Recently, Dr. Xiaoquan Zhang, Assistant Professor from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, was a guest at the ninth senior economics seminar, 2012 and delivered a lecture entitled “Social Bias in Online Product Ratings”.

During the lecture, by taking websites "Yelp" and "TripAdvisor" as examples, Dr. Zhang proposed that the network of social relations, in particular friendship, had an impact on customer ratings of online products, resulting in a deviation between the scores and customers’ real product experience.

He elaborated on the steps of how to model, analyze variables, and design randomized trial to test whether a friend’s score has any impact on the final rating of the target customer. In this process, with emphasis on the use of randomized controlled experiment, Dr. Zhang also explained the variable control methods under different assumptions.

Finally, through the analysis of experimental data, he concluded that – friends’ ratings will indeed affect the target customer’s rating, and influence is various under different hypotheses.

Zhang Xiaoquan (Michael Zhang), Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Department at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He served as an investment banking analyst, manager of the international market of high-tech companies and as a security firms’ consultant.

Written by: Jin Xichen

Photo by: Jiang Yiduo

Edited by: Lawrence Phillips, Jing Zizhao

Source: Shool of Economics,www.view.sdu.edu.cn