Article
Expert product reviews and conflict of interest
Managerial and Decision Economics
(2020)
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/