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  1. Home
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  3. American Economic Review
  4. August 2014
  5. Promotional Reviews: An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation

Promotional Reviews: An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation

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Abstract

Firms' incentives to manufacture biased user reviews impede review usefulness. We examine the differences in reviews for a given hotel between two sites: Expedia.com (only a customer can post a review) and TripAdvisor.com (anyone can post). We argue that the net gains from promotional reviewing are highest for independent hotels with single-unit owners and lowest for branded chain hotels with multi-unit owners. We demonstrate that the hotel neighbors of hotels with a high incentive to fake have more negative reviews on TripAdvisor relative to Expedia; hotels with a high incentive to fake have more positive reviews on TripAdvisor relative to Expedia.

Citation

Mayzlin, Dina, Yaniv Dover, and Judith Chevalier. 2014. "Promotional Reviews: An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation." American Economic Review, 104 (8): 2421-55. DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.8.2421

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • L15 Information and Product Quality; Standardization and Compatibility
  • L83 Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
  • M31 Marketing