Introduction to the Special Issue on the Emergence and Impact of User-Generated Content

The growth of the “social” Web has resulted in the enormous growth of what is referred to as user-generated content, or UGC. UGC takes the form of product reviews, descriptions of product usage, “homemade advertising,” blogs, and other consumer-initiated contributions. Following a research competition cosponsored by the Marketing Science Institute and the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (now known as the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative), a call for papers for a special issue of Marketing Science resulted in 69 submissions. Of these, eight papers were accepted, covering a range of issues such as how and why people make UGC contributions, the impact of UGC contributions, and new methods for analyzing UGC data.