Use of Seeker and Peer Feedback in Ideation Contests: An Anchoring Effect Perspective
COM2 Level 4
Executive Classroom, COM2-04-02
ABSTRACT:
Ideation contests help solution-seeking firms (seekers) address their problems by engaging agents (solvers) in the crowd to generate ideas. An integral aspect of these contests is the solvers' use of feedback during ideation. In this study, we examine how solvers use developmental feedback in ideation contests by considering the anchoring heuristic that affects their judgments and decisions. During contests, solvers can receive feedback for their ideas from different sources (i.e., seekers or peers) and of different levels of practicality (i.e., the extent to which the feedback is helpful and appropriate for the contests). In our theorizing, we formulate distinct expectations about how solvers anchor their ideas to seeker feedback and peer feedback. From these expectations, we hypothesize the impact of feedback source and practicality on solvers' feedback use. Results from an experiment show that solvers' use of seeker feedback differs from their use of peer feedback. In particular, solvers' adoption of low-practicality seeker feedback is relatively high in comparison to the other types of feedback; specifically, solvers used low-practicality seeker feedback 1) about as much as they use high-practicality seeker feedback and 2) much more than they used low-practicality and high-practicality peer feedback. Such solver behaviors indicate a potential drawback of encouraging seekers to give feedback, which is prevalent on contest platforms. Our findings expand the understanding of the scope of the anchoring effect and provide insights into solvers' use of feedback in ideation contests.
BIODATA:
Tat Koon Koh is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. and MSc. from Carnegie Mellon University, and B.Bus from Nanyang Technological University. Prior to joining academia, he co-founded a B2B exchange (in his college freshman year) and worked as an eBusiness executive in the Ministry of Trade and Industry (Singapore). He teaches at undergraduate, MBA/MSc, and executive levels, and has received recognitions for teaching excellence. His research focuses on user dynamics and interactions on multi-sided networks such as online exchanges and crowdsourcing contest platforms and has been or will be published in Information Systems Research, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and MIS Quarterly.