Starring
The Market for Fake Reviews
Sherry He, Brett Hollenbeck & Davide Proserpio
Marketing Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the market for fake product reviews on Amazon.com. Reviews are purchased in large private groups on Facebook and other sites. We hand-collect data on these markets and then collect a panel of data on these products' ratings and reviews on Amazon, as well as their sales rank, advertising, and pricing policies. We find that a wide array of products purchase fake reviews, including products with many reviews and high average ratings. Buying fake reviews on Facebook is associated with a significant but short-term increase in average rating and number of reviews. We exploit a sharp but temporary policy shift by Amazon to show that rating manipulation has a large causal effect on sales. Finally, we examine whether rating manipulation harms consumers or whether it is mainly used by high-quality products in a manner like advertising or by new products trying to solve the cold-start problem. We find that after firms stop buying fake reviews, their average ratings fall and the share of one-star reviews increases significantly, particularly for young products, indicating rating manipulation is mostly used by low-quality products.
The Paradox of Self-Help Expertise: How Unemployed Workers Become Professional Career Coaches
Patrick Sheehan
American Journal of Sociology, January 2022, Pages 1151-1182
Abstract:
A wide range of self-styled experts have emerged in recent years to sell professional self-improvement advice in fields as diverse as employment, health, and finances. Despite lacking traditional markers of expertise, these minor experts are gaining credibility and clientele, often at the expense of official experts in their field. Why do people turn to these experts? How do they build credibility? This article analyzes the paradoxical case of career coaches, many of whom were themselves long-term unemployed, to advance a theory of credibility construction among self-improvement experts. Drawing on qualitative data, the author finds that self-improvement experts build their credibility through strategic interactions and relational work with clients rather than through the institutional affiliations and credentials normally associated with expertise. The author identifies three complementary techniques - (1) constructing a shared moral order, (2) building affective trust relationships, and (3) sharing personal testimonials of transformation - and argues that this bundle of tactics represents an alternative and growing pathway for building expert credibility.
Medium is a powerful message: Pictures signal less power than words
Elinor Amit, Shai Danziger & Pamela Smith
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, March 2022
Abstract:
This research shows people are perceived as less powerful when they use pictures versus words. This effect was found across picture types (company logos, emojis, and photographs) and use contexts (clothing prints, written messages, and Zoom profiles). Mediation analysis and a mediation-by-moderation design show this happens because picture-use signals a greater desire for social proximity (versus distance) than word-use, and a desire for social proximity is associated with lower power. Finally, we find that people strategically use words (pictures) when aiming to signal more (less) power. We refute alternative explanations including differences in the content of pictures and words, the medium's perceived appropriateness, the context's formality, and the target's age and gender. Our research shows pictures and words are not interchangeable means of representation. Rather, they signal distinct social values with reputational consequences.
Why Are Donors More Generous with Time than Money? The Role of Perceived Control over Donations on Charitable Giving
John Costello & Selin Malkoc
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Solicitation of time and money donations are central to the success of nonprofit organizations like charities and political groups. Although nonprofits tend to prefer money, experimental and field data demonstrate that donors prefer to donate time, even when doing so does less good for the cause. However, despite the importance of this asymmetry, little is known about its psychological underpinnings. In the current investigation, we identify a previously unexplored difference between time and money, which we argue can explain the preference to donate time over money. Specifically, we propose that potential donors feel more personal control over their time (vs. money) donations, leading to greater interest in donating and donation amount. We test this framework across seven studies using incentive-compatible and hypothetical behaviors, utilizing both mediation and moderation approaches. Our results show that when donors' sense of control is threatened, donations of time might be used as a compensatory strategy, and that simple linguistic interventions can increase perceived control and donations for money, which we find to typically lag behind time. We conclude by discussing implications of these results for marketing theory and practice.
Anthem Protests, Viewer Politics, and the Demand for NFL Games: Assessing the Impact of National Anthem Protests on Viewership
Noah Sperling & Donald Vandegrift
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the effect of anthem protests on viewership for National Football League (NFL) games controlling for measures of NFL market-specific political beliefs and other demand determinants. To capture the effect of the protests on viewership, we create two classes of protests (unambiguous and ambiguous protests) and support the classification based on the meaning of the protest, actions by NFL owners, and statements by Donald Trump. Using data from all early and late-afternoon Sunday games from the 2014 through 2017 regular NFL seasons, we show that: (1) unambiguous protests reduce viewership in the week following the protests by about 15% while ambiguous protests do not generally produce statistically significant reductions in viewership; (2) the negative effect of unambiguous protests on viewership is particularly strong in metro locations that voted more heavily for Donald Trump in 2016; and (3) following Donald Trump's statements in week 3 of the 2017 season, both ambiguous and unambiguous protests increased and the increase in ambiguous protests was particularly large.
Piracy, Lawsuits, and Competition for Reputation
Kalinda Ukanwa & David Godes
University of Maryland Working Paper, December 2021
Abstract:
We investigate how competition for reputation among consumers can impact the effectiveness of firm interventions. In situations where the firm attempts to intervene to change consumer behavior (e.g., advertising, policy guidelines, legal threats), the consumer's response may depend not only on the consumer's own reputation-building considerations but also on those of others. In this study, we model uploaders' decisions to enhance their reputations by uploading pirated content to a digital platform. Uploaders weigh the reputational benefits from uploading versus the costs from penalties associated with copyright lawsuits (firm interventions). Furthermore, competition from other uploaders who also seek to build their reputations impact each uploader's potential gains. Using a novel data set, we find empirical support for our conceptual framework, which suggests copyright lawsuits may deter uploading in the short-run but may, in some cases, lead to more piracy over the long-run. Our conceptual framework proposes that low-reputation uploaders decrease their reputation-building activity in response to lawsuits. However, this decrease may create an opportunity for their high-reputation competition to increase their uploading activity and enhance their reputations. The implication for firms is that when considering consumer interventions to mitigate harmful activity, firms need to account for consumer reputation concerns and plan accordingly.
Generating authenticity in automated work
Arthur Jago, Glenn Carroll & Mariana Lin
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
In an increasing number of domains, people interact with automated agents (such as algorithms, robots, and computers) instead of humans. Across five studies, we explore the role of authenticity in shaping people's reactions to automated agents' work. In doing so, we examine two basic ways to generate authenticity in autonomous technological work: (a) highlighting the human origins of autonomous technologies and (b) anthropomorphizing autonomous technologies, or presenting them with human-like qualities. We find strong evidence that human origin stories generate authenticity, but much less evidence that simple anthropomorphic cues do so to the same degree (Studies 1-3). Simply prompting people to consider human origins can also generate attributions of authenticity (Study 4), which translates into intended and recommended support for automated work (Study 5). We discuss how managers of organizations can implement automated systems in ways that encourage attributions of authenticity.
Visibility and Peer Influence in Durable Good Adoption
Bryan Bollinger et al.
Marketing Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The underlying channels through which peer influence operates in durable good adoption can affect the ability of marketers to leverage them. In this paper, we assess whether the visibility of peers' adoption decisions leads to greater peer influence. The context we study is residential rooftop solar panels. We exploit the plausibly exogenous location and orientation of peers' rooftop solar panels relative to proximate roadways and visual obstructions, such as vegetation, in order to determine whether geographically proximate peer installations increase a household's probability of solar adoption more if they are visible from the road. We find that the total angle of visibility of peer installations on the same street positively affects solar adoption decisions at distances of at least 500 meters (m). In contrast, we only find a positive effect of nonvisible solar arrays within 100 m, which may be due to causal peer influence via other channels, such as word of mouth, or very localized unobservable effects. The effect of peer visibility is moderated by the economic value that the peers receive from installing solar, providing suggestive evidence of social learning through visual information.
Lack of local pricing response in national retail chains during large and localized demand peaks: Evidence from college move-ins and instant noodles
Xiao Dong
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
I utilize the predictable stockpiling of instant noodles during move-in week in college towns to examine how national retailers adjust prices in response to large and localized demand peaks. I find unit sales of instant noodles increase over 250% during college move-in week compared to sales in non-college town stores. Furthermore, I find national retail chains do not adjust prices locally in response and maintain uniform pricing.