Users’ hidden needs: An investigation of information sharing behaviors on online participatory platforms

As a marketing strategy, Word-of-Mouth is a valuable source which affects the decision before making the purchase, and its significant influence on consumers’ buying decision has been prominently discussed in such areas as marketing and advertising. Online reviews can be referred to as the “New Word-of-Mouth” in the Digital Age. Word-of-Mouth became more critical, as the quality of online reviews is relatively credible. Despite the proven evidence of online reviews as a successful strategy for supporting a decision for purchasing products, the helpfulness of online reviews has not been well understood within the Library communities. This study examines the helpfulness of online reviews as the new Word-of-Mouth to investigate whether online reviews would be useful to understand user needs in selecting books. Understanding user needs and the patterns in sharing information about books is significant in organizing and providing effective access to resources in libraries. This study aims to classify the characteristics associated with user sentiments and attitudes to model behavior features on online platforms. This study constructs a user behavior model by comparing reviews on two different online participatory platforms, Goodreads and Amazon. This study narrowly defines the scope of our investigation on online reviews of children’s books. Sample reviews were collected from the two sites based on the Newbery Medal Winners list by the American Library Association. The hypotheses investigating the relationships between the two platforms will be presented. This study will contribute to user studies regarding illustrating underlying patterns and trends of users’ information sharing behaviors