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The Conformity Effect in Online Product Rating: The Pattern Recognition Approach

  • Kim, Hyung Jun (Graduate School of Culture Technology Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)) ;
  • Kim, Songmi (Graduate School of Culture Technology Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)) ;
  • Kim, Wonjoon (School of Business and Technology Management Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST))
  • Received : 2017.08.10
  • Accepted : 2017.10.13
  • Published : 2017.12.28
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Abstract

Since the advent of the Internet, and the development of smart devices, people have begun to spend more time in online platforms; this phenomenon has created a large number of online Words of Mouth (WOM) daily. Under these changes, one of the important aspects to consider is the conformity effect in online WOM; that is, whether an individual's own opinion would be influenced by the majority opinion of other people. This study, therefore, investigates whether there is the conformity effect in online product ratings for Amazon.com using the method called Markov Chain analysis. Markov Chain analysis considers the stochastic process that satisfies the Markov property, and we assume that the generation of online product ratings follows the process. Under the assumption that people are usually independent when they express their opinion in online platforms, we analyze the interdependency among rating sequences, and we find weak evidence that there exists the conformity effect in online product rating. This suggests that people who leave online product ratings consider others' opinions.

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