Taking Fake Online Consumer Reviews Seriously

Journal of Consumer Policy

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 139-157

  Malbon, Justin ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Consumer protection; Consumer reviews; Information asymmetry; Internet or online consumer market; Regulatory systems

Indexed keywords

EID: 84876704502     PISSN: 01687034     EISSN: 15730700     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10603-012-9216-7     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. Akerlof, G. (1970). The market for 'lemons': Quality uncertainty and the market mechanism. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84, 488-500.
2. Ashton, K. (2012). The not so secret business of fake Yelp reviews. Daily Deal Media 14 February. www. dailydealmedia. com/657the-not-so-secret-business-of-fake-yelp-reviews/.
3. Baldwin, R., & Black, J. (2008). Really responsive regulation. Modern Law Review, 71, 59-94.
4. Bar-Isaac, H. (2005). Imperfect competition and reputational commitment. Economics Letters, 89, 167-173.
5. Becher, S., & Zarsky, T. (2008). E-contract doctrine 2. 0: Standard form contracting in the age of online user participation. Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review, 14, 303-66.
6. Black, J. (2002). Regulatory conversations. Journal of Law and Society, 29, 163-96.
7. Bolton, G., Katok, E., & Ockenfels, A. (2004). How effective are online reputation mechanisms? An experimental investigation. Management Science, 50, 1587-1602.
8. Brito, P. (2011). Teen conceptualization of digital technologies. New Media and Society, 14, 513-532.
9. Calliess, G-P. (2007). Transnational consumer law: Co-regulation of B2C-E-Commerce. Comparative Research in Law and Political Economy Research Paper 3, pp. 1-54.
10. US Census Bureau. (2012). Statistical abstract. Washington, DC.
11. Centre for Retail Research. (2012). Newark, Nottinghamshire, UK http://www. retailresearch. org/onlineretailing. php.
12. Chu, W., Choi, B., & Song, M. (2005). The role of on-line retailer brand and infomediary reputation in increasing consumer purchase intention international journal of electronic commerce. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 9, 115-127.
13. Cole, R. (2011). Fake review optimization-how black hat masters beat the travel system. http://www. tnooz. com/2011/11/15/news/fake-review-optimization-how-black-hat-masters-beat-the-travel-system.
14. Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C., Kossinets, G., Kleinberg, J., & Lee, L. (2009). How opinions are received by online communities: A case study on amazon. com helpfulness votes. World Wide Web 2009 Conference, Madrid, Spain. April 20-24.
15. Datta, P., & Chatterjee, S. (2008). The economics and psychology of consumer trust in intermediaries in electronic markets: The EM-Trust framework. European Journal of Information Systems, 17, 12-28.
16. Del Riego, A. (2009). Digest comment-context for the net: A defense of the FTC's new blogging guidelines. JOLT Digest, an online companion to the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, December 19, 2009. http://jolt. law. harvard. edu/digest/telecommunications/digest-comment-context-for-the-net-a-defense-of-the-ftc%E2%80%99s-new-blogging-guidelines.
17. Digitalmarketinglab. (2010). http://digitalmarketinglab. com. au/index. php/2010/07/18/end-of-financial-year-performance-%E2%80%93-digital-style.
18. European Parliament, Directorate General for Internal Policies, Policy Department A. (2010). Misleading advertising on the Internet. IP/A/IMCO/ST/2010-05.
19. Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 817-868.
20. Flanagin, A., & Metzger, M. (2000). Perceptions of Internet information credibility. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 77, 515-40.
21. Flanagin, A., Metzger M., Pure R., & Markov A. (2011). User-generated ratings and the evaluation of credibility and product quality in ecommerce transactions. Proceedings of the 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
22. Forrest, E., & Cao, Y. (2010). Opinions, recommendations and endorsements: The new regulatory framework for social media. Journal of Business and Policy Research, 5, 88-99.
23. Gibbs, A. (1997). Focus groups. Department of Sociology, University of Surrey. Research Update No. 19, 1997. http://sru. soc. surrey. ac. uk/SRU19. html.
24. Gunningham, N., & Grabosky, P. (1998). Smart regulation. Oxford: Clarendon.
25. Hernández, B., Jiménez, J., & Martín, M. J. (2011). Age, gender and income: Do they really moderate online shopping behaviour? Online Information Review, 35, 113-133.
26. Hoppe, M., Wells, E., Morrison, D., Gilmore, M., & Wilsdon, A. (1995). Using focus groups to discuss sensitive topics with children. Evaluation Review, 19, 102-14.
27. Hörner, J. (2002). Reputation and competition. American Economic Review, 92, 644-663.
28. Izquierdo, S., & Izquierdo, L. (2007). The impact of quality uncertainty without asymmetric information on market efficiency. Journal of Business Research, 60, 858-867.
29. Krueger, R. (1994). Focus group: a practical guide for applied research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
30. Kwon, O., & Sung, Y. (2012). The consumer-generated product review: Its effect on consumers and marketeers. In S. Posavac (Ed.), Cracking the Code: Leveraging consumer psychology to drive profitability (pp. 200-18). Armonk: Sharpe.
31. Lankes, D. (2008). Trusting the Internet: New approaches to credibility tools. In M. Metzger & A. Flanagin (Eds.), Digital media, youth, and credibility (pp. 101-122). Cambridge: MIT.
32. Lankshear, A. (1993). The use of focus groups in a study of attitudes to student nurse assessment. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 18, 1986-89.
33. Lederer, S. (2010). History. In J. Sugarman & D. Sulmasy (Eds.), Methods in medical ethics (2nd ed., pp. 145-58). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
34. Lim, E-P., Nguyen, V-A., Jindal, N., Liu, B., & Lauw, H. (2010). Detecting product review spammers using rating behaviors. 19th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, October 26-30, Toronto, Canada, pp. 393-948.
35. McCracken, C. (2011). Businesses who commission fake reviews should worry about more than just illegality. Out-Law. com 21 June. http://www. out-law. com/page-12016.
36. Miller, C. (2009). Company settles case of reviews it faked. New York Times July 14. http://www. nytimes. com/2009/07/15/technology/internet/15lift. html.
37. Monbiot, G. (2011). The need to protect the Internet from 'astroturfing' grows ever more urgent. The Guardian Blog, 23 February. http://www. guardian. co. uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/feb/23/need-to-protect-internet-from-astroturfing.
38. Mukherjee, A., Liu, B., & Glance, N. (2012). Spotting fake reviewer groups in consumer reviews. World Wide Web 2012-Session: Fraud and Bias in User Ratings Lyon, France, April 16-20.
39. Nielsen blog, July 7, 2009. Global advertising: Consumers trust real friends and virtual strangers the most. http://blog. nielsen. com/nielsenwire/consumer/global-advertising-consumers-trust-real-friends-and-virtual-strangers-the-most.
40. Office of Fair Trading. (UK) (2010). Online targeting of advertising and prices: A market study. London: OFT.
41. Office of Fair Trading. (UK) (2011). Consumer contracts. London: OFT.
42. Office of Fair Trading. (UK) (2012). Investigation into inadequate disclosures in respect of affiliate marketing businesses. London: OFT.
43. Ott M., Choi, Y., Cardie, C., & Hancock, J. (2011). Finding deceptive opinion spam by any stretch of the imagination. Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Portland, Oregon, June 19-24, pp. 309-319.
44. Patton, M. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
45. Pinch T. and Kesler F. (2011). How aunt Ammy gets her free lunch: A study of the top-thousand customer reviewers at amazon. com. http://www. freelunch. me.
46. Powell, R., & Single, H. (1996). Focus groups. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 8, 499-504.
47. Schwartz, J. (2006). Making the consumer watchdog's bark as strong as its gripe: Complaint sites and the changing dynamic of the fair use defence. Albany Law Journal of Science and Technology, 16, 59-123.
48. Scott, C. (2004a). Regulation in the age of governance: The rise of the post-regulatory state. In J. Jordana & D. Levi-Faur (Eds.), The politics of regulation: Institutions and regulatory reforms for the age of governance (pp. 145-174). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
49. Scott, C. (2004b). Regulatory innovation and the online consumer. Law and Policy, 26, 477-506.
50. Speedy, B. (2012). Big jump in online retail sales growth, says NAB index. The Australian, 3 April. http://www. theaustralian. com. au/business/economics/big-jump-in-online-retail-sales-growth-says-nab-index/story-e6frg926-1226316902739.
51. Sprague, R., & Wells, M. (2010). Regulating online buzz marketing: Untangling a web of deceit. American Business Law Journal, 47, 415-454.
52. Tushnet, R. (2011). Towards symmetry in the law of branding. Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal, 21, 971-82.
53. Wall Street Times. (4 April 2012). The big flaws in hotel rankings. http://online. wsj. com/article/SB10001424052702304072004577323874046732602. html.