Why Do Product Prices Affect Review Ratings? Evidence from a Japanese Online Travel Agency
研究了在线酒店预订平台上，消费者支付的价格如何通过影响质量预期来影响评分，发现价格对评分的影响在质量不确定性高时更大，且低价带来的高剩余并非评分提高的主因。
I examine why the prices that consumers pay influence their ratings of products. In the context of hotel reviews on an online booking platform, I find that prices have larger impact on ratings when consumers face larger uncertainty about hotel quality, indicating that prices affect satisfaction through consumers’ quality expectation. On the other hand, I find that the mere fact that the reviewer received higher surplus through a lower price by itself is not a primary reason for a higher rating. I also present suggestive evidence of consumer reciprocation, in which consumers experiencing a high-quality staff service likely become more forgiving of higher prices. I show that introductory pricing can have a substantial impact on the distribution of review rankings among new entrants because of the role of prices as quality signals. Understanding the price effect on ratings is crucial to designing review systems robust to potential distortion. This paper was accepted by Raphael Thomadsen, marketing. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.05043 .