Listening to Strangers: Whose Responses are Valuable, how Valuable are They, and Why?

The authors show that a provider's response speed, the extent to which the provider's previous responses within the focal domain have been positively evaluated by others, and the breadth of the providers' previous responses across different domains of knowledge affect objective judgments of information value.

Abstract

Marketing managers and consumers who use the Web as a source of information often use input from strangers to make decisions or gain knowledge. The authors propose that in such contexts, the information provider's current and past behaviors, relative to those of other information providers, influence who the information seeker believes provides a valuable response and how valuable he or she judges the provider's information to be. The authors track information queries, information provider responses, and objective valuation of these responses by information seekers in a Web forum, in which responses to information queries come from multiple information providers with whom the information seeker has not met face-to-face and has had no prior interaction. Among other results, the authors show that a provider's response speed, the extent to which the provider's previous responses within the focal domain have been positively evaluated by others, and the breadth of the provider's previous responses across different domains of knowledge affect objective judgments of information value. Importantly, these effects are moderated by the information seeker's goal orientation. The information provider's experience in responding to questions in different domains of knowledge increases judgments of information value for information seekers with a decision-making orientation, whereas the information provider's reputation for providing valuable contributions within the focal domain increases judgments of information value for information seekers with a learning orientation.