Investigating conformity effect on online platform with pattern recognition method

Abstract

Since the advent of the Internet, and development of smart devices, people spend most of daily life on communicating and interacting via online platform. Many researchers try to find out both the characteristic of this new type of platform and people’s specific behavior occurred on it. Especially, online shopping malls, like Amazon.com regarded truly prolific mine of people’s state of mind has been utilized for several studies with its bunch of sequences generated by commentators.In our research, by utilizing Markov chain, pattern recognition and analyzing method, we have tried to interpret online ratings into meaningful implications. One specific point of this study is to find out whether people act as individual or a crowd of majority. Coming from the nature characteristic of online space such as anonymity, we have assumed that people are usually more independent when they express their opinion in online platform. In order to test the extent of one’s independency on communication in this manner, we have analyzed the relation among rating sequences focusing on sequential process with Markov chain and analysis of variance. Through this studies we have figured out some interesting point about commentators behavior on Amazon.com and get statistical evidence backing people surely maintain its independency in the cyber system.