We investigate how competition for reputation among consumers can impact the effectiveness of firm interventions. In situations where the firm attempts to intervene to change consumer behavior (e.g., advertising, policy guidelines, legal threats), the consumer's response may depend not only on...

Understanding how opinions are received and evaluated is important for an online community because the volume and quality of user opinions are key determinants of success. In this paper, we investigate how a reputation system affects peer evaluations in an online community. In contrast to...

This paper introduces a model for analyzing marketplaces, such as eBay, which rely on binary reputation mechanisms for quality signaling and quality control. In our model sellers keep their actual quality private and choose what quality to advertise. The reputation mechanism is primarily used to...

Several properties of online interaction are challenging the accumulated wisdom of trading communities on how to produce and manage trust. Online reputation reporting systems have emerged as a promising trust management mechanism in such settings. The objective of this paper is to contribute to...

Online "feedback mechanisms" - also known as "reputation systems" - have been implemented in the most important private e-markets, such as eBay, Yahoo!, Amazon to foster trust and cooperation among trading partners. In this paper we discuss the main issues relevant for the optimal design of such...

Reputation mechanisms have become an important component of electronic markets, helping to build trust and elicit cooperation among loosely connected and geographically dispersed economic agents. Understanding the impact of different reputation mechanism design parameters on the resulting market...