JHU Carey Professor Helps Study on Product Review Websites
Recent research by Johns Hopkins Professor Ravi Aron explains how third-party “infomediary” review websites that aim to inform the public about products are sometimes, inadvertently, doing a disservice to the people they’re trying to help. Aron, who is an Associate Professor at the Carey School of Business, penned the new study with two colleagues for the Journal of Management Information Systems.According to Aron, problems arises when a manufacturer notices the activity of an infomediary and then elects to “free ride” on a third party’s product review.
“Clearly the infomediary means well,” Aron explains. “But its actions can cause the manufacturer to scale back and post less product information on its own site. This enables the manufacturer to save on marketing costs, though at the same time it leaves consumers with less overall information than they would have received in the absence of the infomediary.”
The paper by Aron, Lecturer Panos Markopoulos of the University of Cyprus and Professor Lyle Ungar of the University of Pennsylvania, “Product Information Websites: Are They Good for Consumers,” was published in December 2016 on the Journal of Management Information Systems website. You can read the complete study here.
According to his faculty page, Ravi Aron, Ph.D. (Information Systems, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University) joined the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in 2008. He is an Associate Professor in the research track with expertise in the areas of information technology strategy, healthcare strategy and healthcare information systems.
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