An Empirical Investigation of Ecommerce-Reputation-Escalation-as-a-Service

摘要: In online markets, a store’s reputation is closely tied to its profitability. Sellers’ desire quickly achieve high has fueled profitable underground business that operates as specialized crowdsourcing marketplace and accumulates wealth by allowing sellers harness human laborers conduct fake transactions improve their stores’ reputations. We term such an market seller-reputation-escalation (SRE) market. this article, we investigate the impact of SRE service on escalation performing in-depth measurements prevalence service, model size characteristics offered laborers. To end, have infiltrated five markets studied operations using daily data collection over continuous period 2 months. identified more than 11,000 posting at least 219,165 fake-purchase tasks markets. These earned d46,438 in revenue for total value merchandise involved exceeded d3,452,530. Our study demonstrates can increase reputations 10 times faster legitimate ones while about 25% them were visibly penalized. Even worse, found much stealthier hazardous can, within single day, boost seller’s degree would require seller year accomplish. Armed with our analysis operational economy, offer some insights into potential mitigation strategies. Finally, revisit ecosystem 1 later evaluate latest dynamism especially statuses stores once launch fake-transaction campaigns observe are not active they ago 17% become inaccessible likely because been forcibly shut down corresponding E-commerce conducting transactions.