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Not all ‘review bombing’ is bad for business

Having a one-size-fits-all, review bombing or political speech policy can lead to the suppression of legitimate expressions of support for the role a small business plays in the community.

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For a business on the receiving end of “review bombs” – the sudden influx of online customer reviews following a political or cultural controversy – an interventionist approach to content moderation might seem like a prudent strategy.

But a new open-access study by a Rutgers researcher finds that when review platforms such as Yelp enact tough moderation policies in a bid to sanitize political speech, it can unnecessarily constrain reasonable opinions and cultural context that consumers depend on to decide where to spend their money.

“Simply put, everything you think you know about review bombing is wrong,” said Will B. Payne, assistant professor of geographic information science at Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and author of the study, published in the journal Big Data & Society.

Online reviews can have a significant impact on an independent business’s revenue, particularly those on Yelp, the leading local review platform in the United States. One study found that a one-star increase in the average Yelp rating causes a 5% to 9% increase in revenue for nonchain restaurants.

To understand the geographic reach of review bombing incidents and how platforms define acceptable speech, Payne assessed Yelp’s moderation of comments on U.S. businesses embroiled in political controversies between 2004 and 2021. 

First, Payne created a database of businesses affected by national and local politics. Using news sources to identify specific cases and date ranges, he built a dataset of tens of thousands of political-themed reviews. Topics included the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections, the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Next, he analyzed Yelp’s publicly available metadata for reviews of affected businesses, including review date, username, star rating and user location.

Payne then selected two businesses with large numbers of Yelp reviews for in-depth analysis: Washington, D.C.-based pizzeria Comet Ping Pong (subject of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory in 2016) and St. Louis-based Pi Pizzeria, whose owner, Chris Sommers, became the target of online and offline harassment by pro-police supporters after he publicly backed the Black Lives Matter movement in 2017.

In Comet Ping Pong’s case, Payne found that review bombing resulted in primarily negative comments by reviewers mostly on the West Coast – thousands of miles away from the restaurant – while Pi Pizzeria experienced a much more local pattern (largely from the St. Louis area), with an even split of supporters and detractors.

Payne found that Yelp’s automated and human review filtering systems largely responded the same way to each incident, but with considerably different effects. For Comet Ping Pong, of the 283 reviews flagged and removed by Yelp, 229 were negative one-star reviews. By contrast, of the 588 Pi Pizzeria reviews that Yelp removed, most were in support of Sommers’ actions, positive reviews that averaged close to the restaurant’s four-star rating of Yelp-approved reviews.

“Local customers were censored for simply thanking Chris Sommers for standing with them as they marched against police violence,” Payne said. “They weren’t fake reviews about a conspiracy theory; they were legitimate statements by people supporting a business, in this case for the support its owner gave to the neighborhood.”

Payne also looked at Google’s approach to content moderation and found that unlike Yelp, Google rarely removes politically themed reviews. This, too, can be a double-edged sword; Comet Ping Pong still has dozens of public Google reviews referencing the false Pizzagate conspiracy. 

The data does have several limitations, Payne said. First is the possibility that the self-reported location of Yelp users was inaccurate, or that some users could have moved between the time they set up their Yelp profile and when they wrote a review.

Additionally, reviews on Google Maps – a popular Yelp competitor – don’t contain user location information and can be removed by Google without leaving the public metadata traces that Yelp provides for transparency.

As review bombing continues to test review platforms’ approaches to political discourse – the most recent example surfaced this month, when Yelp halted reviews of a McDonald’s franchise in Feasterville, Penn., where former President Donald J. Trump had held a campaign event – Payne said it’s worth considering whether content moderation has gone too far.

The question is particularly relevant for Yelp, which has used corporate communications and review search filters to support Black-owned, women-owned, and LGBTQ-inclusive businesses – speech that isn’t permitted by reviewers themselves unless accompanying a customer experience review.

“Having a one-size-fits-all, review bombing or political speech policy can lead to the suppression of legitimate expressions of support for the role a small business plays in the community, as in the case of Pi Pizzeria,” Payne said. “Some might disagree that the political positions of a business owner should guide consumer behavior, but on Yelp, it’s a choice that users can’t even make for themselves.”

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Nostalgia is an asset in company acquisitions, so use it

Tailor nostalgia interventions to different employee categories. Workers with knowledge critical to a company’s value benefit most from identity-based interventions, while “cultural carriers” can help bridge old and new organizational cultures through relationship-focused strategies.

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When companies are acquired, conventional wisdom suggests that employee nostalgia for their pre-buyout days is a problem to be eliminated so workers can more quickly adapt to the new owners’ ways of doing business.

A study published in the journal Strategic Organization led by UC Riverside School of Business professors Boris Maciejovsky and Jerayr Haleblian suggests this thinking is wrong—especially when the new owners want to retain the most talented, productive, and informed workers.

Nostalgia, they found, serves as a comforting and stabilizing force during takeover periods, when employees feel vulnerable, fear losing their jobs, status, or advancement opportunities, and are thus inclined to send out résumés.

“Rather than viewing nostalgia as living in the past, we demonstrate how it serves as a bridge between employees’ pre-acquisition identity and their post-acquisition reality,” explained Haleblian, the business school’s Anderson Presidential Chair in Business. “This temporal bridging is crucial for maintaining organizational commitment during transitions.”

Drawing from psychology research in emotion regulation, social identity, narrative identity, and attachment theories, the study shows nostalgia isn’t mere sentimentality—it’s a powerful tool that helps preserve identity and meaning during disruptive times, said Maciejovsky, an associate professor of management.

“We challenge the prevailing view that nostalgic emotions are maladaptive responses to change,” Maciejovsky said. “Our research shows that nostalgia can transform negative reactions into positive outcomes, thereby mitigating the talent loss that often jeopardizes acquisition success.”

For employees, nostalgia is often triggered by the upheaval of a corporate acquisition that replaces familiar leadership with unfamiliar faces. By understanding these emotions, the authors argue, managers can see that longing for the past is not resistance but a desire to preserve meaning and identity.

The implications are significant in today’s business climate, where acquisitions of startup companies to gain talent and innovations are commonplace—especially in the tech sector, where the strategy is called “acqui-hiring.” Yet retention is poor: in the U.S., 47% of key employees leave within the first year of an acquisition, and 75% within three years, creating a human capital gap that can reduce company value by 10–15%, according to Mentorloop.com.

The study provides practical guidance for managers, outlining two main approaches to support employees during acquisitions. The first involves identity-preserving interventions, such as maintaining familiar company symbols like names, logos, workspaces, and practices. It also includes honoring historical narratives that connect current practices to valued traditions, while ensuring that the missions of the acquiring and acquired companies remain carefully aligned. 

The second approach centers on relationship-focused interventions, which emphasize building strong connections among employees through team-building activities, heritage celebrations, and shared experiences that foster a sense of social connection.

“Companies like American Airlines have successfully used heritage celebrations, featuring paint schemes from acquired airlines like TWA, to honor predecessor companies while facilitating integration,” Maciejovsky said. “These aren’t just feel-good gestures—they’re strategic interventions that tap into nostalgia’s regulatory benefits.”

The study emphasizes tailoring nostalgia interventions to different employee categories. Workers with knowledge critical to a company’s value benefit most from identity-based interventions, while “cultural carriers” can help bridge old and new organizational cultures through relationship-focused strategies.

The study, titled How Nostalgia Facilitates Post-Acquisition Target Employee Retention: An Agenda for Future Research, was co-authored with Tim Wildschut and Constantine Sedikides of the University of Southampton, UK.

The authors call for future research to test the limits of nostalgia in organizational change,  how buyouts differently affect the acquirer and target employees, and how nostalgia impacts other life changes.

“Transparency about change is important, but so is understanding how emotions like nostalgia can be strategically managed,” Maciejovsky said. “Like any powerful tool, nostalgia can have unintended consequences if we don’t use it wisely—but when applied thoughtfully, it can transform acquisition challenges into retention advantages.”

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Labels are everything: New study reveals role of popularity in news articles

The way that news organizations label articles could directly influence how much attention they receive and ultimately impact their revenue.

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News readers often click on articles not based on topic but rather the behavior of their fellow audience members, according to new research from the University of Georgia.

And the way that news organizations label those articles could directly influence how much attention they receive and ultimately impact their revenue.

When you go to a news organization’s homepage, they typically label articles that readers are engaging with the most. The researchers focused on two common labels: “most shared” and “most read.”

“These types of labels are not going anywhere. Popularity even in news labels is a psychological phenomenon,” said Tari Dagago-Jack, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of marketing in the UGA Terry College of Business. “Popularity labels on news outlets are taking advantage of the idea that we follow the lead of others and that our decision-making is influenced by what other people are doing.”

Article section labels influence click rate

At first glance, you may assume that these labels, “most shared” and “most read,” mean the same thing: A lot of people checked out the article. But there’s a clear difference that consumers pick up on.

“If something is most shared, we might assume that means many people had to read it and then deem it interesting enough or important enough to pass it on,” Dagogo-Jack said. “But then there’s this other reality where we know a lot of things that are widely shared are often extremely frivolous like cat videos or funny memes.”

In nine surveys and experiments involving hundreds of people, the study found respondents interpreted “most read” stories as being more informative. “Most shared” articles were viewed as less serious and more entertainment based.

“The primary goal for reading news is to gain information, and the label ‘most read’ is a stronger signal of an article’s information value.” —Tari Dagago-Jack, Terry College

“We as readers have two primary motives: to be informed or to be entertained — that is, for a welcome diversion,” said Dagogo-Jack. “At a baseline level, we were finding that people were choosing ‘most read’ at a way higher rate than ‘most shared.’ The primary goal for reading news is to gain information, and the label ‘most read’ is a stronger signal of an article’s information value.”

That means if editors want certain articles to get more attention, they should tailor the label to the readers’ goals.

Knowing your audience, content is key for engagement

The same went for articles advertised on social media. Posts from faux news organizations that had captions describing a more educational article as “most shared” received fewer clicks.

This wasn’t the case, however, for news stories that were less serious and newsworthy. In that case, the “most shared” label worked as well as the “most read” label.

It’s a key message for reporters, editors and web developers: Know your audience and your content.

“People should ask themselves: Why am I even clicking on this thing? Is it just because everyone else read it?” —Tari Dagago-Jack

“For pop culture, sports or music — more entertainment — in those sections you should highlight what is ‘most shared,’” Dagogo-Jack said. “But for world news, politics and science sections, you should be using things like ‘most read’ or ‘most viewed.’”

Dagogo-Jack also recommends putting thought into labels. Ambiguous choices like “trending” or “most popular” may stump readers altogether, as there are so many things this could mean.

“Providing these lists helps us get over information overload or choice paralysis,” he said. “It’s a crutch and makes the decision process easier, but I often wonder: At what cost?

“You’re clicking on something that a lot of people like and social proof is valuable, but it may not necessarily provide what you are looking for, and you just gave up on the search. People should ask themselves: Why am I even clicking on this thing? Is it just because everyone else read it?”

This study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research and was co-authored by New York University assistant professor Jared Watson.

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Dynamic pricing can optimize profits but alienate customers

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If you’ve ever seen a steep increase in the fare for an Uber to the airport on a Friday, or you’ve checked an item’s cost on Amazon, only to see it has changed hours later, you might have experienced algorithmic pricing.

That’s the practice of using algorithms to automatically adjust the price of goods or services based on factors such as demand, competitor pricing, inventory levels, or data about the customer.

While such pricing practices can squeeze out extra profit, they can also carry a marketing risk if not carefully implemented, according to Gizem Yalcin Williams, assistant professor of marketing at Texas McCombs. In 2012, Uber was widely criticized for raising ride prices during Hurricane Sandy. More recently, customers have expressed outrage over concert ticket surge pricing.

In a paper, co-written with an interdisciplinary group of 12 other researchers, Williams examines algorithmic pricing and the challenges companies can face when integrating it with their other objectives. The researchers offer some preliminary dos and don’ts for aligning pricing with marketing strategy, regulations, and avoiding customer backlash.

One potential factor in customer backlash, Williams says, is driven by feelings of unfairness.

“Let’s say that I just got myself something from Amazon, for my dorm, and then a couple of days later, I saw that the price changed,” she says. “I now feel like I overpaid for it, regardless of how good the product is.”

By the same token, seeing a price increase later might trigger elation, she says. “If I feel like I bought it at a lower price, I feel like I was smart.”

When Prices Get Personal

If pricing sometimes feels a bit more personal when algorithms are involved, Williams says, that’s because it is.

In addition to taking supply or production costs into account, companies increasingly use customer-level data to make pricing decisions, often with the help of artificial intelligence.

The exact data that go into the algorithm might not be always known, Williams says. “But what if the price I receive is different than others because of my own data, such as my shopping history, demographics, or location? Shoppers might react to the same price differently, depending on which data they think affected the price set by the company’s algorithm.”

Besides eroding customer loyalty, companies can face regulatory or legal attention when dynamic or surge pricing goes awry. Last year, the grocery chain Kroger was scrutinized by members of Congress over its plans to introduce algorithmic pricing at its stores.

Practical advice on pricing

As part of its research, Williams’ team surveyed pricing managers and conducted in-depth interviews with five strategic-pricing experts. They offered several pieces of advice.

  • Companies should be aware of how accepting their customers are — or are not — of dynamic pricing to avoid potential reputational damages.
  • Opening the “black box” and increasing transparency about how algorithms work can help managers and employees adopt and oversee them effectively.
  • Companies need guardrails to make sure they can effectively and carefully navigate the competitive and regulatory environment.

For Williams, one takeaway, she notes, is clear: Many companies slap the AI label on their operations, to cut costs or boost efficiency, without comprehensive planning for its design, integration, and monitoring.

 “Managers need to be deliberate about when, where, and whether to integrate AI into their operations,” she says. “And even when decisions are automated, it’s critical to have mechanisms that keep humans in the loop.”

Algorithmic Pricing: Implications for Marketing Strategy and Regulation” is published in International Journal of Research in Marketing.

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