时间：2021年4月23日（周五）下午 17：30-19：00

地点：zoom线上平台（若有意参会，请将参会请求通过电子邮件发送至: shyang2018@nsd.pku.edu.cn以获取会议链接）

主讲人：Yiting Deng, UCL School of Management

题目：Expert Opinions and Consumer Reviews: Evidence from the Michelin Guide

摘要：

The consumer purchase journey is influenced by both expert opinions and consumer reviews. However, it is not clear whether favorable expert opinions improve or hurt consumer evaluations of quality. On the one hand, positive expert opinions can enhance the reputation of a business and lead to higher consumer ratings; on the other hand, they may raise consumer expectations and lead to lower consumer ratings. This paper explores the effect of expert opinions on consumer reviews in the context of Michelin stars in the restaurant industry. We constructed a data set based on the Michelin Guide for Great Britain & Ireland from 2010 to 2020. For each restaurant that was awarded Michelin stars during these 11 years, we collected online consumer reviews from TripAdvisor, OpenTable, and Yelp and retrieved relevant historical menus from the restaurant’s official website. Based on the data, we first estimate the effect of Michelin star changes on the valence of consumer reviews. We find that decreases in Michelin star status improve consumers’ star ratings. Next, we estimate a Bayesian topic model and analyze the effects of changes in Michelin star status on review topics, and we find service to be the main driver of customer satisfaction. Finally, we analyze how restaurants respond to changes in Michelin star status by analyzing the relevant historical menus, and we show that in response to Michelin star awards, restaurants modify their menu structure to achieve higher consumer satisfaction.

主讲人简介：

Yiting Deng is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the UCL School of Management, University College London. Prior to joining UCL, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. She received her PhD in Marketing and MS in Statistics from Duke University. She also holds Bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Statistics and a Master’s degree in Economics from Peking University. She applies empirical modeling techniques on consumer choice and firm decision problems, with particular interests in digital marketing, advertising effectiveness, media consumption, and two-sided markets. Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Statistical Science.