Journal of Marketing Behavior > Vol 3 > Issue 2

Should We Reach for the Stars? Examining the Convergence Between Online Product Ratings and Objective Product Quality and Their Impacts on Sales Performance

Sarah Köcher, TU Dortmund University, Germany, sarah.koecher@tu-dortmund.de , Sören Köcher, TU Dortmund University, Germany, soeren.koecher@tu-dortmund.de
 
Suggested Citation
Sarah Köcher and Sören Köcher (2018), "Should We Reach for the Stars? Examining the Convergence Between Online Product Ratings and Objective Product Quality and Their Impacts on Sales Performance", Journal of Marketing Behavior: Vol. 3: No. 2, pp 167-183. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/107.00000050

Publication Date: 13 Nov 2018
© 2018 S. Köcher and S. Köcher
 
Subjects
Sales forecasting,  Consumer behavior,  Marketing research,  Information systems and individuals,  Retailing,  E-commerce and E-business models
 
Keywords
Online product ratingsobjective qualitysales performanceproduct age
 

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In this article:
Introduction 
Data 
Replications 
Extensions 
General Discussion 
References 

Abstract

By documenting that online ratings poorly correlate with quality scores provided by Consumer Reports — presumably a measure of "objective" product quality — de Langhe et al. (2016a) found that consumers rely more heavily on such ratings when making quality inferences than they should. Apart from replicating this finding, we examine the moderating effect of product age on the convergence between objective and rated quality and investigate which quality indicator is a better predictor of sales performance.

DOI:10.1561/107.00000050