Are Movie Review User Ratings Reliable?

November 11, 2011

This paper is about a study that was conducted to analyze online movie viewer ratings through an interrelationship between product information and social influences. The study found that on average, higher predecessors’ ratings increased the likelihood of a subsequent user providing a higher rating. Interestingly, the study found that when online movie reviewers would discuss freely in the comments section about the movie, the actual user rating would not necessarily match the person’s review of the movie. For example, if a person talked very positively about a movie, the user rating he would give would be surprisingly low. Sometimes the user would talk very negatively about a movie but still give it a relatively high score.

This study relates to the information cascade phenomena talked about in class. Even though individuals have their own signals (own opinion on the quality of a movie), their ratings and reviews can easily be influenced by the previous public opinions of others. This explains the discrepancy between the comments and the user ratings. Even though a viewer may have strongly disliked a movie and talked very negatively about it in the comments section, he may be influenced by the average user rating and rate the movie slightly higher than what he actually believes it to be.

This is important because in today’s age with many people doing most of their shopping and research of products online, Word of Mouth and User- Generated Content has become extremely influential over individual’s decisions.  Firms can benefit by using this study to alter their movie marketing strategies in a way that takes into account consumer behavior when generating online reviews. In the future, we can use the results of this study to create unbiased recommendation systems in the future if we wish to know the true quality or rating of a movie. This can be done by not showing to the individual the past ratings of the other users. Thus, there would be no average user rating and an individual would have to rate it his own true value.

not mine.credit and source: CORNELL UNIVERSITY