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Article
Expert product reviews and conflict of interest
Managerial and Decision Economics (2020)
  • Tom Hamami
  • James Bailey, Providence College
Abstract
Many firms that produce expert product reviews benefit from increased sales of the products they review, resulting in a conflict of interest. We evaluate expert product reviews from a video game magazine owned by a game retailer. We find evidence of review inflation for lower-quality games and in periods shortly following the release of a game's corresponding hardware. These results are consistent with theoretical predictions for a firm that optimizes the trade-off between sales revenue and the reputational costs associated with biasing reviews
Disciplines
Publication Date
July 26, 2020
DOI
10.1002/mde.3221
Citation Information
Tom Hamami and James Bailey. "Expert product reviews and conflict of interest" Managerial and Decision Economics Vol. 42 (2020) p. 170 - 176 ISSN: 1099-1468
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/james-b-bailey/27/