Aggregation processes in customer rating systems - Insights from an economic decision experiment
Dirk van Straaten, Behnud Mir Djawadi, Vitalik Melnikov, Eyke Hüllermeier, René Fahr · 2026
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Description
van Straaten and colleagues ran a decision experiment on how shoppers combine star ratings in a 2026 study. Shops online squeeze many ratings into one score, usually a plain average, to help buyers choose. Whether buyers actually think in averages was unclear.
Most shoppers in the test did rank products much as a plain average would predict. A closer look showed real variety, though. One large group weighed very bad and very good ratings about equally while ignoring the middle. Others focused mainly on bad reviews. A single score thus hides different reading habits, which matters for how platforms should show rating spreads.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Dirk van Straaten, Behnud Mir Djawadi, Vitalik Melnikov, Eyke Hüllermeier, René Fahr |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 97964 |
| LICENSE | CC_BY |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | PLOS |