Understanding the antecedents and consequences of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is of significant theoretical value and great interest to both consumers and firms. To reconcile the disagreement in the relationship between eWOM and product sales, we investigate the joint effect of different dimensions of eWOM on the sales of durable goods (i.e., cars). Our study is based on eWOM collected from Autohome, a leading online review platform of automobiles in China. Our empirical results show that the volume and valence of eWOM positively affect car sales, and variance negatively affects car sales when the volume of eWOM is low. Further analyses of the joint effect show that the positive impact of eWOM volume on sales is stronger when the valence is lower and the variance is higher. This research contributes to the literature on eWOM and provides helpful suggestions for firms by shedding light on the joint effect of different dimensions of eWOM in the context of the Chinese automobile industry.

Understanding factors associated with the performance of the sell-side analyst is of great value in both theory and practice. We profile the crucial influence of professional connections among security analysts on generating earnings forecast in this study based on a dataset of analysts' employment history obtained from the Securities Association of China and analysts' history forecasts obtained from CSMAR. By estimating a multivariate linear regression model, we find that professional connections within analyst teams are positively associated with earnings forecast accuracy. The results of Fisher's Permutation test further confirm that the effect of professional connections on analyst forecast quality is stronger when firms covered are facing decreasing EPS. Our results still hold for additional analyses with an alternative measure for professional connections. In conclusion, this work confirms the significant role of professional connections in information sharing and mutual understanding among analysts.