Just in time for Cyber Monday. Online retailers have long wondered if trumpeting consumer-behavior statistics on their websites could hurt business. New findings from Qi Wang, an associate professor of marketing at Binghamton University, should ease their fears.

Wang studied the effects of user comments and sales statistics that accompany products offered on e-commerce sites. While the impact of positive and negative feedback has been well understood, much less was known about so-called “observational behavior” – aka a person’s tendency to adopt the same habits as his or her peers. Wang’s findings were published in the Journal of Marketing Research.

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