Exploring the h-type measure and its theoretical model in the context of e-commerce.

The aim of this study is to find whether the h-index and Schubert-Glänzel model which was originally used in bibliometrics can work in the broader social and information systems, such as e-commerce. This study introduces the popularity index (hP) to profile on-line sellers and products and tests the accuracy of the Schubert-Glänzel model of the hP index using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. The hP index was tested on Taobao, a leading Chinese e-commerce marketplace. About 300 products on Taobao were randomly selected from 10 categories of the most popular on-line products as samples for this study. It was found that hP is consistent with the Schubert-Glänzel model the h-index. This shows that the existing theoretical bibliometric model which was originally used in the scientific literature, could be helpful in the broader social or information systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]