| Titre : | How does the variance of product ratings matter? (2012) |
| Auteurs : | Monic Sun, Auteur |
| Type de document : | Article : texte imprimé |
| Dans : | Management science (Vol. 58 N° 4, Avril 2012) |
| Article en page(s) : | pp. 696-707 |
| Note générale : | Management |
| Langues : | Anglais |
| Tags : | Information transmission Product ratings Social media User-generated content |
| Résumé : | This paper examines the informational role of product ratings. We build a theoretical model in which ratings can help consumers figure out how much they would enjoy the product. In our model, a high average rating indicates a high product quality, whereas a high variance of ratings is associated with a niche product, one that some consumers love and others hate. Based on its informational role, a higher variance would correspond to a higher subsequent demand if and only if the average rating is low. We find empirical evidence that is consistent with the theoretical predictions with book data from Amazon.com and BN.com. A higher standard deviation of ratings on Amazon improves a book's relative sales rank when the average rating is lower than 4.1 stars, which is true for 35% of all the books in our sample. |
| DEWEY : | 658 |
| ISSN : | 0025-1909 |
| En ligne : | http://mansci.journal.informs.org/content/58/4/696.abstract |
