University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Operations, Information and Decisions Papers Wharton Faculty Research 5-2012 Designing Ranking Systems for Hotels on Travel Search Engines by Mining User-Generated and Crowdsourced Content Anindya Ghose University of Pennsylvania Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis Beibei Li Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/oid_papers Part of the Marketing Commons, Other Business Commons, Recreation Business Commons, Sales and Merchandising Commons, and the Tourism and Travel Commons Recommended Citation Ghose, A., Ipeirotis, P. G., & Li, B. (2012). Designing Ranking Systems for Hotels on Travel Search Engines by Mining User-Generated and Crowdsourced Content. Marketing Science, 31 (3), 493-520. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.1110.0700 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/oid_papers/100 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Designing Ranking Systems for Hotels on Travel Search Engines by Mining User- Generated and Crowdsourced Content Abstract User-generated content on social media platforms and product search engines is changing the way consumers shop for goods online. However, current product search engines fail to effectively leverage information created across diverse social media platforms. Moreover, current ranking algorithms in these product search engines tend to induce consumers to focus on one single product characteristic dimension (e.g., price, star rating). This approach largely ignores consumers' multidimensional preferences for products. In this paper, we propose to generate a ranking system that recommends products that provide, on average, the best value for the consumer's money. The key idea is that products that provide a higher surplus should be ranked higher on the screen in response to consumer queries.