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SUMMARY:Online Reputation Management: Estimating the Impact of Management 
 Responses on Consumer Reviews - Davide Proserpio (Boston University)
DTSTART:20150416T140000Z
DTEND:20150416T150000Z
UID:TALK58199@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Eiko Yoneki
DESCRIPTION:Failure to meet a consumer's expectations can result in a nega
 tive review\, which can have a lasting\, damaging impact on a firm's reput
 ation\, and its ability to attract new customers. To mitigate the reputati
 onal harm of negative reviews many firms now publicly respond to them. How
  effective is this reputation management strategy in improving a firm's re
 putation? We empirically answer this question by exploiting a difference i
 n managerial practice across two hotel review platforms\, TripAdvisor and 
 Expedia: while hotels regularly respond to their TripAdvisor reviews\, the
 y almost never do so on Expedia. Based on this observation\, we use differ
 ence-in-differences to identify the causal impact of management responses 
 on consumer ratings by comparing changes in the TripAdvisor ratings of a h
 otel following its decision to begin responding against a baseline of chan
 ges in the same hotel's Expedia ratings. We find that responding hotels\, 
 which account for 56% of hotels in our data\, see an average increase of 0
 .12 stars in the TripAdvisor ratings they receive after they start respond
 ing. Moreover\, we show that this increase in ratings does not arise from 
 hotel quality investments. Instead\, we find that the increase is consiste
 nt with a shift in reviewer selection: consumers with a poor experience be
 come less likely to leave a negative review when hotels begin responding.\
 n\nBio: Davide Proserpio is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the Departmen
 t of Computer Science at Boston University where he is advised by Professo
 r Sharon Goldberg and John Byers and he frequently collaborates with Profe
 ssor Giorgos Zervas. His current research involves leveraging concepts fro
 m computer science\, statistics and economics to study complex social syst
 ems. Davide received his bachelor in telecommunication engineering from Po
 litecnico di Milano (Milan\,\nItaly) and his master in engineering from Ca
 rlos III University (Madrid\, Spain).\n
LOCATION:FW26\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Builiding
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