MIS Speaker's Series with Mo Xiao

Date: Fri. April 13, 2012
Time: 3:00 - 4:00 pm
Location: McClelland 128
Cost: None
Event RSVP: None

SPEAKER: Dr. Mo Xiao

TITLE: Losing to Win: Reputation Management of Online Sellers

Abstract: Reputation is an asset, especially for online entrepreneurs. How much it is worth, however, is a challenging empirical question as sellers actively manage reputation.  In fact, previous research shows ambiguous effects of online sellers' reputation on prices. We track the universe of online sellers for 14 months from 2010 to 2011 on China's largest e-commerce platform, Taobao.com, where seller reputation is easily quantifiable and highly visible to all parties of
transactions. Taobao.com uses eBay's reputation system, but separates seller reputation from buyer reputation. For each month, we observe every seller's basic attributes, revenue and several measures of reputation. We identify the causal impact of a seller's reputation on its revenue and survival likelihood by using the seller's buyer volume as instruments. We find that seller reputation has a substantial positive impact on established sellers, but new entrants fail to reap the benefits of their existing reputation. New entrants tend to engage in sales-related activities to further build up their reputation and they may have spent too much resource in this process to survive to
next stage. Our results help to reconcile the contradicting results on the effects of reputation on prices.

Bio: Visit Mo here.

For more information contact:

Mingfeng Lin, PhD.
Assistant Professor, MIS Department
Phone: 520-621-2684
mingfeng@email.arizona.edu

Have an MIS event you would like to share? Please contact us.