The DOI matches its Crossref record; 10 of the 10 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets
Open accessAbstract
Consumer-generated product reviews have proliferated online, driven by the notion that consumers' decision to purchase or not purchase a product is based on the positive or negative information about that product they obtain from fellow consumers. Using research on information processing as a foundation, we suggest that in the context of an online community, reviewer disclosure of identity-descriptive information is used by consumers to supplement or replace product information when making purchase decisions and evaluating the helpfulness of online reviews. Using a unique data set based on both chronologically compiled ratings as well as reviewer characteristics for a given set of products and geographical location-based purchasing behavior from Amazon, we provide evidence that community norms are an antecedent to reviewer disclosure of identity-descriptive information. Online community members rate reviews containing identity-descriptive information more positively, and the prevalence of reviewer disclosure of identity information is associated with increases in subsequent online product sales. In addition, we show that shared geographical location increases the relationship between disclosure and product sales, thus highlighting the important role of geography in electronic commerce. Taken together, our results suggest that identity-relevant information about reviewers shapes community members' judgment of products and reviews. Implications for research on the relationship between online word-of-mouth (WOM) and sales, peer recognition and reputation systems, and conformity to online community norms are discussed.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037//0033-2909.117.3.497 · Cited by 23,245
Hsiao, C. (2014) · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139839327 · Cited by 7,869
The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews
Chevalier, J. A., & Mayzlin, D. (2006) · Journal of Marketing Research · doi:10.1509/jmkr.43.3.345 · Cited by 6,003
Hennig-Thurau, T., Gwinner, K. P., Walsh, G., & Gremler, D. D. (2004) · Journal of Interactive Marketing · doi:10.1002/dir.10073 · Cited by 5,916
The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time
Brewer, M. B. (1991) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167291175001 · Cited by 5,107
Computer-Mediated Communication: Impersonal, Interpersonal, and Hyperpersonal Interaction
WALTHER, J. B. (1996) · Communication Research · doi:10.1177/009365096023001001 · Cited by 4,798 · cited 6×
“In sum, if community members identify with and more positively assess reviewers who disclose identity-descriptive information (Walther 1992, 1996; Jarvenpaa and Leidner 1999; Lea et al. 2001) and use their assessment of reviewers as a heuristic shaping their evaluation of the product reviewed…”
BackgroundInfluentialThe psychology of social impact
Latané, B. (1981) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.36.4.343 · Cited by 2,864
Building Effective Online Marketplaces with Institution-Based Trust
Pavlou, P. A., & Gefen, D. (2004) · Information Systems Research · doi:10.1287/isre.1040.0015 · Cited by 2,516
The Persuasiveness of Source Credibility: A Critical Review of Five Decades' Evidence
Pornpitakpan, C. (2004) · Journal of Applied Social Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2004.tb02547.x · Cited by 2,205 · cited 6×
“Indeed, the information processing literature has repeatedly demonstrated that attributes of a message source often exert direct effects on message recipients’ attitudes and behaviors, independent of the message content (e.g., Chaiken and Maheshwaran 1994, Petty et al. 1998, Simpson et al. 2000, Cohen 2003, Menon and…”
BackgroundInfluentialResnick, P., Kuwabara, K., Zeckhauser, R., & Friedman, E. (2000) · Communications of the ACM · doi:10.1145/355112.355122 · Cited by 2,190 · cited 5×
“In contrast, reviewers' self-disclosure that is patterned after community norms communicates reviewers' community identification to others, helps to establish the reviewers' reputation (Resnick et al. 2000), and provides an opportunity to obtain identity-verifying responses from fellow members.”
BackgroundInfluential
Cited by
Goldfarb, A., & Tucker, C. (2019) · Journal of Economic Literature · doi:10.1257/jel.20171452 · Cited by 2,744
The impact of electronic word-of-mouth communication: A literature analysis and integrative model
Cheung, C. M. K., & Thadani, D. R. (2012) · Decision Support Systems · doi:10.1016/j.dss.2012.06.008 · Cited by 2,005
Babić Rosario, A., Sotgiu, F., De Valck, K., & Bijmolt, T. H. A. (2016) · Journal of Marketing Research · doi:10.1509/jmr.14.0380 · Cited by 1,073
Research Commentary —Too Big to Fail: Large Samples and the p -Value Problem
Lin, M., Lucas, H. C., & Shmueli, G. (2013) · Information Systems Research · doi:10.1287/isre.2013.0480 · Cited by 972
What makes a useful online review? Implication for travel product websites
Liu, Z., & Park, S. (2015) · Tourism Management · doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2014.09.020 · Cited by 963
Metadata
- Authors
- Forman, C., Ghose, A., & Wiesenfeld, B.
- Venue
- Information Systems Research
- Published
- 2008-09
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 291-313
- ISSN
- 1047-7047 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5536
- OpenAlex
- W3122724846
- Cited by
- 1,695
- References
- 10
- FWCI
- 154.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1287/isre.1080.0193
- The paper
- Forman, C., Ghose, A., & Wiesenfeld, B. (2008). Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets. Information Systems Research. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.1080.0193
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
