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Online Review Solicitations Reduce Extremity Bias In Online Review Distributions And Increase Their Representativeness, Hülya Karaman
Online Review Solicitations Reduce Extremity Bias In Online Review Distributions And Increase Their Representativeness, Hülya Karaman
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Representative online customer reviews are critical to the effective functioning of the Internet economy. In this study, I investigate the representativeness of online review distributions to examine how extremity bias and conformity impact it, and explore whether online review solicitations alter representativeness. Past research on extreme distribution of online ratings commonly relied solely on observed public online ratings. One strength of the current paper is that I observe the private satisfaction ratings of customers regardless of whether they choose to write an online review or not. I show that both extremity bias and conformity exist in unsolicited online word-of-mouth (WOM) …