We investigate a business-to-business context and ask when and why a firm should announce a “reference program” that commits the firm to facilitating the flow of information about the efficacy of its products from early adopters to potential late adopters. We model a monopolist manufacturer...

In this research we predict and demonstrate that consumers' propensities to generate word-of-mouth (WOM) is affected by their motivation to self-enhance, that is, to seek experiences that bolster the self-concept. Data from three experiments and an empirical analysis of real-world WOM indicate...

Nearly all organizations of any type, size or scale produce their final output via aprocess characterized in some form by (i) joint contributions from multiple individualagents and (ii) a sequential work flow in which “upstream” agents take actions that mayimpact the choices made by those...

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...

Understanding how opinions are received and evaluated is important for an online community because the volume and quality of user opinions are key determinants of success. In this paper, we investigate how a reputation system affects peer evaluations in an online community. In contrast to...

We investigate the evolution of online ratings over time and sequence. We first establish that there exist two distinct dynamic processes, one as a function of the amount of time a book has been available for review and another as a function of the sequence of reviews themselves. We find that,...

In this paper, we ask when will a firm earn more profits from selling the attention of its customers to advertisers than from selling the underlying product itself. In other words, when will a firm become an advertising "medium"? We investigate this decision as a function of the intensity and...