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- Title
Seller Reputation and Buyer Feedback.
- Authors
Xiaodan Zhang; Yanping Gong; Houser, Daniel
- Abstract
Reputation has a strong influence on online market outcomes, and communication in the form of feedback (e.g., online message boards) plays an important role in determining one's reputation. Although the economic benefits of reputation systems have been well-documented, reputation systems might also have economic costs. In this article we ask whether transactions numerically scored as "positive" are more likely to be associated with negative written feedback when a seller has a relatively low reputation. Our analysis of this question is based on data from the Chinese online marketplace, Taobao.com. We collected over 2,500 numerical evaluations and written messages from buyers to sellers, where in all cases the buyers numerically scored their transaction experience as "positive." Using the XH message classification game (Houser & Xiao, 2011), evaluators who were blind to the transaction details categorized buyer's written messages from these transactions as reflecting a "positive," "negative" or "neutral" experience. We discover that positive numerical feedback is accompanied by less positive textual comments when sellers have already received more feedback (that is, when the sellers have been on Taobao longer or have had more transactions for other reasons). We discuss multiple competing explanations for this finding.
- Subjects
REPUTATION; PSYCHOLOGICAL feedback; INTERNET marketing; INTERNET forums; ONLINE marketplaces; TAOBAO.COM Inc.
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, & Economics, 2016, Vol 9, Issue 2, p121
- ISSN
1937-321X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1037/npe0000058