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Abstract. We examine the effect of managerial response on consumer voice in a dynamic quality environment. We argue that the consumer is motivated to write reviews not only because reviews [...]

Empirically, we find that Web logs (or 'blogs') often link to other blogs in the same category. We present an analytical model that explains why a rational blogger may choose to link to another blog. We allow bloggers to differ along two dimensions: (1) the ability to post news-breaking content, and (2) the ability to find news in other blogs. By linking, a blog signals to the reader that it will be able to direct her to news in other blogs in the future. The downside of a link is that it is a positive signal on the rival's news-breaking ability. We show that linking will be in equilibrium when the heterogeneity on the ability to break news is low relative to the heterogeneity on the ability to find news in other blogs. One implication of the linking mechanism is that blogs that are high on the news-breaking ability are more likely to gain readers. Hence, despite the fact that bloggers link for purely selfish reasons, the macro effects of this activity is that readers' learning is enhanced. Key words: game theory; social media; linking; signaling; blogs History: Received September 30, 2010; accepted November 8, 2011, by J. Miguel Villas-Boas, marketing. Published online in Articles in Advance July 30, 2012., 1. Introduction In 1994, a Swarthmore College student, Justin Hall, created an online personal journal called Links.net, now recognized as the first Web log or 'blog' (Rosen 2004). Since then, [...]

What the firm should say in an advertising message, the choice of content, is a critical managerial decision. Here, we focus on a particular aspect of the advertising content choice: [...]

In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of a firm's proactive management of customer-to-customer communication. We are particularly interested in understanding how, if at all, the firm should go about [...]

Chat rooms, recommendation sites, and customer review sections allow consumers to overcome geographic boundaries and to communicate based on mutual interests. However, marketers also have incentives to supply promotional chat [...]

Byline: David Godes (1), Dina Mayzlin (2), Yubo Chen (3), Sanjiv Das (4), Chrysanthos Dellarocas (5), Bruce Pfeiffer (6), Barak Libai (7), Subrata Sen (2), Mengze Shi (8), Peeter Verlegh (9) Abstract: Consumer choice is influenced in a direct and meaningful way by the actions taken by others. These 'actions' range from face-to-face recommendations from a friend to the passive observation of what a stranger is wearing. We refer to the set of such contexts as 'social interactions' (SI). We believe that at least some of the SI effects are partially within the firm's control and that this represents an exciting research opportunity. We present an agenda that identifies a list of unanswered questions of potential interest to both researchers and managers. In order to appreciate the firm's choices with respect to its management of SI, it is important to first evaluate where we are in terms of understanding the phenomena themselves. We highlight five questions in this regard: (1) What are the antecedents of word of mouth (WOM)? (2) How does the transmission of positive WOM differ from that of negative WOM? (3) How does online WOM differ from offline WOM? (4) What is the impact of WOM? (5) How can we measure WOM? Finally, we identify and discuss four principal, non-mutually exclusive, roles that the firm might play: (1) observer, (2) moderator, (3) mediator, and (4) participant. Author Affiliation: (1) Harvard University, USA (2) Yale University, USA (3) University of Arizona, Arizona (4) Santa Clara University, California (5) MIT, USA (6) University of Colorado, Colorado (7) Tel Aviv University, Israel (8) University of Toronto, Toronto (9) Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam Article History: Registration Date: 01/01/2005

Managers are very interested in word-of-mouth communication because they believe that a product's success is related to the word of mouth that it generates. However, there are at least three [...]

Research was conducted to examine the effect of Medicaid fee differentials on the use of cesarean delivery over the period 1988-1992. It was shown that larger fee differentials between cesarean and normal childbirth for the Medicaid program results in higher cesarean delivery rates which is in contrast to the backward-bending supply curve implied by the Medicare literature. Findings indicate that Medicaid reimbursement reductions can cause real reductions in the intensity with which Medicaid patients are treated.