IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/qmktec/v4y2006i2p119-141.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is silence golden? An inquiry into the meaning of silence in professional product evaluations

Author

Listed:
  • Wagner Kamakura
  • Suman Basuroy
  • Peter Boatwright

Abstract

The world today is rife with product recommendations from professional critics and experts that are available from numerous sources—television, magazines, radio, internet, etc. Very often these recommendations shape our decisions and choices. In this study, we investigate two main issues regarding expert opinions. First, we present an approach that uses information available from every expert, including those who are silent about the product, to obtain a consensus measure of expert opinion. Our model also allows us to obtain a measure of how informative each expert is and how their information content may vary by type of review. More importantly, our overall measure of expert opinion weights the opinion of each expert based on how informative they are at the particular quality level of the product being evaluated. In other words, we provide consumers with a method that reconciles conflicting expert opinions into a summary measure. The second issue we investigate in this paper is the meaning of “silence” in expert opinions. Our model demonstrates that the fact that an expert is silent about a product may imply a positive or a negative review, depending on the expert. We use data from the motion pictures industry to illustrate our approach. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2006

Suggested Citation

  • Wagner Kamakura & Suman Basuroy & Peter Boatwright, 2006. "Is silence golden? An inquiry into the meaning of silence in professional product evaluations," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 119-141, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:qmktec:v:4:y:2006:i:2:p:119-141
    DOI: 10.1007/s11129-006-3181-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11129-006-3181-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11129-006-3181-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harvey, Nigel & Harries, Clare & Fischer, Ilan, 2000. "Using Advice and Assessing Its Quality," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 252-273, March.
    2. Michel Wedel & Wagner Kamakura, 2001. "Factor analysis with (mixed) observed and latent variables in the exponential family," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 515-530, December.
    3. Michaely, Roni & Womack, Kent L, 1999. "Conflict of Interest and the Credibility of Underwriter Analyst Recommendations," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 653-686.
    4. Holbrook, Morris B, 1999. "Popular Appeal versus Expert Judgments of Motion Pictures," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 26(2), pages 144-155, September.
    5. West, Patricia M & Broniarczyk, Susan M, 1998. "Integrating Multiple Opinions: The Role of Aspiration Level on Consumer Response to Critic Consensus," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 25(1), pages 38-51, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Angela (Xia) Liu & Tridib Mazumdar & Bo Li, 2015. "Counterfactual Decomposition of Movie Star Effects with Star Selection," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(7), pages 1704-1721, July.
    2. Thaís L. D. Souza & Marislei Nishijima & Ana C. P. Fava, 2019. "Do consumer and expert reviews affect the length of time a film is kept on screens in the USA?," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 43(1), pages 145-171, March.
    3. Jun Pang & Angela Xia Liu & Peter N. Golder, 2022. "Critics’ conformity to consumers in movie evaluation," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 864-887, July.
    4. Clement, Michel & Wu, Steven & Fischer, Marc, 2014. "Empirical generalizations of demand and supply dynamics for movies," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 207-223.
    5. Morris Holbrook & Michela Addis, 2008. "Art versus commerce in the movie industry: a Two-Path Model of Motion-Picture Success," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 32(2), pages 87-107, June.
    6. Marina Sokolova & Guy Lapalme, 2012. "How Much Do We Say? Using Informativeness of Negotiation Text Records for Early Prediction of Negotiation Outcomes," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 363-379, May.
    7. Fowdur, Lona & Kadiyali, Vrinda & Prince, Jeffrey, 2012. "Racial bias in expert quality assessment: A study of newspaper movie reviews," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 292-307.
    8. Lili Kang & Fei Peng, 2024. "Star power as quality signal or marketing effect? A path analysis on China's motion‐picture industry," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 3639-3655, July.
    9. Dehling, Noémie, 2023. "Silence in the consumer experience: A conceptualization and research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    10. Moon, Sangkil & Kamakura, Wagner A., 2017. "A picture is worth a thousand words: Translating product reviews into a product positioning map," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 265-285.
    11. Peter Boatwright & Suman Basuroy & Wagner Kamakura, 2007. "Reviewing the reviewers: The impact of individual film critics on box office performance," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 401-425, December.
    12. Marco Caliendo & Michel Clement & Edlira Shehu, 2015. "The effect of individual professional critics on books’ sales: capturing selection biases from observable and unobservable factors," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 423-436, December.
    13. Hofmann, Julian & Clement, Michel & Völckner, Franziska & Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, 2017. "Empirical generalizations on the impact of stars on the economic success of movies," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 442-461.
    14. Michel Clement & Anke Hille & Bernd Lucke & Christina Schmidt-Stölting & Frank Sambeth, 2008. "Der Einfluss von Rankings auf den Absatz — Eine empirische Analyse der Wirkung von Bestsellerlisten und Rangpositionen auf den Erfolg von Büchern," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 60(8), pages 746-777, December.
    15. Jia Jin & Chenchen Lin & Fenghua Wang & Ting Xu & Wuke Zhang, 2023. "A study of cognitive effort involved in the framing effect of summary descriptions of online product reviews for search vs. experience products," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 785-806, June.
    16. Natalia Gmerek, 2015. "The determinants of Polish movies’ box office performance in Poland," Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 1(1), pages 15-35.
    17. Nima Jalali & Sangkil Moon & Moon-Yong Kim, 2023. "Profiling diverse reviewer segments using online reviews of service industries," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(2), pages 130-148, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Feng & Liu, Xuefeng & Fang, Eric (Er), 2015. "User Reviews Variance, Critic Reviews Variance, and Product Sales: An Exploration of Customer Breadth and Depth Effects," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 372-389.
    2. Chakravarty, Anindita & Liu, Yong & Mazumdar, Tridib, 2010. "The Differential Effects of Online Word-of-Mouth and Critics' Reviews on Pre-release Movie Evaluation," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 185-197.
    3. Ana Suárez-Vázquez, 2011. "Critic power or star power? The influence of hallmarks of quality of motion pictures: an experimental approach," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 35(2), pages 119-135, May.
    4. S. Ravid & John Wald & Suman Basuroy, 2006. "Distributors and film critics: does it take two to Tango?," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 30(3), pages 201-218, December.
    5. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau & André Marchand & Barbara Hiller, 2012. "The relationship between reviewer judgments and motion picture success: re-analysis and extension," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 36(3), pages 249-283, August.
    6. Essig, Richard A., 2024. "The preference for users to experts in the domain of online product ratings," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    7. Dobrescu, Loretti I. & Luca, Michael & Motta, Alberto, 2013. "What makes a critic tick? Connected authors and the determinants of book reviews," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 85-103.
    8. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    9. Dion Bongaerts & K. J. Martijn Cremers & William N. Goetzmann, 2012. "Tiebreaker: Certification and Multiple Credit Ratings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 113-152, February.
    10. AltInkIlIç, Oya & Hansen, Robert S., 2009. "On the information role of stock recommendation revisions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 17-36, October.
    11. Alan Crane & Kevin Crotty, 2020. "How Skilled Are Security Analysts?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 1629-1675, June.
    12. Linda Allen & Julapa Jagtiani & Stavros Peristiani & Anthony Saunders, 2002. "The role of bank advisors in mergers and acquisitions," Staff Reports 143, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    13. Andres, Christian & Cumming, Douglas & Karabiber, Timur & Schweizer, Denis, 2014. "Do markets anticipate capital structure decisions? — Feedback effects in equity liquidity," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 133-156.
    14. Garcia-Meca, Emma & Martinez, Isabel, 2007. "The use of intellectual capital information in investment decisions: An empirical study using analyst reports," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 57-81.
    15. Glenn Boyle & Graeme Guthrie & Luke Gorton, 2010. "Holding onto Your Horses: Conflicts of Interest in Asset Management," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(4), pages 689-713.
    16. Lauren Cohen & Andrea Frazzini & Christopher J. Malloy, 2012. "Hiring Cheerleaders: Board Appointments of "Independent" Directors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(6), pages 1039-1058, June.
    17. Azzi, Sarah & Bird, Ron, 2005. "Prophets during boom and gloom downunder," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 337-367, February.
    18. Michalis Makrominas, 2015. "The impact of analyst-investor disagreement on the cross-section of implied cost of capital," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 40(2), pages 224-244, May.
    19. Mola, Simona & Guidolin, Massimo, 2009. "Affiliated mutual funds and analyst optimism," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 108-137, July.
    20. Mary J. Benner, 2010. "Securities Analysts and Incumbent Response to Radical Technological Change: Evidence from Digital Photography and Internet Telephony," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(1), pages 42-62, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:qmktec:v:4:y:2006:i:2:p:119-141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.