Designing Ranking Systems For Consumer Reviews: The Impact Of Review Subjectivity On Product Sales And Review Quality

With the rapid growth of the Internet, users' ability to publish content has created active electronic communities that provide a wealth of product information. Consumers naturally gravitate to reading reviews in order to decide whether to buy a product. However, the high volume of reviews that are typically published for a single product makes it harder for individuals to locate the best reviews and understand the true underlying quality of a product based on the reviews. Similarly, the manufacturer of a product wants to identify the reviews that influence the customer base, and examine the content of these reviews.