MIS Quarterly
The sharing economy’s growth challenges incumbents, prompting new strategies like consumer opinion manipulation in the lodging sector. We study two manipulation types: self-promotion and competitor demotion, using data from multiple sources to analyze Airbnb’s impact on hotels’ strategies. Interestingly, hotels tend to reduce mutual demotion when facing the common “enemy” of Airbnb competition. Low-end hotels tend to not increase their review manipulation activities, while high-end hotels tend to demote competing hotels less and promote themselves more in the presence of higher levels of Airbnb competition.
Cheng Nie is an assistant professor of information systems and business analytics at the Ivy College of Business. His paper is published in MIS Quarterly.