David Schuff

What makes a helpful online review? a study of customer reviews on amazon.com

Customer reviews are increasingly available online for a wide range of products and services. They supplement other information provided by electronic storefronts such as product descriptions, reviews from experts, and personalized advice generated by automated recommendation systems. While researchers have demonstrated the benefits of the presence of customer reviews to an online retailer, a largely uninvestigated issue is what makes customer reviews helpful to a consumer in the process of making a purchase decision. Drawing on the paradigm of search and experience goods from information economics, we develop and test a model of customer review helpfulness. An analysis of 1,587 reviews from Amazon.com across six products indicated that review extremity, review depth, and product type affect the perceived helpfulness of the review. Product type moderates the effect of review extremity on the helpfulness of the review. For experience goods, reviews with extreme ratings are less helpful than reviews with moderate ratings. For both product types, review depth has a positive effect on the helpfulness of the review, but the product type moderates the effect of review depth on the helpfulness of the review. Review depth has a greater positive effect on the helpfulness of the review for search goods than for experience goods. We discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and practice.

Web 2.0 and politics: the 2008 u.s. presidential election and an E-politics research agenda

The Internet was a major factor in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and has become an important tool for political communication and persuasion. Yet, information systems research is generally silent on the role of the Internet in politics. In this paper, we argue that IS is positioned to enhance understanding of the influence of the Internet on politics, and, more specifically, the process of election campaigning using Internet-based technologies such as Web 2.0. In this paper, we discuss how these technologies can change the nature of competition in politics and replace or complement traditional media. Our empirical study on how Web 2.0 technologies were used by the candidates leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential primaries sheds light on how these technologies influenced candidate performance. Finally, we outline a research agenda highlighting where IS can contribute to the academic discourse on e-politics.

Managing your total IT cost of ownership

Though the TCO of end-user workstations can always be reduced by sacrificing end-user service, careful planning can reduce the costs without the sacrifice.

A model of Internet standards adoption: the case of IPv6

Abstract.  The Internet presents a unique environment in which to study adoption. This is because of its composition of autonomous entities that are otherwise strongly interrelated. Our model of Internet standards adoption (ISA) combines diffusion of innovation and economics of adoption literature to present an integrative model. This model proposes that the adoption of Internet‐based standards is dependent upon two dimensions: the usefulness of the features to the potential adopter, and the conduciveness of the environment to adoption of the standard. This model accounts for not only the traditional dichotomous view of adoption, but also includes the notion of ‘partial adoption’, where both old and new standards can coexist for extended periods of time. As a demonstration, we apply the ISA model to the next generation Internet protocol Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Despite its ostensible superiority, IPv6 has not been widely adopted. In this paper we discuss the reasons why this might be the case. Our analysis also draws wider conclusions about the adoption of Internet standards: in particular, the importance of transitional technologies between the old and new standards and the need for co‐ordinated government polices which encourage adoption. Our analysis also indicates that geopolitical boundaries may have a considerable impact on the adoption of Internet standards.

Supporting systems analysis and design through fisheye views

Demonstrating the usefulness of integrating context-based views into the systems analysis and design process.

Centralization vs. decentralization of application software

between centralized and decentralized application software distribution , although modular program design and enterprise management software may break that cycle. Meanwhile, IT departments that want to manage the distribution and configuration of software across their networks are searching for an acceptable balance of control, reliability , and speed. Distributing application files on individual PCs maximizes network performance, but makes it much more difficult to enforce configuration standards and maintain control. Placing application files in a few central locations gives an IT department significant control over software configuration but may degrade network performance and lead to user dissatisfaction. Whichever way the IT department chooses, the result should never lose sight of the user. As the components and software in corporate networks become increasingly complex, simplification of their management and administration becomes essential. The network-attached PC has a high cost of ownership; CIO Magazine has estimated the cost to be

A method for developing dimensional data marts

10,000 per desktop per year [3, 4]. The costs of a network-attached PC mostly cover maintenance, not installation or actually buying the equipment. These costs can be cut by reducing the number of hours spent on network administration tasks like implementing new software, distributing new software versions, applying patches, and troubleshooting problems with the individual software applications installed on each workstation. Centralization of application software is one

Comparing the understandability of alternative data warehouse schemas: An empirical study

Decision-oriented dimensional data marts are fundamentally different than transaction-oriented relational databases. A distinctive methodology and a different set of tools are required for their effective development.

Managing E-Mail Overload: Solutions and Future Challenges

An easily understood data warehouse model enables users to better identify and retrieve its data. It also makes it easier for users to suggest changes to its structure and content. Through an exploratory, empirical study, we compared the understandability of the star and traditional relational schemas. The results of our experiment contradict previous findings and show schema type did not lead to significant performance differences for a content identification task. Further, the relational schema actually led to slightly better results for a schema augmentation task. We discuss the implications of these findings for data warehouse design and future research.

Why Aren't the Stars Aligned? An Analysis of Online Review Content and Star Ratings

Effective e-mail management tools must treat messages as useful information, not simply as data congesting the network, the hard disk, or a users inbox. Solutions that economize on scarce cognitive resources at the expense of the relatively cheap additional CPU power, disk capacity, or network bandwidth will ultimately prevail over those that pursue the opposite strategy. With proper application of automatic filtering, clustering, and new user interface metaphors, e-mail can once again become an effective knowledge management tool rather than a source of information overload