IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cam/camdae/0335.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Superiority of Tough Reviewers in a Model of Simultaneous Sales

Author

Listed:
  • Gill, D.
  • Sgroi, D.

Abstract

This paper considers the impact of reviewers on the sale of a product of unknown quality. Sales occur simultaneously after an initial review by an unbiased, pessimistic or optimistic reviewer and we examine the impact on sales in each case. We find that counter-intuitively a pessimistic reviewer is best for the firm's profits regardless of the quality of the product. An endorsement by such a pessimist provides an excellent signal of the product's quality, while consumers expect the reviewer to fail to endorse, so receiving no endorsement will not impact too heavily on the firm's expected profits. This asymmetric impact provides a strong explanation for the stylized fact that reviewers are often viewed as being very critical.

Suggested Citation

  • Gill, D. & Sgroi, D., 2003. "The Superiority of Tough Reviewers in a Model of Simultaneous Sales," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0335, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:cam:camdae:0335
    Note: IO, ET
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/research-files/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe0335.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gill, David & Sgroi, Daniel, 2008. "Sequential decisions with tests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 663-678, July.
    2. Emmanuel Farhi & Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2013. "Fear of rejection? Tiered certification and transparency," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(4), pages 610-631, December.
    3. Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2006. "A Model of Forum Shopping," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1091-1113, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    private information; reviewers; bias; simultaneous sales; marketing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cam:camdae:0335. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jake Dyer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.