This dissertation consists of three chapters on the economics of the Internet. The first chapter begins with presenting the advertising spending patterns of US local restaurants that have different ratings on Yelp.com. Rating information on Yelp includes display ratings and review distributions. The Yelp's rounding algorithm creates a discontinuity in display ratings. Therefore, I use a regression discontinuity design to identify the effect of a higher display rating on local restaurants' advertising spendings. I find a significantly negative effect of display rating for highly-rated restaurants on advertising. However, when the display rating is constant between two steps, the relationship between local restaurant advertising spending and average rating is significantly positive. The second chapter uses a game-theoretic model to analyze competing firms' advertising and pricing decisions. Here customer reviews are available and firms may build up loyal customer bases. I find that highly-rated firms are more likely to advertise more, i.e., online reviews complement advertising. Comparative static results can explain the results found in the first chapter. Intuitively, when the capacity of a local business becomes limited, a jump in the display rating will reduce the complementary effect of online reviews on advertising. I also analyze an extension of the model, where an entrant and an incumbent interact. I find that customer reviews undo the "fat-cat" effect of a large incumbent with lots of loyal customers. The third chapter proposes a new explanation for adoption failure or delay in markets with network effects. In the model, consumers and software providers play a dynamic adoption game. Each group of players choose between two incompatible technologies. Consumers may wait, but firms may not. Although efficiency requires one technology to be adopted by all consumers and firms right away, there is a "market split and adoption delay" equilibrium. In this equilibrium some consumers choose to wait at first and firms split between the two technologies. The model is motivated by the 56K modem market, in which competition between two technologies appears to have led to adoption failure, until an industry standard setting organization coordinated the market on an alternative standard.

The influence of online customer reviews (OCRs) on consumer behaviour has recently gained considerable attention, from both academic and business communities. Technology allows customers to freely and easily post their comments and opinions online about any product or service. These types of customer reviews can have a significant effect on customers’ purchase decisions and have become an essential part of the experience when shopping online. However, knowledge of the role of the perceived derived attributes of OCRs on consumer behaviour remains vague. Previous studies have mainly focused on the influence of the virtual attributes of OCRs, such as volume and valence, on consumers’ intentions, while limited attention has been paid to understanding the effects of the derived attributes. This study, thus, aims to understand the effects of the social and functional perceived derived attributes of OCRs on customer trust and intention to shop online. Hence, we develop a research model - Perceived Derived Attributes (PDA) -, based on the integration of social support with functional support derived from OCRs. The PDA model provides an in-depth understanding of the role of the social support of OCRs by applying and utilising theories of social support, social presence and a sense of belonging. The PDA model also investigates the influence of the functional support arising from OCRs through the inclusion of perceived control, from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The PDA model characterises perceived social support through informational and emotional supports, social presence, and a sense of belonging; whereas, functional supports are characterised by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and perceived control. A total of 489 responses to a survey were collected from users of amazon.com. The results from this study suggest that customer trust in an e-vendor and their intention to shop online are significantly affected by social and functional supports derived from OCRs. In particular, informational support, social presence and a sense of belonging, derived from OCRs were found to positively and significantly affect both customer trust in the online vendor and consumer behavioural intention. However, emotional support was only found to affect customers’ intentions and not their trust in the e-vendor. Additionally, customer trust in an e-vendor and their intention to shop online are significantly affected by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment of OCRs. Furthermore, the sense of control derived from OCRs significantly affects customer intention and significantly affects customer trust in e-vendors but only for customers who frequently check OCRs before making a purchase. This study is the first to introduce and empirically test the effects of perceived derived attributes of OCRs on customer trust and behavioural intention. Understanding the effects of such influencing factors is of utmost importance for both theoretical development and business practices. Clearly, these attributes of OCRs are linked to the development of the shopping environment, representing a promising marketing tool that positively affects customers’ behaviour.

This study examines the eWOM effect, more specifically: how customer reviews effects consumers. The study is based on a modified version of the Regulatory Focus Theory which describes consumer behavior using consumer consumption goals. The purpose of this study was to examine how positive and negative customer review's influence consumers when analyzing products that are equally characterized by two consumption goals: promotion and prevention goals. The authors combined quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (focus groups) research methods with the sample selection for both research methods being based on students of Södertörns University. Results indicate that negative customer reviews have a stronger influence on consumers than positive customer reviews when analyzing products that are equally characterized by the promotion goals and prevention goals. The results contradict the authors hypothesis which predicted an equally strong influence from positive and negative customer reviews.

The influence of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on consumers’ purchase intentions has long been known. However, the emergence of social media has brought a new perspective to eWOM through enabling users to communicate with their existing networks on the Internet. On social media, conversely to the other online platforms, users are able to exchange their opinions and experiences about products or services with familiar people, which refers to people who they already know such as friends and acquaintances. This new way of eWOM has the potential for greater impact on consumers. Therefore, the aim of this research is to examine the influence of eWOM in social media on consumers’ purchase intentions. To do so, the research in this thesis involved two major phases. In the first phase, in order to explore the determinants of eWOM information on social media which influences consumers’ purchase intentions, a theoretical model was developed based on the integration of Information Adoption Model (IAM) and related components of Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). The new model, which is named as Information Acceptance Model (IACM), was validated through structural equation modelling (SEM) based on surveys of 384 social media users in the UK. The results have highlighted that quality, credibility, usefulness and adoption of information, needs of information and attitude towards information are the key factors for eWOM in social media which influence consumers’ purchase intentions. Furthermore, to provide better understanding of the influence of eWOM on social media, the second phase of this research was designed as a comparative study. To explore whether the eWOM between familiar people on social media or the eWOM between anonymous people on other online platforms was more influential on consumers’ purchase intentions, the data collected through survey was reanalysed with a different perspective; and a comparison was conducted based on multiple regression analysis. The results have revealed significant differences and found anonymous reviews to be more influential on consumers’ purchase intentions than friends’ recommendations on social media. However, since these results were contrary to expectations, 10 in-depth interviews were also administered to enlighten the insightful results found through the survey. The interview findings uncovered the survey results. Information quantity, information readiness, detailed information, and dedicated information were discovered as the factors which make online reviews superior than friends’ recommendations in terms of the influence of eWOM. This research contributes to theoretical implications through its validated model and found key dimensions. The research model, IACM, brings a new approach to information adoption by extending IAM and provides new insights to researchers who study Information Systems (IS). In addition, the model highlights the information adoption process as an antecedent of behavioural intention, which is a very important finding for the related literature. Future studies can build new models through considering this relationship between information adoption process and behavioural intention. Moreover, the second phase of this research provides new constructs for future studies through its qualitative findings. The findings reached through in-depth interviews, which explain why consumers prefer anonymous online reviews, can either be tested as components of new theories and models or they can be tested as inclusion of existing theories and models. Both types have potential to provide valuable results for the literature. On the other hand, in terms of practicality, this research provides marketers with a frame of reference to understand the influence of eWOM in social media on consumers’ purchase intentions. Both the contextual and the comparative studies in this research offer valuable insights for marketers; marketers thus can develop better strategies for marketing on social media.

Vid ett e-handelsköp finns det två alternativ för informationssamling om produkten som skall köpas, produktinformation från e-handlaren och kundomdömen från tidigare konsumenter. Postnords e-barometer har flera år visat att svenska konsumenter önskade att e-handlare utvecklade kundomdömen på sina plattformar vilket denna studie har intresserat sig för att undersöka. Arbetet är av kvantitativ karaktär och har som syfte att undersöka svenska konsumenters användning av kundomdömen inför ett köp och vilka faktorer som påverkar användningen. För detta används en teoretisk modell med tillhörande hypoteser som är en förläning på TAM-modellen. Undersökningen bestod av en surveyundersökning där enkät har använts som datainsamlingsmetod. Resultatet visar på att de flesta respondenter till underökningen är positivt inställda till kundomdömen. De tycker att det är användbart, användarvänligt, betydelsefullt och har även en avsikt att använda dem innan köp. Dock är det väldigt få som använder omdömessystemet efter köp för att dela med sig av sina åsikter eller på annat sätt använda omdömessystemet. Studien föreslår att svenska konsumenter är mycket mer tystlåtna när det gäller eWOM än var tidigare studier har visat. Kundomdömen upplevs inte som trovärdiga, vilket dock inte visade sig vara en faktor som har en påverkan på användandet av kundomdömen vid köp. De faktorer som visade sig ha en stark direkt påverkan på avsikten att använda kundomdömen vid ett köp är omdömessystemets användbarhet och betydelse. En indirekt påverkan visade det sig att användarvänligheten har vilket påverkar användbarheten. Detta resultat skiljer sig från den ursprungliga TAM-modellen som menar att även användarvänligheten direkt påverkar avsikten att använda. Vidare har det i studien även identifierats olika demografiska grupper med olika datorvanor vilket har en medelmåttig effekt på hur användarvänligt ett omdömessystem upplevs. Resultaten visar också att det finns statistisk signifikanta skillnader mellan demografiska grupper och deras förhållning till kundomdömen. Kvinnor har en mer positiv syn på omdömessystem och har dessutom ett större förtroende till dem än män. Vidare upplever de kunder som ofta eller aldrig returnerar varor efter ett köp att kundomdömen är mer betydelsefulla och användbara. / When purchasing online there are two alternatives to collect information about the product of interest, product information from the e-retailer and customer reviews from previous customers. Postnord’s e-barometer has several years shown that Swedish customers wish that e-commerce providers developed customer reviews on their platforms, which are the main topic for this study. This work is of a quantitative nature and aims to explore Swedish online customers use of customer reviews before making a purchase and factors that influence their use. For this, a theoretical model with associated hypotheses has been used which is an extension on the original TAM-model. The study is a survey study where a survey was used as a primary data collection to test the model and analyze about factors that influence each other. The result of this study shows that most of the study’s respondents have a positive attitude towards customer reviews, they believe it is useful, easy to use, important and have intentions to use it before a purchase online. However, very few respondents tend to use customer review systems after purchases to share their purchase experience or use it in other ways. The study proposes that Swedish customers are much more of a silent observer when it comes to eWOM than what previous studies have found. Customer reviews is not perceived to be trustworthy, which however this study shows is not a factor that influence the intention to use customer reviews, in other words, customer reviews are perceived useful even if they are not trustworthy. The factors that proved to have strong direct influence on the intention to use customer reviews is the usefulness of the customer reviews system and the perceived importance of it. Additionally, the ease of use has an indirect influence, which differs from the original TAM-model which means that the ease of use directly influences the intention to use. Furthermore, different demographic groups with different computer experience has been identified, which has a moderate effect on the perceived ease of use customer reviews systems. The result also shows that there are statistically significant differences between demographical groups, and their relation to customer reviews. Women has a more positive view of customer reviews and perceive them to be more trustworthy than men. Furthermore, customers with different product return behaviors has different perceptions of the importance of customer review systems and the ones who never or often return products after a purchase online tend to perceive customer reviews more important.

This study examines the effect of electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) on consumers’ purchasing decision process, more specifically: How does consumer attitudes and purchasing intent toward companies and their products affected by negative eWOM on social media. The study is based on three-component model of attitudes which identifies attitude as the awareness, assessment and readiness to act. The purpose of this study was to examine how negative eWOM on social media affects the consumer’s purchasing decision process. The purpose was to improve understanding of eWOM’s role and influence on the consumer’s attitudes and purchasing intent towards the companies and their products.   The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 individuals aged 18-20. Results indicate that negative customer reviews on social media have a negative influence on consumers attitudes and purchasing intent. The results also show that the effect varies between different product types. The effect may be stronger for expensive and important purchases than for cheap and routine purchases.

Background: The great majority of travellers read online reviews before selecting a hotel. Showcasing how big of a role online customer reviews (OCR) play in the consumer decision-making process. Apart from potential financial gains, reviews also help to indicate the areas that performed excellently and those that still need to be improved. However, only a part of hotel visitors actually leave an online review after a hotel stay indicating that there is still room for increasing the amount of OCR left to boost hotel performance and drive sales.   Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore how hotel managers work with OCR and provide recommendations on how they can incorporate it into their business successfully. Method: This study follows a qualitative research approach by conducting semi-structured interviews with five hotel managers and a CEO from a ratings and review agency.  Conclusion: The study found that although all hotels use OCR to some extent, chain hotels often apply more advanced strategies. This study identified several strategies that could be adopted to increase the amount of online reviews. For instance, by developing omnichannel to make the customer experience seamless, offer them easy feedback tools, and the possibility to give short reviews. This is in addition to offering the option for guests to choose if they want to share longer and deeper feedback afterwards. Also, it is important to research when it is most convenient for hotel guests to leave a review. This would be either straight after the hotel stay or a few days later. Overall, it is important to develop good customer relationship management to improve customer satisfaction, but at the same time have a well-developed service failure system in case something negative is indicated in the review.

With the rapid accretion of online shopping, online customer reviews have become a very essential source. An interpretation of this essential source is not fulfilled with every aspect since online customer reviews consists of unstructured information. This paper enlightens the understanding of behavioural analysis on how customers rate and review gender-based products by focusing on two brands in the fashion industry. Since gender-based products are analysed, gender as a search term is used for diversification in terms of product categories. To understand behavioural differences of customers to rate gender-based products, quantitative statistical methods were used. The two-sample t-test investigates if the means of two samples have statistically significant differences. Additionally, the word frequencies are analysed with the quantitative content analysis methodology to procure an answer for how customers review gender-based products for different product categories. The results show that the product categories which consist of the keyword “Men” in their product description have earned a higher average of total number or reviews and star rating. However, the words that customers type have similarities among different product categories and there are not any consistencies in their frequencies. Therefore, our results show that the customer comments are not significantly dependent for the determined gender-based product categories. / Med den snabba ökningen av online-shopping har kundrecensioner på nätet blivit en viktig källa. Kundrecensioner består av information som är ostrukturerad, vilket betyder att tolkningsprocessen av kundrecensionerna försvåras. I denna uppsats är en beteendeanalys genomförd för att belysa förståelsen av hur kunder betygsätter och recenserar könsinriktade produkter. Fokus har lagts på två varumärken inom modebranschen. Eftersom produkterna är könsinriktade används kön som en sökterm för att differentiera produktkategorierna. För att förstå skillnaden i kundernas beteende vid betygsättning av könsinriktade produkter användes kvantitativa statistiska metoder. Ett ”two-sample” t-test användes för att undersöka om det fanns statistiskt signifikanta skillnader i stickprovernas medelvärden. Med en kvantitativ innehållsanalys undersöktes ordfrekvensen för att få en förståelse av hur kunder granskar könsinriktade produkter, inom olika produktkategorier. Resultatet visar att de produktkategorier vars produktbeskrivning består av nyckelordet ”män”, har fått ett högre genomsnitt av antal recensioner samt fått högre betyg. Orden som kunder använder är lika inom de olika produktkategorierna och ordfrekvensen har ingen fast struktur. Resultatet visar därmed att kundrecensionerna inte är signifikant beroende av de fastställda könsinriktade produktkategorierna.

Spoken communication between humans generate information in two channels; the primary channel, linked to the syntactic-semantic part of the speech (what a person is litteraly saying); the secondary channel conveys paralinguistic information (tone, emotional state and gestures). This study examines the paralinguistic part of the speech, more specific the tone and emotional state. The study examines if there is a correlation between human speech and the opinion of a participant to a language café based conversation. The language café conversations is moderated by the social robot platform Furhat created by Furhat Robotics. The report is written from two perspectives. A data scientific view where identified emotions in audio files are analysed with machine learning algorithms and mathematical models. Vokaturi, an emotion recognition software, analyses the audio files and quantifies the emotional attributes. The classification model is based upon these attributes and the answers from the language café survey. Speech emotion recognition is also evaluated as a method for gathering customer opinions in a customer feedback loop. The results show an accuracy of 61% and indicates that some sort of prediction is possible. However there is no clear correlation between the recorded human voice and the participants opinion of the conversation. In the discussion part the difficulties of creating a high accuracy model with current data is analysed. It also contains a hypothetic analysis of the model as a gathering method for customer data. / En person som talar sprider information genom en primär samt en sekundär kanal. Den primära kanalen är kopplat till den syntaktiska semantiken av talet (vad personen bokstavligen säger), medan den sekundära kanalen är kopplat till den paralingvistiska delen (ton, känslotillstånd och gester). Denna studie undersöker den paralingvistiska delen av talet, mer specifikt en människas tonläge och känsla. Studien undersöker om det finns någon korrelation mellan mänskligt tal och vad personen tycker om ett parkcafé-samtal. Parkcafé samtalen i denna studie har genomförts tillsammans med den sociala roboten Furhat skapad av Furhat Robotics. Rapporten är skriven ur två perspektiv. Ett datatekniskt perspektiv där känsloyttringar i ljudfiler analyseras med hjälp av maskininlärning och matematiska modeller. Med hjälp av Vokaturi, som tillhandahåller mjukvara för känsloigenkänning av ljud, analyseras inspelade konversationer och attribut för olika känslor kvantifieras. Klassificeringsmodellen skapas sedan av dessa attribut, svar på enkätundersökningar (del ett) samt av författarna egen-annoterade ljudfiler (del två). Dessutom analyseras känsloigenkänning som metod för insamling av användaråsikter ur ett företagsekonomiskt perspektiv. Resultaten påvisar en träffsäkerhet på ca 62% och 61% för del ett respektive två och pekar på att någon form av prediktion är möjlig. Ett tydligt samband mellan deltagarens röst och dess åsikt om samtalet är dock svårt att finna med dessa resultat. I analysen och slutsatsen diskuteras svårigheterna med att ta fram en funktionell modell med tillgänglig data samt en hypotetisk diskussion kring modellen som del av en customer feedback loop.