurchases, and Simon (1989), which considers brand-level sales, weempirically provide support for the hypothesis that total categorysales price elasticities first decease in absolute value but thenultimately increase if the product in question faces the decline phaseof the product life cycle (due to competitive substitutes, changes intastes, and so on). As an interesting artifact of the methodology, thearticle also shows how the Bass model can be easily modified to accountfor total category sales (first plus repeat purchases) and that, in thelimit, the Bass model converges to stochastic repeat purchase models(bridging two radically different modeling traditions). If unadjusted,the Bass model applied to sales data is grossly misspecified when thetime series studied exceeds five to ten years for consumer durables.     

The Nature of the Product in Market Relationships: A Pluri-Signified Product Concept

This paper challenges the traditional marketing idea that a product can be conceptualized as a separate unit which can be broken down and understood by its basic elements. A critique of the traditional product concept in Marketing is presented. On the basis of recent theoretical and empirical evidence a new framework is developed in which the product is represented as the outcome of a tripartite signification process between the buyer, the supplier and the object. Finally, the implications of this new perspective for marketing theory and practice are outlined.     

The Effect of Low‐ versus High‐Variance in Product Reviews on Product Evaluation

This research investigates whether the effect of low‐ versus high‐variance product reviews on the evaluation of a product about which consumers have favorable or unfavorable prior expectation can vary depending on product type, the argument quality of product reviews, and the number of reviewers. The data across three laboratory experiments demonstrate that high‐variance product reviews are more likely than low‐variance product reviews to undermine product evaluation when consumers have unfavorable prior expectation about a product. When consumers have favorable prior expectation, however, high‐variance product reviews can enhance or undermine product evaluation depending on product category, the argument quality of reviews, and the number of reviewers. The findings are explained by the type of causal attribution consumers make, such that high‐variance product reviews can allow consumers to make biased product evaluation consistent with their prior expectation when the causes of variance in the product reviews are attributed to the reviewers rather than to the product. However, when the causes of variance are attributed to the product rather than the reviewers, high‐variance product reviews can undermine product evaluation regardless of the favorability of prior expectation.     

Product Knowledge and Product Involvement as Moderators of the Effects of Information on Purchase Decisions: A Case Study Using the Perfect Information Frontier Approach

This study ascertains the extent to which consumers achieve highest value-for-money under different conditions. Perfect Information Frontier Approach is applied to examine the influences of providing consumers with information on their purchase decisions, with allowance for the joint effects of prior product knowledge and product involvement on the provided information. A 2 (provided information: simple vs. complex) × 2 (prior product knowledge: novice vs. expert) × 2 (involvement: high vs. low) factorial design was employed. Data from 282 survey respondents illustrate that experts were more likely to be persuaded by complex product information than by simple information, while novices reacted similarly to both simple and complex information. The effects of providing complex information to involved novices and providing simple information to involved experts showed the least impact.     

Born globals: Propositions to help advance the theory

Although born globals (BGs) have now been studied for over a decade, theory and practice are still evolving. This article was written to clarify the definition of a Born Global (BG) firm and to describe the three phases—introductory, growth and resource accumulation, and break-out to independent growth as a major player—through which BGs progress. Drawing from empirical evidence, it was found that the risks, resource development, channels/networks and organisational learning of BGs develop during the three phases through which successful BGs pass. However, this process deviates considerably from that followed by traditional internationalising small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Born Global entrepreneurs and academics can learn much by studying the causes of these differences.     

产品复杂度、产品密度与产业升级——基于产品空间理论的研究

本文基于产品空间理论研究产品复杂度、产品密度及其二者交互的结构特征对产业升级的影响.利用1962-2015年148个国家794种产品的全球商品贸易四位码面板数据,分别运用OLS与Probit进行实证检验,计量结果表明:(1)产品复杂度越高,产业升级的难度系数递增,实现产业升级的可能性越低;但是,产品复杂度的增加,抑制优势产业失势的能力提高,对产业失势具有显著阻止作用.(2)产品密度越高,产业跳跃幅度越小,有利于产业升级的实现;同时,产品转换的风险越低,越能够加速落后产业失势,退出市场.(3)产品复杂度与产品密度具有相互促进作用,二者的交互对产业升级与失势具有显著正向影响,有利于促进经济结构调整.因此,产业升级是基于整体能力网络的系统工程,通过同时提升产品复杂度和产品密度,开展前瞻性产品结构顶层设计与能力建构之间的互动,有助于一国谋求全球新地位.     

Improving New Product Quality: An Empirical Study of Product Development Teams in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

The role of team and organizational factors affecting new product quality and their interactions as moderating the effects are examined. Results from a domestic study suggest that new product quality is positively affected by information capability in the team and quality orientation in the firm; in contrast, it is negatively related to the innovativeness of the new product as seen by the firm and speed-to-market pressure in the team. However, teams' information capabilities alleviate the negative effect of innovativeness on quality. Quality orientation lessens the relationship between information capability and new product quality. Functional diversity and tenure diversity do not affect new product quality. In addition, managerial implications and directions for future research are proposed.     

A Cross-National Investigation of Product Perception:

Exporting to diverse markets without much informa- tion about how consumers may evaluate products from various countries calls for an investigation of the image of products made in various countries. This article looks at products made in China, Hong Kong, India, and the United States, as perceived by respon- dents from each of these countries. Respondents evaluated products manufactured in these countries along fifteen dimensions selected from the Nagashima (1970) study. Significant differences were found to exist in the perceptions of products from these test countries across the respondent groups. Implications of the findings for gov- ernments and companies interested in promoting international trade, particularly in emerging markets, are discussed.