Seller Reputation

Seller Reputation

Seller reputation is an important asset because buyers often choose sellers on the basis of their reputation. This is particularly true when the quality of the good or service transacted is hard to measure and the parties cannot perfectly contract on the outcome of the transaction. As a consequence, the seller will be mindful of building and maintaining a good reputation through the information...

Reputation based Buyer Strategies for Seller Selection in Electronic Markets

An Evolutionary Analysis of Buyer Insurance and Seller Reputation in Online Markets∗

Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and a buyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthiness and trust in markets with moral hazard problems. Our analysis suggests that the costs involved in giving reliable feedback determine the gains from trade that can be obtained in equilibrium. Buyer insurance, o...

On the efficacy of imperfect public-monitoring of seller reputation in e-commerce

Reputation is crucial in promoting exchanges in online markets, since it may overcome information inefficiency through successful signals of sellers’ quality to less informed customers. To explore this issue, I study web sellers’ reliability in business-to-consumer online transactions with reference to reputation games. Customers can gather information in online marketplaces like e-Bay through ...

Remain Silent and Ye Shall Suffer: Seller Exploitation of Reticent Buyers in an Experimental Reputation System∗

By providing incentives for sellers to act in a trustworthy manner, reputation mechanisms in many online environments can mitigate moral-hazard problems when particular buyers and sellers interact infrequently. However, these mechanisms rely on buyers sharing their private information about sellers with the community, and thus may suffer from too little feedback when its provision is costly. In...