The Impact of Online Q&As on Product Sales: The Case of Amazon Answer

This paper uses data from two online shopping platforms to investigate the impact of questions and answers on product sales. This research question is important as online marketplaces are increasingly incorporating questioning and answering (Q&A) capabilities. However, the economic implications of these Q&A capabilities have yet to be explored and discussed in the literature. We use a difference-in-differences approach to empirically examine the effect of questions and answers that exist on only one platform on the sales of experience goods. Interestingly, we find that answers, particularly the depth of answers, have a positive impact on sales. In addition, the fraction of questions with at least one answer has a positive and significant impact on product sales as well. Our further analyses on textual content suggest that fit-oriented questions and quality-oriented questions impact sales differently and that positive answers and negative answers also impact sales in different ways. Our findings suggest that platform sellers should pay particular attention to questions that their products receive, as answered questions increase product sales.

History: Param Singh, Senior Editor; Lu (Lucy) Yan, Associate Editor.

Funding: The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Société et Culture Research Support for New Academics [Grant 207342] and the National University of Singapore [Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Research Grant].

Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2023.1233.