Bayesian Social Learning from Consumer Reviews

Bayesian Social Learning from Consumer Reviews PDF Author: Bar Ifrach
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
Motivated by the proliferation of user-generated product-review information and its widespreaduse, this note studies a market where consumers are heterogeneous in terms of their willingness-to-pay for a new product. Each consumer observes the binary reviews (like or dislike) of consumers who purchased the product in the past and uses Bayesian updating to infer the product quality. We show that the learning process is successful as long as the price is not prohibitive and therefore at least some consumers, with sufficiently high idiosyncratic willingness-to-pay, will purchase the product irrespective of their posterior quality estimate. We examine some structural properties of the dynamics of the posterior beliefs.Finally, we study the seller's pricing problem, and we show that, if the set of possible prices is finite, then a stationary optimal pricing policy exists. If putting one item on the market involves a constant cost, then under this optimal policy, learning fails with positive probability.

Bayesian Social Learning from Consumer Reviews

Bayesian Social Learning from Consumer Reviews PDF Author: Bar Ifrach
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
Motivated by the proliferation of user-generated product-review information and its widespreaduse, this note studies a market where consumers are heterogeneous in terms of their willingness-to-pay for a new product. Each consumer observes the binary reviews (like or dislike) of consumers who purchased the product in the past and uses Bayesian updating to infer the product quality. We show that the learning process is successful as long as the price is not prohibitive and therefore at least some consumers, with sufficiently high idiosyncratic willingness-to-pay, will purchase the product irrespective of their posterior quality estimate. We examine some structural properties of the dynamics of the posterior beliefs.Finally, we study the seller's pricing problem, and we show that, if the set of possible prices is finite, then a stationary optimal pricing policy exists. If putting one item on the market involves a constant cost, then under this optimal policy, learning fails with positive probability.

Social Learning in a Competitive Market with Consumer Reviews

Social Learning in a Competitive Market with Consumer Reviews PDF Author: Stefano Vaccari
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
Two products of unknown qualities are simultaneously launched by two different firms in the market. An infinite population of consumers with heterogeneous preferences sequentially decide whether to purchase one of the two products or not to buy at all. Arriving consumers estimate the qualities of products based on the distribution of binary online reviews reported by prior consumers and decide accordingly, obeying a non-Bayesian rule. The goal of our work is to describe how the online review mechanism drives the spread of information in a competitive market and to provide conditions under which consumers' quality estimates converge almost surely to the true qualities of products.

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks PDF Author: Yann Bramoullé
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190216832
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 857

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks represents the frontier of research into how and why networks they form, how they influence behavior, how they help govern outcomes in an interactive world, and how they shape collective decision making, opinion formation, and diffusion dynamics. From a methodological perspective, the contributors to this volume devote attention to theory, field experiments, laboratory experiments, and econometrics. Theoretical work in network formation, games played on networks, repeated games, and the interaction between linking and behavior is synthesized. A number of chapters are devoted to studying social process mediated by networks. Topics here include opinion formation, diffusion of information and disease, and learning. There are also chapters devoted to financial contagion and systemic risk, motivated in part by the recent financial crises. Another section discusses communities, with applications including social trust, favor exchange, and social collateral; the importance of communities for migration patterns; and the role that networks and communities play in the labor market. A prominent role of networks, from an economic perspective, is that they mediate trade. Several chapters cover bilateral trade in networks, strategic intermediation, and the role of networks in international trade. Contributions discuss as well the role of networks for organizations. On the one hand, one chapter discusses the role of networks for the performance of organizations, while two other chapters discuss managing networks of consumers and pricing in the presence of network-based spillovers. Finally, the authors discuss the internet as a network with attention to the issue of net neutrality.

Bayesian Analysis for the Social Sciences

Bayesian Analysis for the Social Sciences PDF Author: Simon Jackman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9780470686638
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
Bayesian methods are increasingly being used in the social sciences, as the problems encountered lend themselves so naturally to the subjective qualities of Bayesian methodology. This book provides an accessible introduction to Bayesian methods, tailored specifically for social science students. It contains lots of real examples from political science, psychology, sociology, and economics, exercises in all chapters, and detailed descriptions of all the key concepts, without assuming any background in statistics beyond a first course. It features examples of how to implement the methods using WinBUGS – the most-widely used Bayesian analysis software in the world – and R – an open-source statistical software. The book is supported by a Website featuring WinBUGS and R code, and data sets.

Bayesian Methods

Bayesian Methods PDF Author: Jeff Gill
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1584885629
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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Book Description
The first edition of Bayesian Methods: A Social and Behavioral Sciences Approach helped pave the way for Bayesian approaches to become more prominent in social science methodology. While the focus remains on practical modeling and basic theory as well as on intuitive explanations and derivations without skipping steps, this second edition incorporates the latest methodology and recent changes in software offerings. New to the Second Edition Two chapters on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) that cover ergodicity, convergence, mixing, simulated annealing, reversible jump MCMC, and coupling Expanded coverage of Bayesian linear and hierarchical models More technical and philosophical details on prior distributions A dedicated R package (BaM) with data and code for the examples as well as a set of functions for practical purposes such as calculating highest posterior density (HPD) intervals Requiring only a basic working knowledge of linear algebra and calculus, this text is one of the few to offer a graduate-level introduction to Bayesian statistics for social scientists. It first introduces Bayesian statistics and inference, before moving on to assess model quality and fit. Subsequent chapters examine hierarchical models within a Bayesian context and explore MCMC techniques and other numerical methods. Concentrating on practical computing issues, the author includes specific details for Bayesian model building and testing and uses the R and BUGS software for examples and exercises.

Fast and Slow Learning from Reviews

Fast and Slow Learning from Reviews PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumer behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description
This paper develops a model of Bayesian learning from online reviews, and investigates the conditions for asymptotic learning of the quality of a product and the speed of learning under different rating systems. A rating system provides information about reviews left by previous customers. A sequence of potential customers decide whether to join the platform. After joining and observing the ratings of the product, and conditional on her ex ante valuation, a customer decides whether to purchase or not. If she purchases, the true quality of the product, her ex ante valuation, an ex post idiosyncratic preference term and the price of the product determine her overall satisfaction. Given the rating system of the platform, she decides to leave a review as a function of her overall satisfaction. We study learning dynamics under two classes of rating systems: full history, where customers see the full history of reviews, and summary statistics, where the platform reports some summary statistics of past reviews. In both cases, learning dynamics are complicated by a selection effect -- the types of users who purchase the good and thus their overall satisfaction and reviews depend on the information that they have available at the time of their purchase. We provide conditions for asymptotic learning under both full history and summary statistics, and show how the selection effect becomes more difficult to correct for with summary statistics. Conditional on asymptotic learning, the speed (rate) of learning is always exponential and is governed by similar forces under both types of rating systems, though the exact rates differ. Using this characterization, we provide the rate of learning under several different types of rating systems. We show that providing more information does not always lead to faster learning, but strictly finer rating systems always do. We also illustrate how different rating systems, with the same distribution of preferences, can lead to very fast or very slow speeds of learning. Keywords: Bayesian learning, online reviews, recommendation systems, social learning, speed of learning. JEL classification: C72, D83, L15.

Advances in Data Science and Information Engineering

Advances in Data Science and Information Engineering PDF Author: Robert Stahlbock
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030717046
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 965

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Book Description
The book presents the proceedings of two conferences: the 16th International Conference on Data Science (ICDATA 2020) and the 19th International Conference on Information & Knowledge Engineering (IKE 2020), which took place in Las Vegas, NV, USA, July 27-30, 2020. The conferences are part of the larger 2020 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, & Applied Computing (CSCE'20), which features 20 major tracks. Papers cover all aspects of Data Science, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Artificial and Computational Intelligence (ICDATA) and Information Retrieval Systems, Information & Knowledge Engineering, Management and Cyber-Learning (IKE). Authors include academics, researchers, professionals, and students. Presents the proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Data Science (ICDATA 2020) and the 19th International Conference on Information & Knowledge Engineering (IKE 2020); Includes papers on topics from data mining to machine learning to informational retrieval systems; Authors include academics, researchers, professionals and students.

Revenue Management and Pricing Analytics

Revenue Management and Pricing Analytics PDF Author: Guillermo Gallego
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1493996061
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
“There is no strategic investment that has a higher return than investing in good pricing, and the text by Gallego and Topaloghu provides the best technical treatment of pricing strategy and tactics available.” Preston McAfee, the J. Stanley Johnson Professor, California Institute of Technology and Chief Economist and Corp VP, Microsoft. “The book by Gallego and Topaloglu provides a fresh, up-to-date and in depth treatment of revenue management and pricing. It fills an important gap as it covers not only traditional revenue management topics also new and important topics such as revenue management under customer choice as well as pricing under competition and online learning. The book can be used for different audiences that range from advanced undergraduate students to masters and PhD students. It provides an in-depth treatment covering recent state of the art topics in an interesting and innovative way. I highly recommend it." Professor Georgia Perakis, the William F. Pounds Professor of Operations Research and Operations Management at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. “This book is an important and timely addition to the pricing analytics literature by two authors who have made major contributions to the field. It covers traditional revenue management as well as assortment optimization and dynamic pricing. The comprehensive treatment of choice models in each application is particularly welcome. It is mathematically rigorous but accessible to students at the advanced undergraduate or graduate levels with a rich set of exercises at the end of each chapter. This book is highly recommended for Masters or PhD level courses on the topic and is a necessity for researchers with an interest in the field.” Robert L. Phillips, Director of Pricing Research at Amazon “At last, a serious and comprehensive treatment of modern revenue management and assortment optimization integrated with choice modeling. In this book, Gallego and Topaloglu provide the underlying model derivations together with a wide range of applications and examples; all of these facets will better equip students for handling real-world problems. For mathematically inclined researchers and practitioners, it will doubtless prove to be thought-provoking and an invaluable reference.” Richard Ratliff, Research Scientist at Sabre “This book, written by two of the leading researchers in the area, brings together in one place most of the recent research on revenue management and pricing analytics. New industries (ride sharing, cloud computing, restaurants) and new developments in the airline and hotel industries make this book very timely and relevant, and will serve as a critical reference for researchers.” Professor Kalyan Talluri, the Munjal Chair in Global Business and Operations, Imperial College, London, UK.

Bayesian Statistics for the Social Sciences

Bayesian Statistics for the Social Sciences PDF Author: David Kaplan
Publisher: Guilford Publications
ISBN: 1462516513
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Bridging the gap between traditional classical statistics and a Bayesian approach, David Kaplan provides readers with the concepts and practical skills they need to apply Bayesian methodologies to their data analysis problems. Part I addresses the elements of Bayesian inference, including exchangeability, likelihood, prior/posterior distributions, and the Bayesian central limit theorem. Part II covers Bayesian hypothesis testing, model building, and linear regression analysis, carefully explaining the differences between the Bayesian and frequentist approaches. Part III extends Bayesian statistics to multilevel modeling and modeling for continuous and categorical latent variables. Kaplan closes with a discussion of philosophical issues and argues for an "evidence-based" framework for the practice of Bayesian statistics. User-Friendly Features *Includes worked-through, substantive examples, using large-scale educational and social science databases, such as PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and the LSAY (Longitudinal Study of American Youth). *Utilizes open-source R software programs available on CRAN (such as MCMCpack and rjags); readers do not have to master the R language and can easily adapt the example programs to fit individual needs. *Shows readers how to carefully warrant priors on the basis of empirical data. *Companion website features data and code for the book's examples, plus other resources.

Alone, Together

Alone, Together PDF Author: Tommaso Bondi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
We develop a dynamic model of naïve social learning from consumer reviews. In our model, consumers decide which of two products to buy based on both expected quality and idiosyncratic taste. Products' qualities are initially unknown, and are (mis)learned from reviews. At the heart of the model lies a dynamic feedback loop between reviews, beliefs, and choices: period t reviews influence t + 1 consumers' beliefs, and thus choices; these determine the average of t + 1 reviews, which in turn influences t + 2 beliefs, choices and reviews. We show that in the long-run (t = ∞), reviews are systematically biased, leading some consumers astray. In particular, reviews relatively advantage lower quality and more polarizing products, since these products induce stronger taste-based consumer self-selection. Thus, in stark contrast with the winner-takes-all dynamics of classic observational learning models, in which consumers learn from the choices of their predecessors, social learning from opinions generates excessive choice fragmentation. Our findings have implications for interpreting the variance of reviews; pricing in presence of reviews; the design of crowd-sourced exploration; and the short and long term effectiveness of fake reviews.