Subject：Learning from Self and the Crowd: the Informational Role of User-Generated Content for Frequently Purchased Products
Time: Monday (Mar. 4 2013) at 9:30am—11:30am
Location: Room 216, School of Management
Participants: Teachers and students of School of Management
Abstract of the report
User-generated content (UGC) supplements the traditional information channels and has become an important information source for consumers. This online information is changing the way consumers shop for both online and offline products. We propose a structural model to examine the informational role of UGC on individual consumer’s purchase decision on frequently purchased products. We specifically address the following research questions: (1) how does and individual consumer interpret the product information embedded in online UGC to guide his/her purchase decision? (2) For frequently purchased products, how will consumers’ experiential learning moderate the informational role of UGC? (3) If the product information embedded in UGC is biased, how will consumers adjust their sensitivity to UGC content in their future choices?
We apply the model to a panel datasets which include consumers’ dining transactions, consumer reviews data from a popular restaurant review website, and attribute information of restaurants. We find that learning models fit the data much better than the static model. Our results show that it is critically important to control consumer experiential learning when investigating the influence of UGC. Otherwise, we may overestimate the influence of online UGC. Our results provide implications in terms of how individual consumers view, perceive, and use UGC to guide their product choice, how consumers’ information needs may change over their consumption experiences, and how the potential bias of UGC may affect consumer usage of the UGC.
Introduction of the speaker
Wang Qingliang is a Ph.D. candidate in Information Systems at the School of Computing at National University of Singapore. He earned a bachelor's degree in Information Management and Information Systems from Renmin University of China.
His research interests are on issues related to information diffusion and consumer learning in digital media environments, social media and social network analysis, consumer behavior and firm strategies in IT-mediated markets. His dissertation focuses on examining how social media change the way that consumers learn and acquire information, as well as how user-generated content may affect consumer choice in offline environments.
