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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(136)
- News (52)
- Research (76)
- Events (2)
- Multimedia (5)
- Faculty Publications (32)
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- 2015
- Working Paper
Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud
By: Michael Luca and Georgios Zervas
Consumer reviews are now part of everyday decision-making. Yet, the credibility of these reviews is fundamentally undermined when businesses commit review fraud, creating fake reviews for themselves or their competitors. We investigate the economic incentives to commit... View Details
Keywords: Information; Competition; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Reputation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry
Luca, Michael, and Georgios Zervas. "Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud." Working Paper. (May 2015. Revise and resubmit, Management Science.)
- 2022
- Working Paper
Consumer Reviews and Regulation: Evidence from NYC Restaurants
By: Chiara Farronato and Georgios Zervas
We investigate the informativeness of hygiene signals in online reviews, and their effect on consumer choice and restaurant hygiene. We first extract signals of hygiene from Yelp. Among all dimensions that regulators monitor through mandated restaurant inspections, we... View Details
Keywords: Restaurants; Reviews; Hygiene; Yelp; Regulation; Food; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Consumer Behavior
Farronato, Chiara, and Georgios Zervas. "Consumer Reviews and Regulation: Evidence from NYC Restaurants." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 29715, February 2022.
- December 2016
- Article
Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud
By: Michael Luca and Georgios Zervas
Consumer reviews are now part of everyday decision making. Yet, the credibility of these reviews is fundamentally undermined when businesses commit review fraud, creating fake reviews for themselves or their competitors. We investigate the economic incentives to commit... View Details
Luca, Michael, and Georgios Zervas. "Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud." Management Science 62, no. 12 (December 2016): 3412–3427.
- September 2018
- Article
Aggregation of Consumer Ratings: An Application to Yelp.com
By: Weijia Dai, Ginger Jin, Jungmin Lee and Michael Luca
Because consumer reviews leverage the wisdom of the crowd, the way in which they are aggregated is a central decision faced by platforms. We explore this "rating aggregation problem" and offer a structural approach to solving it, allowing for (1) reviewers to vary in... View Details
Keywords: User Generated Content; Crowdsourcing; Yelp; Social and Collaborative Networks; Information; Internet and the Web; Learning; Mathematical Methods; E-commerce
Dai, Weijia, Ginger Jin, Jungmin Lee, and Michael Luca. "Aggregation of Consumer Ratings: An Application to Yelp.com." Quantitative Marketing and Economics 16, no. 3 (September 2018): 289–339.
- 2016
- Working Paper
Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com
By: Michael Luca
Do online consumer reviews affect restaurant demand? I investigate this question using a novel dataset combining reviews from the website Yelp.com and restaurant data from the Washington State Department of Revenue. Because Yelp prominently displays a restaurant's... View Details
Keywords: Revenue; Network Effects; Reputation; Social and Collaborative Networks; Food and Beverage Industry; Service Industry; Washington (state, US)
Luca, Michael. "Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-016, September 2011. (Revised March 2016.)
- 26 Jul 2022
- Research & Ideas
Burgers with Bugs? What Happens When Restaurants Ignore Online Reviews
restaurants, causing consumers to avoid those with bad ratings. Restaurants, in turn, often respond by cleaning up their act, according to an analysis of Yelp reviews, OpenTable reservations, and data from the New York City Department of... View Details
- 26 Sep 2017
- First Look
First Look at New Research and Ideas, September 26, 2017
innovation in the world: open innovation, user innovation, and citizen innovation. Research into this phenomenon could do much to advance the study and practice of creativity. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52919 Nowcasting the... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
- Research Summary
Crowdsourced reviews
To determine whether online consumer reviews influence the way that reputation is formed, Professor Luca has combined reviews from the website Yelp.com with public restaurant data. He has shown that a one-star increase in Yelp ratings results in a 5- to 9-percent... View Details
- 04 Oct 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com
- 27 Sep 2011
- First Look
First Look: September 27
Website Yelp.com and restaurant data from the Washington State Department of Revenue. Because Yelp prominently displays a restaurant's rounded average rating, I can identify the causal impact of Yelp ratings... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
- 28 Jul 2015
- First Look
First Look: July 28, 2015
Publisher's link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49412 Forthcoming Management Science Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud By: Luca, Michael, and Georgios Zervas Abstract—Consumer... View Details
Keywords: Carmen Nobel
- May–June 2023
- Article
Which Firms Gain from Digital Advertising? Evidence from a Field Experiment
By: Weijia Dai, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca
Measuring the returns of advertising opportunities continues to be a challenge for many
businesses. We design and run a field experiment in collaboration with Yelp across 18,294
firms in the restaurant industry to understand which types of businesses gain more from... View Details
Dai, Weijia, Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca. "Which Firms Gain from Digital Advertising? Evidence from a Field Experiment." Marketing Science 42, no. 3 (May–June 2023): 429–439.
- 27 Feb 2018
- First Look
First Look at New Research and Ideas, February 27, 2018
dividends income as if they were separate sources of income. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54113 Nowcasting Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change By: Glaeser, Edward L.,... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
- May 2020
- Article
Digitizing Disclosure: The Case of Restaurant Hygiene Scores
By: Weijia (Daisy) Dai and Michael Luca
Collaborating with Yelp and the city of San Francisco, we revisit a canonical example of quality disclosure by evaluating and helping to redesign the posting of restaurant hygiene scores on Yelp.com. We implement a two-stage intervention that separately identifies... View Details
Keywords: Corporate Disclosure; Consumer Behavior; Knowledge Dissemination; Food and Beverage Industry
Dai, Weijia (Daisy), and Michael Luca. "Digitizing Disclosure: The Case of Restaurant Hygiene Scores." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 12, no. 2 (May 2020): 41–59.
- 2016
- Chapter
User-Generated Content and Social Media
By: Michael Luca
This paper documents what economists have learned about user-generated content (UGC) and social media. A growing body of evidence suggests that UGC on platforms ranging from Yelp to Facebook has a large causal impact on economic and social outcomes ranging from... View Details
Keywords: User-generated Content; Crowdsourcing; Design Economics; Internet and the Web; Marketing; Economics; Media; Social Media
Luca, Michael. "User-Generated Content and Social Media." Chap. 12 in Handbook of Media Economics. Vol. 1B, edited by Simon Anderson, Joel Waldfogel, and David Strömberg. North-Holland Publishing Company, 2016.
- Article
Product Quality and Entering Through Tying: Experimental Evidence
By: Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca
Dominant platform businesses often develop products in adjacent markets to complement their core business. One common approach used to gain traction in these adjacent markets has been to pursue a tying strategy. For example, Microsoft pre-installed Internet Explorer... View Details
Keywords: Tying; Platform Strategy; Google; Product; Quality; Digital Platforms; Strategy; Market Entry and Exit
Kim, Hyunjin, and Michael Luca. "Product Quality and Entering Through Tying: Experimental Evidence." Management Science 65, no. 2 (February 2019): 596–603.
- 23 Jul 2013
- First Look
First Look: July 23
and Yelp Review Fraud By: Luca, Michael, and Georgios Zervas Abstract—Review sites have become increasingly important sources of information for consumers. Because these reviews affect sales, businesses have the incentive to game the... View Details
Keywords: Anna Secino
- Article
Positioning Brands Against Large Competitors to Increase Sales
By: Neeru Paharia, Jill Avery and Anat Keinan
We explore the effect of having a large dominant competitor and show the conditions under which focusing on a competitive threat, rather than hiding it, can actually help a brand. We demonstrate through lab and field studies that highlighting a large competitor's size... View Details
Keywords: Brands; Brand Management; Brand Positioning; Competitive Positioning; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Air Transportation Industry; United States
Paharia, Neeru, Jill Avery, and Anat Keinan. "Positioning Brands Against Large Competitors to Increase Sales." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 51, no. 6 (December 2014): 647–656. (Lead article.)
- 2018
- Working Paper
Product Quality and Entering Through Tying: Experimental Evidence
Dominant platform businesses often develop products in adjacent markets to complement their core business. One common approach used to gain traction in these adjacent markets has been to pursue a tying strategy. For example, Microsoft pre-installed Internet Explorer... View Details
Keywords: Market Entry and Exit; Digital Platforms; Competitive Strategy; Product Marketing; Quality
Kim, Hyunjin, and Michael Luca. "Product Quality and Entering Through Tying: Experimental Evidence." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-045, October 2018. (Revised December 2018. Forthcoming in Management Science.)
- October 14, 2019
- Article
Designing Better Online Review Systems
By: Geoff Donaker, Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca
Online reviews are transforming the way consumers choose products and services of all sorts. We turn to TripAdvisor to plan a vacation, Zocdoc to find a doctor, and Yelp to choose a new restaurant. Reviews can create value for buyers and sellers alike, but only if they... View Details
Donaker, Geoff, Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca. "Designing Better Online Review Systems." Harvard Business Review 97, no. 6 (November–December 2019): 122–129.