Feedback mechanisms as intermediaries for Web information market: an exploratory study

The Internet is sometimes said to be drowning in contents. Users of information therefore experience great difficulty in identifying the accuracy, relevancy and interpretability of information. Total data quality management and centralized information intermediaries are either too expensive for the vast amount of Internet contents or they force information consumers to face the problem of determining the trustworthiness of the intermediaries. We explore the possibility of using various feedback mechanisms to serve as intermediaries. The service quality of four types of feedback is compared in this study: click-through count, open-ended feedback, close-ended feedback and no feedback. The potential benefits of feedback are twofold. For information consumers, it serves to provide quality proofs and helps the user to become aware of the public´s preferences toward specific content sites. For information producers, feedback could provide peer support and recognition. This exploratory study concludes that open-ended feedback and click-through counts result in users with a higher perceived service quality. For the information providers, feedback information awards them with peer support and a more satisfied attitude toward the system. These results, while not conclusive, suggest that it is possible to make feedback mechanisms play the role of infomediaries in order to manage the information market - a much more important role than for accounting purposes.