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The Impact of Online Q&As on Product Sales: The Case of Amazon Answer

Warut Khern-Am-Nuai¹; Hossein Ghasemkhani²; Dandan Qiao³; Karthik Kannan⁴

¹ Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1G5, Canada · ² Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 · ³ Department of Information Systems and Analytics, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117417, Singapore; · ⁴ Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721

This study uses observational data from two online retail sites to examine the effect of questions and answers on sales of experience goods. Particularly, we leverage the naturally occurring experiment where the Q&A capabilities are available on only one platform. Interestingly, we discover that answers, especially the depth of answers, positively affect sales. Additionally, the fraction of questions with at least one answer positively and significantly affects product sales. Our additional textual content analyses unveil that fit- and quality-oriented questions have different effects on sales, as do positive and negative answers. Insights from this work can help platform managers develop Q&A ecosystems and content management policies.

DOI

10.1287/isre.2023.1233

Volume

35 (2)

Pages

747-765

Language

en

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