TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chevalier,Judith A.
AU  - Mayzlin,Dina
TI  - The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10148
PY  - 2003
Y2  - December 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10148
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10148.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Judith A. Chevalier
Yale School of Management
135 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT  06520
Tel: 203/432-3122
Fax: NA
E-Mail: judith.chevalier@yale.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2004-05-01
AB  - We examine the effect of consumer reviews on relative sales of books on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. We find that 1) reviews are overwhelmingly positive at both sites, but there are more reviews and longer reviews at Amazon.com, 2) an improvement in a book's reviews leads to an increase in relative sales at that site, and 3) the impact of 1-star reviews is greater than the impact of 5-star reviews. The results suggest that new forms of customer communication on the Internet have an important impact on customer behavior.
ER  -