Together We Buy, Alone I Quit: Some Experimental Studies of Online Persuaders

Abstract

We present a simple web experiment in which participants are asked to listen to a small number of songs and download the two they liked the most. In the experiment, participants were subject to common types of online feedbacks such as star ratings, recommendations and expert advice. Somewhat surprisingly, such online cues had no impact on market shares, but a significant difference emerged as far as market volume was concerned. When operating under the influence of online cues conjuring the presence of others activities soared: participants downloaded, listened to and rated songs much more than in the other scenarios.