Outline Reputation Scores: How Well are They Understood?

This paper presents a study comparing existing reputation systems to determine if the different reputation system designs are equally capable of eliciting meaningful feedback from users and if the information from these systems is equally useful for evaluating whether or not to purchase from a given seller. A survey of online consumers and data from both the eBay and the Amazon reputation systems are used to determine the impact of reputation system design on overall system effectiveness. Results of this research indicate that the five-star response system used by Amazon may be more useful to users attempting to determine which sellers to buy from.