题目：On Self-Selection Biases In Online Product Reviews

主讲人：张洁 副教授（德州大学阿灵顿分校）

时间：2017年7月6日（周四）上午10点

地点：主楼418

内容介绍：

    Online product reviews help consumers infer product quality, and the mean (average) rating is often used as a proxy for product quality.  However, two self-selection biases, acquisition bias (mostly consumers with a favorable predisposition acquire a product and hence write a product review) and underreporting bias (consumers with extreme, either positive or negative, ratings are more likely to write reviews than consumers with moderate product ratings), render the mean rating a biased estimator of product quality, and they result in the well-known J-shaped (positively skewed, asymmetric, bimodal) distribution of online product reviews. To better understand the nature and consequences of these two self-selection biases, we analytically model and empirically investigate how these two biases originate from consumers’ purchasing and reviewing decisions, how these decisions shape the distribution of online product reviews over time, and how they affect the firm’s product pricing strategy.  Our empirical results reveal that consumers do realize both self-selection biases and attempt to correct for them by using other distributional parameters of online reviews, besides the mean rating. However, consumers cannot fully account for these two self-selection biases because of bounded rationality. We also find that firms can strategically respond to these self-selection biases by adjusting their prices.  This paper has implications for consumers to leverage online product reviews to infer true product quality, for commercial websites to improve the design of their online product review systems, and for product manufacturers to predict the success of their products.

主讲人简介：

    美国罗切斯特大学（University of Rochester）西蒙工商12BET硕士和博士，现为德州大学阿灵顿分校（The University of Texas at Arlington）工商12BET副教授。主要研究领域包括渠道管理, 信息产品, 电子商务, 和社交媒体等。先后获得德州大学阿灵顿分校工商12BET杰出研究成果奖、托莱多大学工商12BET杰出研究论文奖、夏威夷系统科学国际会议(HICCS)最佳论文奖等奖励。研究成果发表在MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Economics and Management Strategies, Communications of the ACM, Decision Support System等国际顶级或权威学术期刊。

（承办：管理工程系，科研与学术交流中心）