College of Business & Economics

Department of e-Business & Technology Management

Seminar Series

The Department of e-Business and Technology Management encourages scholarship through a research seminar series that features faculty presentations of recent work to faculty and students within the department and College of Business and Economics. Past seminar titles include:

Date of Presentation	11/5/2010
Time	3:00:00 PM
Location	ST 310
Presenter	Dr. James Otto
Seminar Title	Comparing customer ratings from multiple reputation systems: The case of New York City hotels
Abstract	This exploratory study contains analyses that contrast the customer ratings of hotels across multiple reputation systems, Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity. We investigate the extent to which the websites' customer ratings for overall satisfaction are equivalent to each other, and the extent to which they provide new useful information about hotels. Our analysis of a random sample of 99 hotels and 5,575 individual customer ratings suggests that the ratings are not equivalent across websites, and that each website's customer ratings offers unique information on the ability of hotels to satisfy customers. We discuss the implications of our findings to consumers and hotel managers.