The Influence of Internet Consultants.

Automated internet consultants, which give a personal advice starting from a comparison between personal viewpoints of internet users on the one hand and objective attributes and issue positions of suppliers - e.g. firms or political parties - on the other, have gained momentum during recent years. The research question of this paper is whether such advices exert influence. This question is answered on the basis of a study of the influence of two political internet consultants from the Netherlands, Stemwijzer and Kieskompas. A panel survey study was used to measure party preferences before and afther an eventual advice to vote for a specific party. The results show that internet advices exert a considerable influence indeed. The probability to vote for a non-preferred party increases from 4% to 19% in the case of a positive advice. The probability to vote for one's preferred party decreases from 73% to 52% in the case of a negative advice. The paper discusses in addition the reasons why advices from internet consultants may be invalid and unreliable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]