An Examination of the Joint Impacts of Review Content and Reviewer Characteristics on Review Usefulness—the Case of Yelp.com

We examine the interaction effects of review content (certainty) and reviewer characteristics (popularity and expertise) on consumer judgment of review usefulness. Utilizing an extended Poisson regression model, we empirically tested the joint impacts based on 5426 reviews from Yelp.com about 968 restaurants. Our results indicate that (1) reviewer popularity negatively interacts with certainty to affect review usefulness and (2) in contrast, reviewer expertise positively interacts with certainty to affect review usefulness. These findings add new insights into online review research and offer practical implications for online review platforms

An Investigation of the Presentational Impacts of User-Generated Picture and Text on Consumer Information Processing and Attitude Outcomes in the e-WOM Context

Given the importance of e-WOM and the lack of academic research on the role of pictures in influencing consumer decision making, we adapt the cue summation theory to examine the effects of the relative layout (the alternate layout vs. the separate layout) and relative sequence (UGP first vs. UGT first) on diagnosticity, pleasantness of e-WOM and customers’ attitude towards the recommended product/service in the e-WOM. We conduct an experiment to test our research model. The results show that separate layout is better than the alternate layout in perceived diagnosticity and product evaluation, especially when the UGP is displayed first than the UGT first displayed. In contrast, for pleasantness, alternate layout is better than separate layout, regardless of the sequence of text and picture. These findings make important contributions to e-WOM literature and extend cue-summation theory. Our research also provides guidelines on the presentational strategies of e-WOM

An Information System Framework and Prototype for Collaborative and Standardized Chinese Liquor Production

20th Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2014, Savannah, GA, 7-9 August 2014There is a pressing need for Chinese liquor producers to use information systems in managing production process and improving production efficiency for meeting fiercely increasing market competition. Unlike liquor production in other countries, Chinese liquor production replies on experience and manual operations greatly, which has very low-level automation and informatization. This paper takes a famous Chinese liquor producer as the target case company, introduces typical information systems used in Chinese liquor production, explores the motivations to implement information systems, and examines the benefits, the problems encountered as well as the key success factors in implementation and applications of information systems in Chinese liquor production industry.Department of Management and MarketingRefereed conference pape

Multiple-Domain Sentiment Classification for Cantonese Using a Combined Approach

In this study, we proposed a combined approach, which amalgamates machine learning and lexicon- based approaches for multiple-domain sentiment classification that supports Cantonese-based social media analysis. Our study contributes to the existing literature not only by investigating the effectiveness of the proposed combined approach for supporting social media analysis in the Cantonese context but also by verifying that the proposed method outperforms the baseline approaches, which are commonly used in the literature. We demonstrated that social media network-based classifiers can be general classifiers that support multiple-domain sentiment classification

Extending CRM in the Retail Industry: An RFID-Based Personal Shopping Assistant System

This paper describes the research and development of a radio frequency identification (RFID)-based personal shopping assistant (PSA) system for retail stores. RFID technology was employed as the key enabler to build a PSA system to optimize operational efficiency and deliver a superior customer shopping experience in retail stores. We show that an RFID-based PSA system can deliver significant results to improve the customer shopping experience and retail store operational efficiency, by increasing customer convenience, providing flexibility in service delivery, enhancing promotional campaign efficiency, and increasing product cross selling and upselling through a customer relationship management (CRM) system. In this study, an RFID value grid for retail stores is proposed that allows managers to use RFID technology in stores to add value to the shopping experience of their customers. Four propositions are presented as the research agenda for examining the ability of RFID technology to improve the operations management of retail stores

Resource-based Perspective on Slack and Data Breach

In the last couple of years, data breach has become a top concern for enterprises and consumers. Resource-based view (RBV) suggests that firms are proactive, and the low marginal cost of slack will motive and enable firms to have new activities by redeploying the stocked excess resources to achieve competitive advantages. Based on the RBV, this study explores both the input and opportunity effectiveness of slack on data breach risk. In terms of the former, we firstly test the association between human resource (HR) slack and data breach risk; in terms of the later, we further investigate how the interaction of HR slack and financial slack can impact data breach risk. Besides, from firm external lens, we also test whether the influence of HR slack on data breach risk is contingent upon external environments