IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormksc/v25y2006i2p155-163.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Promotional Chat on the Internet

Author

Listed:
  • Dina Mayzlin

    (Yale School of Management, 135 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520)

Abstract

Chat rooms, recommendation sites, and customer review sections allow consumers to overcome geographic boundaries and to communicate based on mutual interests. However, marketers also have incentives to supply promotional chat or reviews in order to influence the consumers' evaluation of their products. Moreover, firms can disguise their promotion as consumer recommendations due to the anonymity afforded by online communities. We explore this new setting where advertising and word of mouth become perfect substitutes because they appear indistinguishable to the consumer. Specifically, we investigate here whether word of mouth remains credible and whether firms choose to devote more resources promoting their inferior or superior products. We develop a game theoretic model in which two products are differentiated in their value to the consumer. Unlike the firms, the consumers are uncertain about the products' quality. The consumers read messages online that help them decide on the identity of the superior product. We find a unique equilibrium where online word of mouth is persuasive despite the promotional chat activity by competing firms. In this equilibrium, firms spend more resources promoting inferior products, in striking contrast to existing advertising literature. In addition, we discuss consumer welfare implications and how other marketing strategies might interact with promotional chat.

Suggested Citation

  • Dina Mayzlin, 2006. "Promotional Chat on the Internet," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(2), pages 155-163, 03-04.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormksc:v:25:y:2006:i:2:p:155-163
    DOI: 10.1287/mksc.1050.0137
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.1050.0137
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mksc.1050.0137?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Glenn Ellison & Drew Fudenberg, 1995. "Word-of-Mouth Communication and Social Learning," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 110(1), pages 93-125.
    2. Paul Resnick & Christopher Avery & Richard Zeckhauser, 1999. "The Market for Evaluations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 564-584, June.
    3. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1986. "Price and Advertising Signals of Product Quality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 796-821, August.
    4. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1993. "The Economics of Rumours," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(2), pages 309-327.
    5. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    6. Ignatius Horstmann & Sridhar Moorthy, 2003. "Advertising Spending and Quality for Services: The Role of Capacity," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 337-365, September.
    7. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    8. Kihlstrom, Richard E & Riordan, Michael H, 1984. "Advertising as a Signal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 427-450, June.
    9. Vijay Mahajan & Eitan Muller & Roger A. Kerin, 1984. "Introduction Strategy for New Products with Positive and Negative Word-of-Mouth," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(12), pages 1389-1404, December.
    10. Young-Hoon Park & Peter S. Fader, 2004. "Modeling Browsing Behavior at Multiple Websites," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(3), pages 280-303, May.
    11. Nelson, Philip, 1974. "Advertising as Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 729-754, July/Aug..
    12. Eric T. Anderson & Duncan I. Simester, 2001. "Price Discrimination as an Adverse Signal: Why an Offer to Spread Payments May Hurt Demand," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 315-327, November.
    13. Sridhar Moorthy & Kannan Srinivasan, 1995. "Signaling Quality with a Money-Back Guarantee: The Role of Transaction Costs," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(4), pages 442-466.
    14. Gavan J. Fitzsimons & Donald R. Lehmann, 2004. "Reactance to Recommendations: When Unsolicited Advice Yields Contrary Responses," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 82-94, September.
    15. Eric J. Friedman* & Paul Resnick, 2001. "The Social Cost of Cheap Pseudonyms," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 173-199, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tingting Nian & Arun Sundararajan, 2022. "Social Media Marketing, Quality Signaling, and the Goldilocks Principle," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 540-556, June.
    2. Brekke Kjell Arne & Rege Mari, 2007. "Advertising as a Distortion of Social Learning," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-18, October.
    3. Yogesh V. Joshi & Andres Musalem, 2021. "When Consumers Learn, Money Burns: Signaling Quality via Advertising with Observational Learning and Word of Mouth," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(1), pages 168-188, January.
    4. Zhen, Xueping & (George) Cai, Gangshu & Song, Reo & Jang, Sungha, 2019. "The effects of herding and word of mouth in a two-period advertising signaling model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 275(1), pages 361-373.
    5. Juanjuan Zhang, 2010. "The Sound of Silence: Observational Learning in the U.S. Kidney Market," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(2), pages 315-335, 03-04.
    6. Monteiro, Paulo Klinger & Moraga-González, José Luis, 2003. "We Sold a Million Units -- The Role of Advertising Past-Sales," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 57(2), April.
    7. Corneo, Giacomo & Jeanne, Olivier, 1999. "Segmented communication and fashionable behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 371-385, July.
    8. Banerjee, Abhijit & Fudenberg, Drew, 2004. "Word-of-mouth learning," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 1-22, January.
    9. Ivan Pastine & Tuvana Pastine, 2000. "Coordination in Markets with Consumption Externalities : The Role of Advertising and Product Quality," Working Papers 0003, Department of Economics, Bilkent University.
    10. Hao Zhao, 2000. "Raising Awareness and Signaling Quality to Uninformed Consumers: A Price-Advertising Model," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(4), pages 390-396, January.
    11. Michel Grabisch & Agnieszka Rusinowska, 2020. "A Survey on Nonstrategic Models of Opinion Dynamics," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-29, December.
    12. P. K. Monteiro & J. L. Moraga, 1998. "``We sold a million copies''-The role of advertising past sales," Industrial Organization 9812001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Yuxin Chen & Qihong Liu, 2022. "Signaling Through Advertising When an Ad Can Be Blocked," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(1), pages 166-187, January.
    14. Xinxin Li & Lorin M. Hitt, 2008. "Self-Selection and Information Role of Online Product Reviews," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 19(4), pages 456-474, December.
    15. Brett Hollenbeck & Sridhar Moorthy & Davide Proserpio, 2019. "Advertising Strategy in the Presence of Reviews: An Empirical Analysis," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(5), pages 793-811, September.
    16. Zakaria Babutsidze & Robin Cowan, 2014. "Showing or telling? Local interaction and organization of behavior," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 9(2), pages 151-181, October.
    17. Liang Guo & Yue Wu, 2016. "Consumer deliberation and quality signaling," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 233-269, September.
    18. Upender Subramanian & Ram C. Rao, 2016. "Leveraging Experienced Consumers to Attract New Consumers: An Equilibrium Analysis of Displaying Deal Sales by Daily Deal Websites," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3555-3575, December.
    19. Régis Chenavaz & Sajjad M. Jasimuddin, 2017. "An analytical model of the relationship between product quality and advertising," Post-Print hal-01685892, HAL.
    20. Feng, Hong & Fu, Qiang & Zhang, Lan, 2020. "How to Launch a New Durable Good: A Signaling Rationale for Hunger Marketing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).

    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:inm:ormksc:v:25:y:2006:i:2:p:155-163. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    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.