Self or Simulacra of Online Reviews: An Empirical Perspective
基于Yelp网站数据，实证研究发现消费者的朋友和粉丝数量会正向影响其撰写在线评论的数量，挑战了评论真实反映消费体验的假设。
ABSTRACT Online user‐generated content includes various forms of computer‐mediated online reviews, ratings, and feedback. The impact of online consumer reviews has been widely studied particularly in e‐commerce, online marketing, and consumer behavior domains using text‐mining and sentiment analysis. Such studies often assume that consumer‐submitted online reviews truly represent consumer experiences, but multiple studies on online social networks suggest otherwise. Drawing from the social network literature, this paper investigates the impact of peers on consumer willingness to write and submit online reviews. An empirical study using data from “Yelp,” a globally used online restaurant review Web site, shows that the number of friends and fans positively impacts the number of online consumer reviews written. Implications for research and practice are discussed.