Chris Forman
Chris Forman is a management researcher and the first author of "Examining the relationship between reviews and sales: the role of reviewer identity disclosure in electronic markets", published in Information Systems Research in 2008. On the paper he is listed with the College of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Who they are
Forman studies the economics of information technology and online markets. The 2008 paper was written with Ghose and Wiesenfeld.
This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.
Key papers
Examining the relationship between reviews and sales (2008), with Ghose and Wiesenfeld. Using Amazon data, the study found that reviews containing information about who the reviewer was were rated more positively by other shoppers, and that the prevalence of reviewer identity disclosure was associated with increases in subsequent sales.
Key ideas
The central idea is that a customer review is a form of self-disclosure, and that disclosure changes how the review is received. Readers appear to trust reviews more when they can see something of the person behind them. The study is observational, so it shows an association with sales rather than proving that disclosure caused them.
Sources
- Forman, C., Ghose, A., & Wiesenfeld, B. (2008). Examining the relationship between reviews and sales: the role of reviewer identity disclosure in electronic markets. Information Systems Research, 19(3), 291-313. doi:10.1287/isre.1080.0193