TY  - JOUR
A1  - Caliendo, Marco
A1  - Clement, Michel
A1  - Shehu, Edlira
T1  - The effect of individual professional critics on books' sales: capturing selection biases from observable and unobservable factors
JF  - Marketing letters : a journal of research in marketing
N2  - We propose a combined approach of propensity score matching with difference-in-differences methods for reducing selection biases of products being reviewed by critics. Critics' decision to review products may be driven by observable (e.g., star power) and unobservable (e.g., critics' individual preferences) factors, raising the question of reverse causality and selection biases. Our proposed approach enables to rigorously control for selection biases by observable and unobservable characteristics. We apply our methodological framework on data from the German book market and estimate the sales effect of a well-known TV critic. We identify substantial selection effects of individual critics, which result in serious underestimation of the short-term effect (up to 29 %) and the long-term effect (up to 37 %). The results emphasize the relevance of the proposed methodological framework by demonstrating that observable and unobservable factors drive selection effects.
KW  - Critics
KW  - Reviewer
KW  - Propensity score matching
KW  - Difference-in-difference
KW  - Selection effects
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-015-9391-9
SN  - 0923-0645
SN  - 1573-059X
VL  - 26
IS  - 4
SP  - 423
EP  - 436
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  -