As an intermediary improves trust between two sides of its market to facilitate matching and transactions, it faces an increased risk of disintermediation: with sufficient trust, the two sides may circumvent the intermediary to avoid the intermediary's fees. We investigate the relationship...

Social interactions have become crucial and varied in the digital economy. However, the impact of the structural diversity of social network connections on users' decisions is still not well understood. Accurate measurements and rigorous causal evidence have been lacking, making it difficult to...

Despite the widespread popularity of online opinion forums among consumers, the business value that such systems bring to organizations has, so far, remained an unanswered question. This paper addresses this question by studying the value of online movie ratings in forecasting motion picture...

Prior works offer compelling evidence that on the demand side of the market, user-generated online product reviews play a very important role in informing consumers' purchase decisions. On the supply side, however, the interplay between online product reviews and firm strategies is less...