When Online Reviews Meet Hyperdifferentiation: A Study of the Craft Beer Industry
Journal of Management Information Systems
Firm-Created Word-of-Mouth Communication: Evidence from a Field Test
Marketing Science
Consumers rule: How consumer reviews influence perceived trustworthiness of online stores
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications
The impact of electronic word-of-mouth communication: A literature analysis and integrative model
Decision Support Systems
Social Media and Firm Equity Value
Information Systems Research
The Effect of Online Consumer Reviews on New Product Sales
International Journal of Electronic Commerce
Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
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Can negative information about a product increase sales, and if so, when? Although popular wisdom suggests that “any publicity is good publicity,” prior research has demonstrated only downsides to negative press. Negative reviews or word of mouth, for example, have been found to hurt product evaluation and sales. Using a combination of econometric analysis and experimental methods, we unify these perspectives to delineate contexts under which negative publicity about a product will have positive versus negative effects. Specifically, we argue that negative publicity can increase purchase likelihood and sales by increasing product awareness. Consequently, negative publicity should have differential effects on established versus unknown products. Three studies support this perspective. Whereas a negative review in the New York Times hurt sales of books by well-known authors, for example, it increased sales of books that had lower prior awareness. The studies further underscore the importance of a gap between publicity and purchase occasion and the mediating role of increased awareness in these effects.