This paper presents estimation results on the size and loyalty of sport teams’ supporter groups in professional German football. Based on a novel two-stage estimation procedure, we find clear evidence for heterogeneity across teams. In a first stage, a random utility model for a representative...

Online reviews are supposed to provide an unbiased source of information for consumers. However, prior studies have shown that, due to the complex nature of consumer-producer matching and the influence of the consumer's social environment on their decision-making, such reviews are subject to...

This paper provides field evidence that social distance between customers and reviewers influences the impact from online reviews on product sales. We conceptualize information on interpersonal similarity as a heuristic cue that helps customers to infer similarity in product preferences between...

In a range of studies across platforms, online ratings have been shown to be characterized by distributions with disproportionately-heavy tails. We focus on understanding the underlying process that yields such “j-shaped” or “extreme” distributions. We propose a novel theoretical...