According to the research article from Ho-Dac, Carson, & Moore (Links to an external site.) (2013) found in the additional reading section in this module, customers refer to expert reviews in their own reviews. By providing samples to expert reviews, websites can formulate an opinion on a specific topic, product, or service. Can you think of a time when you reviewed an expert opinion on a website that was used to formulate your own perception about the quality or performance of a product?
In this activity, you will develop your own criteria that would be used to identify an expert. Read the Ho-Dac, Carson, & Moore (2013) article, or other Tier 1 or Tier 2 sources that discuss online customer reviews (OCR). Integrate your supportive work with an originally developed criteria that outlines the characteristics of an expert. Expert opinions are easy to access online, but does this information provide assurances for a quality product or service?
Outline your criteria (5 or 10 step framework) that would help differentiate experts versus non-value added information that can distort customer perspectives of a product or service.
Write a 2-page summary article research and review for this activity. Save your document with a descriptive filename and submit as an attachment.
New techniques in Web Analytics include Site Overlays and Geo-Mapping. There are many free tools available online to experience how visual mapping is being using in determining customer locations, center of gravity for channel distribution, and other graphical display of information. In this activity, Geo-Mapping will be used from a data-set of customer information and graphically displayed on the tool or embedded in another application.
Review the free access to Maptive (Links to an external site.). Create an Excel spreadsheet that will be used to map retail stores, customer locations, or other businesses of your choice. The data-set field should be at least 10 entries for mapping.
After using the mapping tool, write a 2-page summary analysis paper that includes the following:
- Summarize your tool usage include a screen shot to explain the map and dataset created for this exercise.
- Discuss the benefits of site overlays and geo-mapping as outlined in Appendix 11A (chapter 11 in textbook).
- Mohr, J.J., Sengupta, S., & Slater, S. (2010). Marketing of high technology products and innovations (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
- Research an article to include additional examples, applications, and benefits of the use of this new technique in Web Analytics.
Note: This review will automatically be evaluated through Turnitin (Links to an external site.), a service that checks your work for improper citation or potential plagiarism by comparing it against a database of web pages, student papers, and articles from academic books and publications. Be very careful to avoid self-plagiarism, that is, using previous material written for other class assignments.