How Does Popularity Information Affect Choices? A Field Experiment

Citation: Catherine Tucker, Juanjuan Zhang (2011/05) How Does Popularity Information Affect Choices? A Field Experiment. Management Science (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): How Does Popularity Information Affect Choices? A Field Experiment
Download: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1002763
Tagged: Business (RSS) popularity (RSS)

Summary

Authors show theoretically and via a field experiment that the availability of popularity information can give a greater boost to the popularity of narrow appeal products than broad appeal products, given similar initial popularity. It may be that consumers assume that a narrow appeal product must be of higher quality to reach the same level of popularity as that of a broad appeal product.

Field experiment tested effect via a website listing wedding services, with narrow appeal defined as those based in towns of less than 50,000 population. After the introduction of popularity information on the site, narrow-appeal vendors receive more visits than do broad-appeal vendors of equivalent initial popularity.