Vocal Minority and Silent Majority: How Do Online Ratings Reflect Population Perceptions of Quality?

Author List: Gao, Guodong (Gordon); Greenwood, Brad N.; McCullough, Jeff; Agarwal, Ritu;
MIS Quarterly, 2015, Volume 39, Issue 3, Page 565-589.
Consumer-generated ratings typically share an objective of illuminating the quality of a product or service for other buyers. While ratings have become ubiquitous and influential on the Internet, surprisingly little empirical research has investigated how these online assessments reflect the opinion of the population at large, especially in the domain of professional services where quality is often opaque to consumers. Building on the word-of-mouth literature, we examine the relationship between online ratings and population perceptions of physician quality. Our study builds on prior work by leveraging a unique dataset which includes direct measures of both the offline population's perception of physician quality and consumer-generated online reviews. As a result, we are able to examine how online ratings reflect patients' opinions about physician quality. In sharp contrast to the widely voiced concerns by medical practitioners, we find that physicians who are rated lower in quality by the patient population are less likely to be rated online. Although ratings provided online are positively correlated with patient population opinions, the online ratings tend to be exaggerated at the upper end of the quality spectrum. This study is the first to provide empirical evidence of the relationship between online ratings and the underlying consumer-perceived quality, and extends prior research on online word-of-mouth to the domain of professional services.
Keywords: Online ratings; physician quality; online word-of-mouth; professional services; informativeness
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#247 0.225 online evidence offline presence empirical large assurance likely effect seal place synchronous population sites friends increases isomorphism rewards drop intermediaries
#199 0.150 reviews product online review products wom consumers consumer ratings sales word-of-mouth impact reviewers word using effect marketing helpfulness electronic commerce
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#275 0.061 perceptions attitudes research study impacts importance perceived theory results perceptual perceive perception impact relationships basis significant positive reported common individuals
#127 0.054 systems information research theory implications practice discussed findings field paper practitioners role general important key grounded researchers domain new identified
#161 0.052 role relationship positively light important understanding related moderating frequency intensity play stronger shed contribution past considered maintenance effort effect specifically