Workshop’s Topic: While the information in the user community frequently informs the consumers on purchasing decisions, whether it can influence producers in future product R&D remains unclear. In this paper, I examine the role of user reviews on product development in the video game industry. Using textual data from a two-sided platform, I evaluate the effect of reviews on videogame updates, and the empirical results show that games with more design-related reviews have a higher probability of updates in the following month when users are unsatisfied. I further present evidence that incumbent firms can learn from reliability-related reviews for more complicated product development, while small start-ups focus on design-related reviews. I also show that updates are critical for prolonging product life cycle, since they positively correlated with the re-engagement of inactive users.

Time and Location: 14:00 PM (GMT+8), Room A823 (School of Management)

Language: Bilingual (Chinese and English)