Online word-of-mouth (WOM) platforms have been referred to by various terms such as online communities, feedback systems, peer reputation systems, or consumer generated media. Such systems provide a global platform for customers to share their experiences, and also rate service providers. WOM systems are burgeoning on the Internet for products such as music and books (Amazon.com), news (Slashdot.org), consumer electronics (shopping.com), tourism and travel (Tripadvisor.com; Hotels.com), and many other products and services. As with the traditional WOM, numerous studies have shown that these systems have a significant impact on customer decision making process, their satisfaction with goods and services, and the overall value of online economic transactions. In this study, the primary focus were the product review systems (PRS). These review systems are less personal but more ubiquitous platforms for online WOM wherein consumers post reviews about the products/services they have consumed. These reviews are widely accessible to other consumers but are disseminated only when other consumer consult these reviews during the purchasing process. However, there are still numerous problems associated with these systems. Recent studies have shown that there are numerous instances of deceptive information provided by service providers themselves or customers who have been paid by commercial parties. Added to this is the problem of anonymity in a computer mediated environment that adds to the already existing uncertainty for the consumer. Further, each review system consists of hundreds of consumer reviews associated with any given product or service. Given that consumers face these numerous problems, research is yet to examine the factors that drive the consumers develop trust in these reviews, and base their purchasing decisions on the information gleaned from the review systems. The main objective of this study was to explore this interesting phenomenon. To this end, this study applied uncertainty reduction theory and Social identity theory to delineate certain aspects of the online reviews that might have an impact on the consumer's assessment of online product reviews. Based on these theories, it was hypothesized that the informational content of the review and social component of the review (individuals' identity information disclosure and the consumers' perceived similarity with this information) have a significant effect on the consumers' trust in a review and subsequently the purchase intention. Further, based on the elaboration likelihood model, it was also posited that consumers' use of these heuristics is more salient while evaluating high involvement products than low involvement products. To test the hypotheses, the study adopted a quasi-experimental design with 2x2 (2 levels each for information content and social component within-subjects) x 2 (2 involvement modes between-subjects) full factorial design. Based on two levels for each of these factors, four reviews similar to those found in sites such as tripadvisor.com were created. A total of 283 students (153 in high involvement mode and 130 in low involvement mode) evaluated these reviews and assigned trust scores as well purchase intention scores to each review. The data was analyzed using linear mixed models and structural equation modeling. The results showed that both the main effects, information content of the review, and the consumers' perceived social identity with the reviewer contribute to an increased trust in the reviews. The study data did not support the hypothesis that involvement of the activity moderates the above mentioned relationships. Within this, information content was found to be playing an important role in both the involvement modes whereas the social component explained more variance in the trust in the high involvement mode than low involvement mode. Some of the results concur with previous research in both traditional and online WOM. The significance of these results in the extant literature as well their implications for both product review system providers as well tourism and hospitality service providers are discussed in detail. / Business Administration

Numerical information is ubiquitous in modern life. The prevalence of numerical information in the marketplace necessitates understanding how consumers handle and interpret that information, for both theoretical and practical reasons. Past research has largely focused on consumers’ encoding of numbers, calculative limitations, and usage of heuristics. This dissertation will contribute to this burgeoning literature in several ways. First, I identify a general tendency in how consumers calculate ratios based on an intuitive model of division. Specifically, consumers tend to divide larger numbers by smaller numbers. The intuitive model of division has marketing implications for both consumers’ evaluations of quantity offers and sensitivities to promotions. Next, I examine how consumers draw inferences from distributional information. In contrast to the assumption that consumers utilize means to assess central tendency, I demonstrate that consumers use the modal response to judge what is typical, with implications for consumers’ inferences about product ratings and other social distributions. / PHD

Yes / The competitive landscape of multiple e-commerce platforms and the vast amount of product reviews associated with these platforms have supported both consumers’ online shopping decision making and also served as a reference for product attribute performance improvement. This paper proposes a sentiment-driven fuzzy cloud multi-criteria model for online product ranking and performance to provide purchase recommendations. In this novel model, Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory Network-Conditional Random Fields (BiLSTM-CRF), sentiment analysis, and K-means clustering are first integrated to mine product attributes and compute sentiment values based on reviews from various platforms. Next, considering the confidence of the sentiment value, the cloud model is combined with q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets to define the new concept of the q-rung orthopair fuzzy cloud (q-ROFC) and the interaction operational laws between q-ROFCs are given. The sentiment values of each product attribute from different platforms are cross-combined and transformed into a type of q- ROFC, while multiple interactive information matrices are established. To investigate the correlation among homogeneous attributes, the q-ROFC interaction weighted partitioned Maclaurin Symmetric mean operator is proposed. Finally, we provide real-world examples of online mobile phone ranking and attribute performance evaluation. The results show that our proposed method offers significant advantages in dealing with customer purchase decisions for online products and problems with performance direction identification. Managerial implications are discussed.

Yes / We read with interest the review written by Evans and Allen, and published in the Journal of Optometry, in July, 2016.

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.

Institutions of higher learning in South Africa should establish and sustain their own quality management systems. These systems should improve quality of the core business of higher education i.e. teaching and learning, research and community engagement. It should yield reliable information for internal planning as well as external monitoring purposes. The integration of quality management with planning and resource allocation within a framework of continuous improvement is viewed as fundamental elements for successful quality management of institutions of higher learning. A key assumption of this research is that quality management models should be underpinned by the systems theory in order to enhance the integration of quality management, planning and resource allocation on institutional strategic, tactical and operational levels. This study utilised the key elements and phases of the PDCA and ADRI models to develop a model for the integration of quality management, planning and resource allocation within a context of continuous improvement This model will be suitable for implementation by one of the institutions of higher learning in South Africa that fails, according to its latest HEQC audit to integrate quality management, planning and resource allocation. It offers also a conceptual framework for any institution of higher learning that fails to integrate quality management, planning and resource allocation. / Ph.D., Education, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010

Institutions of higher learning in South Africa should establish and sustain their own quality management systems. These systems should improve quality of the core business of higher education i.e. teaching and learning, research and community engagement. It should yield reliable information for internal planning as well as external monitoring purposes. The integration of quality management with planning and resource allocation within a framework of continuous improvement is viewed as fundamental elements for successful quality management of institutions of higher learning. A key assumption of this research is that quality management models should be underpinned by the systems theory in order to enhance the integration of quality management, planning and resource allocation on institutional strategic, tactical and operational levels. This study utilised the key elements and phases of the PDCA and ADRI models to develop a model for the integration of quality management, planning and resource allocation within a context of continuous improvement This model will be suitable for implementation by one of the institutions of higher learning in South Africa that fails, according to its latest HEQC audit to integrate quality management, planning and resource allocation. It offers also a conceptual framework for any institution of higher learning that fails to integrate quality management, planning and resource allocation. / Ph.D., Education, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2010

In today's global market environment, enterprises are increasingly turning towards collaboration in projects to leverage their resources, skills and expertise, and simultaneously address the challenges posed in diverse and competitive markets. Moderators, which are knowledge based systems have successfully been used to support collaborative teams by raising awareness of problems or conflicts. However, the functioning of a moderator is limited to the knowledge it has about the team members. Knowledge acquisition, learning and updating of knowledge are the major challenges for a Moderator's implementation. To address these challenges a Knowledge discOvery And daTa minINg inteGrated (KOATING) framework is presented for Moderators to enable them to continuously learn from the operational databases of the company and semi-automatically update the corresponding expert module. The architecture for the Universal Knowledge Moderator (UKM) shows how the existing moderators can be extended to support global manufacturing. A method for designing and developing the knowledge acquisition module of the Moderator for manual and semi-automatic update of knowledge is documented using the Unified Modelling Language (UML). UML has been used to explore the static structure and dynamic behaviour, and describe the system analysis, system design and system development aspects of the proposed KOATING framework. The proof of design has been presented using a case study for a collaborative project in the form of construction project supply chain. It has been shown that Moderators can "learn" by extracting various kinds of knowledge from Post Project Reports (PPRs) using different types of text mining techniques. Furthermore, it also proposed that the knowledge discovery integrated moderators can be used to support and enhance collaboration by identifying appropriate business opportunities and identifying corresponding partners for creation of a virtual organization. A case study is presented in the context of a UK based SME. Finally, this thesis concludes by summarizing the thesis, outlining its novelties and contributions, and recommending future research.

The state of cultural journalism has been a subject of discussion within journalism research for a long period of time. The core of the discussion is that cultural journalism differs from journalism in many ways, which creates friction. Some researchers illustrate this friction as a battle between two separate paradigms – the journalistic paradigm and the aestethic paradigm – and their values. The aesthetic paradigm strives for values such as subjectivity, pedagogicality and expertise, while the journalistic paradigm focuses on effectivity, objectivity and ethics. The research concerning this has mostly been aimed at literature and music, but not film to the same extent. This study aimed to fill that gap by investigating the changes within swedish film criticism during the time between the late ‘90s and today. The platforms that we analysed are Moviezine, Barometern and Aftonbladet and the film reviews from them were analysed from the perspective of language, method of production and the values of the two paradigms. The study showed that these three platforms took their own paths; some of them have moved towards the aesthetic paradigm, while others have gone in the opposite direction. 2016 is the most divisive year of the analysed years.

RB redactó el primer borrador del artículo y realizó la revisión final. EM redactó la versión presentada al comité editorial, elaboró las figuras del artículo, levantó las observaciones del comité editorial y redactó la versión final del artículo. AG realizó contribuciones al texto inicial, desarrolló la primera versión del resumen y revisó la versión final. GM realizó contribuciones al texto inicial, levantó las observaciones del comité editorial, realizó contribuciones al texto final y revisó la versión final. / Los estudios de síntesis (EDS): revisiones sistemáticas y metanálisis, son base para llevar a cabo las evaluaciones económicas en salud (EES). Los EDS, al permitir obtener parámetros para las probabilidades de estimación y de efectividad a partir de la combinación de resultados de estudios primarios y, al incluir en su metodología procesos de selección, evaluación, sistematización y síntesis, son considerados como el primer nivel de jerarquía en la evidencia científica. No obstante, pueden estar sometidos a sesgos y fallas metodológicas que afectan su validez. El presente artículo expone, inicialmente, la importancia de la aleatorización en la jerarquización de los diseños de investigación; luego se revisa los principales factores que afectan la validez de los EDS, incidiendo en el sesgo de publicación, la heterogeneidad y la inclusión de estudios primarios con objetivos principales distintos al del EDS; asimismo, se presenta a los estudios individuales como una alternativa válida para el desarrollo de una EES. Se concluye que uno de los aspectos claves en una EES es la selección adecuada de los tipos de estudio, sean estos primarios o secundarios. / Synthesis studies (SS): systematic review and meta-analysis are the basis for developing Health Economic Evaluations (HEE). SS allow us to obtain parameters for estimating probabilities and effectiveness from the combination of the results of primary studies, and, as they include in their methodology the selection, evaluation, systematization and synthesis processes, they are considered the first level of hierarchy in scientific evidence. Nevertheless, they can be prone to bias and methodological failures that can affect the validity of their results. This article initially presents the relevance of the randomization in the hierarchic classification of research designs, then it reviews the main factors affecting the validity of the SS, emphasising the publication bias, the heterogeneity and the inclusion of primary studies with main objective differing from the one of the SS. Moreover, it presents individual studies like a valid alternative for the development of a SS. The conclusion is that one of the key aspects in a SS is the correct evaluation of the study types and the objective evaluation of their quality, being these primary or secondary.