We scrutinize the direct and moderated impact of brands’ support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) on consumer responses. Our empirical strategy exploits Blackout Tuesday as a natural experiment in which BLM support occurred on Instagram (treated platform) but not on Twitter (control platform) to...

In this study, we demonstrate empirical evidence supporting the game theoretic argument that the presence of online reviews can curtail branded firms' quality advantage over independent firms due to signaling in experience good markets. Exploiting heterogeneous review platform penetration rates...

We study peer effects on individuals' contributions to a major form of word of mouth—online reviews. Provided by either consumers or third-party professionals, online reviews influence consumer purchasing decisions and hence sales. Individuals have conflicting incentives of free riding and...

Product fit uncertainty is cited as one of the top reasons for high online product return rates. Fit describes how well a product suits a consumer's needs. The value of a product drops sharply when it deviates from a customer's ideal fit. In this study, we focus on ordinal fit, a type of fit...