How Does Popularity Information Affect Choices? A Field Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tucker, Catherine Elizabeth; Zhang, Juanjuan
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1110.1312
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 828-842
• 关键词: popularity information; Observational learning; field experiment; Internet marketing

摘要

Popularity information is usually thought to reinforce existing sales trends by encouraging customers to flock to mainstream products with broad appeal. We suggest a countervailing market force: popularity information may benefit niche products with narrow appeal disproportionately, because the same level of popularity implies higher quality for narrow-appeal products than for broad-appeal products. We examine this hypothesis empirically using field experiment data from a website that lists wedding service vendors. Our findings are consistent with this hypothesis: narrow-appeal vendors receive more visits than equally popular broad-appeal vendors after the introduction of popularity information.