Enabled by Web 2.0 technologies, online social media in the forms of discussion forums, message boards, and blogs has become a prevalent channe lof communication for consumers and businesses. Online social media allows consumers to share their product opinions and experience at an unprecedented...

In this paper, we examine the persuasive influences of online user comments (or word-of-mouth) and of the reviews by movie critics on moviegoers’ evaluation of to-be-released movies. Two distinctive features of this study are: (1) moviegoers are considered to be heterogeneous in their movie...