The Effects of Online Incentivized Reviews on Organic Review Ratings

As online reviews become a major factor in the consumer decision-making process, firms have started seeking ways to create and leverage reviews to help achieve their marketing objectives. One productive strategy to generate reviews is to incentivize or reward customers to write reviews. While such a strategy certainly augments the number of reviews, it naturally raises questions of how unbiased such reviews are, and how such a bias, if it exists, affects potential customers. Complicating the issue further, such incentives can be provided by either the vendor or the platform, which may affect the nature of bias. To understand the marketing value of such reviews, this research examines the effects of online incentivized reviews on subsequent organic reviews. First, we investigate whether incentivized reviews are biased compared to organic reviews. Specifically, we find that vendor – initiated incentivized reviews are more favorable whereas platform – initiated incentivized reviews are more critical. Second, we study how incentivized reviews affect future organic review ratings. The findings suggest that vendor (platform) – initiated incentivized reviews reduce (increase) the subsequent organic review ratings. Moderating effects of helpfulness of incentivized reviews and product type are significant. These findings offer important insights about the effectiveness of incentivized reviews

Is Oprah Contagious? Identifying Demand Spillovers in Product Networks

We study the online contagion of exogenous demand shocks generated by book reviews featured on the Oprah Winfrey TV show and published in the New York Times, through the co-purchase recommendation network on Amazon.com. These exogenous events may ripple through and affect the demand for a 'network' of related books that were not explicitly mentioned in a review but were located 'close' to reviewed books in this network. Using a difference-in-differences matched-sample approach, we identify the extent of the variations caused by the visibility of the online network and distinguish this effect from variation caused by hidden product complementarities. Our results show that the demand shock diffuses to books that are upto five links away from the reviewed book, and that this diffused shock persists for a substantial number of days, although the depth and the magnitude of diffusion varies widely across books at the same network distance from the focal product. We then analyze how product characteristics, assortative mixing and local network structure, play a role in explaining this variation in the depth and persistence of the contagion. Specifically, more clustered local networks 'trap' the diffused demand shocks and cause it to be more intense and of a greater duration but restrict the distance of its spread, while less clustered networks lead to wider contagion of a lower magnitude and duration. Our results provide new evidence of the interplay between a firm's online and offline media strategies and we contribute methods for modeling and analyzing contagion in networks

Digital Platform Strategy - A Systematic Critical Review

While the transformative effect of digital platforms is broadly recognized, digital platform-related research evolved in largely disconnected streams focusing on technical platform architecture, network effects, and specific tactical decisions, without offering a holistic view of digital platform strategy. With the goal of advancing digital platform strategy research, we conduct a systematic critical review of research published in the leading Information Systems journals through a pragmatic business strategy lens that argues that markets, partnerships, differentiators, staging, and profit logic form the core elements of a holistic business strategy. We outline the core insights in extant research and we identify a number of promising opportunities for expanding the scope of digital platform strategy research in Information Systems

Should I Buy Now, Pay Later? An Empirical Study of Consumer Behavior in E-Commerce

The Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) payment service in FinTech has rapidly gained popularity as a new payment option for consumers. However, its effect on consumer behavior remains unclear. This study investigates the effect of BNPL adoption on consumer purchase behaviors using a proprietary dataset from a large e-commerce platform. We find that BNPL adoption increases monthly spending by 11.2%, leads to a shift in purchase channel usage towards the mobile channel, and has a cannibalization effect on cash, debit cards, and credit cards payment methods. Our further analyses shed light on the mechanisms behind these effects. We find that the increased consumer spending as a result of BNPL adoption is driven by increased credit accessibility, mobile device ubiquity, and induced consumption effects. Our findings contribute to the growing body of literature on BNPL in FinTech and provide various practical implications for e-commerce and FinTech service operators

Contemporary Research on Management and Business

This book contains 74 selected papers presented at the 5th International Seminar of Contemporary Research on Business and Management (ISCRBM 2021), which was organized by the Alliance of Indonesian Master of Management Program (APMMI) and held in Jakarta, Indonesia on 18 December 2021. This online conference was hosted by the Master of Management Program of Indonesia University. This year, ISCRBM focused on research related to driving sustainable business through innovation. Business has had to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, so a new approach towards managing business to survive competition is indispensable. Innovation is the key for all organizations in surviving in the new normal and beyond. The Seminar aimed to provide a forum for leading scholars, academics, researchers, and practitioners in the business and management area to reflect on the issues, challenges and opportunities, and to share the latest innovative research and best practices. This seminar brought together participants to exchange ideas on the future development of management disciplines: human resource, marketing, operation, finance, strategic management and entrepreneurship

Social Cues and the Online Purchase Intentions of Organic Wine

This study investigates how online store atmospherics (i.e., social cues) affect consumer purchase intentions of organic wine. A between-subject experiment with a quantitative survey conducted among German consumers reveals that the mere presence of social cues (i.e., a chat box) on a wine sellers' online platform positively affects the intention to purchase organic wine from this online store because social cues elicit perceptions of social presence that translate into trust in the online store and brand trust. The latter promotes purchase intentions. Internal (i.e., familiarity with organic wine purchases) and situational (i.e., goal-directedness of shopping) factors do not moderate the effects of social cues

“Made in China”: Crisis begets quality upgrade

The quality of manufactured products made in China has improved tremendously in the past several decades. In this paper, we argue that crises are instruments for the upgrade of Chinese manufactured goods. We first develop a theoretical framework to show that a crisis, if used wisely, could present good opportunities for entrepreneurs and local governments to form collective action to improve product quality. Next, we empirically test the hypothesis using a panel data set from 1990 to 2008 covering more than 100 clusters in the Zhejiang Province of China.Cluster, crisis, manufacturing industry, quality upgrade,

How do ethical consumers utilize sharing economy platforms as part of their sustainable resale behavior? : The role of consumers' green consumption values

Past research has extensively studied the antecedents and consequences of consumers' green consumption values, as well as the psychological mechanisms that underlie an ethical consumer. Yet a frustrating paradox remains, indicated by the consumers' intention-behavior gap for their sustainable behavior. To address this gap, the present study focuses on the consumption values that lead to using a sharing economy platform. Our study draws on the theory of consumption values and altruistic-egoistic values, as well as spillover effect psychology, to examine associations between context-specific values, green consumption values, and sustainable resale behavior. By collaborating with a Nordic second-hand peer-to-peer platform brand, our findings-obtained from large-scale field data (n = 3256)-challenge the conventional wisdom by demonstrating that economic and practical values for using the second-hand peer-to-peer platform negatively affect green consumption values and subsequently weaken the consumers' preparedness to engage in sustainable resale behavior. In contrast, recreational, generative, societal benefit, and protestor values positively influence green consumption values and increase the consumers' willingness to engage in pro-environmental behavior. Further, such relationships are moderated by gender: stronger effects were identified among female consumers. These findings have important implications for theory and practice.Peer reviewe

How do ethical consumers utilize sharing economy platforms as part of their sustainable resale behavior? : The role of consumers' green consumption values

Past research has extensively studied the antecedents and consequences of consumers' green consumption values, as well as the psychological mechanisms that underlie an ethical consumer. Yet a frustrating paradox remains, indicated by the consumers' intention-behavior gap for their sustainable behavior. To address this gap, the present study focuses on the consumption values that lead to using a sharing economy platform. Our study draws on the theory of consumption values and altruistic-egoistic values, as well as spillover effect psychology, to examine associations between context-specific values, green consumption values, and sustainable resale behavior. By collaborating with a Nordic second-hand peer-to-peer platform brand, our findings-obtained from large-scale field data (n = 3256)-challenge the conventional wisdom by demonstrating that economic and practical values for using the second-hand peer-to-peer platform negatively affect green consumption values and subsequently weaken the consumers' preparedness to engage in sustainable resale behavior. In contrast, recreational, generative, societal benefit, and protestor values positively influence green consumption values and increase the consumers' willingness to engage in pro-environmental behavior. Further, such relationships are moderated by gender: stronger effects were identified among female consumers. These findings have important implications for theory and practice.Peer reviewe