Impact of Online Product Reviews on Purchasing Decisions

Online consumer reviews, product and services recommendations and peer opinions play an increasingly growing role in the customer’s decision making process. The various online product review and recommendation platforms differ in their objectives, function and characteristics. The literature has so far paid little attention on function characteristics of these platforms as an element of customer adoption and preference. Given the importance of this form of customer generated content on business sales and profitability the monitoring and often responding to customer reviews by business organizations has become a major managerial challenge and an important reputation management issue. In order to respond efficiently to customer reviews companies need to identify consumer reviews platforms, understand their characteristics and continuously assess their impact on consumer purchasing decisions. This study identifies four main types of online review platforms: retail websites, independent reviewing platforms, video-sharing platforms and personal blogs. These platforms present product reviews in different formats with accent on various review function characteristics. An online survey analyzed consumer opinions about the various platforms and review mechanisms and the impact of those on consumer buying behavior. The results underline the importance of platform credibility and usability on consumer trust and reliance in reviews as input in the decision-making proces

Pengaruh Online Customer Review dan Product Knowledge Terhadap Keputusan Pembelian Produk Avoskin Pada Instagram

Since the development of information technology and the internet, it has brought changes to consumer behavior in shopping online and offline where these changes affect consumer purchasing decisions in buying a product. Social media acts as a medium of communication and information that connects sellers and buyers. The development of the internet also has an impact on marketing which has now entered the era of digital marketing. Various buying and selling transactions that previously could only be done face-to-face with buyers or sellers, and visiting stores to see the products offered directly. Now buying and selling can be accessed and carried out directly only through social media where on the one hand it makes consumers hesitate to buy products that cannot be seen directly physically. So by looking at the experiences of other people who have bought a product, it helps consumers in making purchasing decisions. This study aims to determine and analyze Online Customer Reviews, and Product Knowledge on purchasing decisions for avoskin facial skin care products on Instagram social media. The population in this study are consumers who are active on Instagram social media and have purchased Avoskin skin care products. By using purposive sampling method, data collection of respondents using an online questionnaire of 100 respondents. The analysis used in this study is multiple linear regression, t test, correlation test, and F test. The results of this study indicate that partially online customer reviews, and product knowledge, have a positive effect on purchasing decisions for Avoskin facial skin care products. And simultaneously shows that Online Customer Review and Product Knowledge have a significant effect on purchasing decisions for avoskin facial skin care products.   Keywords: Online Customer Reviews. Product Knowledge, and Social Medi

DETERMINANTS OF PRODUCT PURCHASE DECISIONS ON THE SHOPEE MARKETPLACE

Technological developments increase online buying and selling transactions through e-commerce. This study aims to examine the determinants that affect purchasing decisions on marketplace Shopee. This type of descriptive quantitative approach is used in this study. To determine the research sample, a stratified proportional random sampling technique was used and 100 students of IAIN Salatiga were obtained as research samples. The data analysis technique used is multiple linear regression with the research instrument in the form of a questionnaire. The results showed that 1) Islamic branding had a positive and significant effect on Shopee marketplace purchasing decisions, 2) promotions had a positive and significant impact on Shopee marketplace purchasing decisions, 3) product reviews had no significant effect on Shopee marketplace purchasing decisions, 4) security has a positive and significant effect on Shopee  marketplace purchasing decisions, 5) payment methods have a positive and significant impact on Shopee marketplace purchasing decision

Investigating Usefulness Configurations of Online Consumer Reviews: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Online reviews have a significant impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions. Many researchers have studied the relationship between review usefulness based on various factors related to online review, but existing studies have focused only on the linear relationship between variables methodologically. Therefore, this study examines the usefulness of online reviews from a configurational perspective derived from the complex interactions between elements, and aims to identify how these configurations differ according to product types. This study developed a conceptual model by combining HSM and ELM based on the theoretical discussion on the information processing and analyzed 7,316 cases collected from Amazon.com using fsQCA. As a result, three configurations affecting online usefulness were derived from search goods and four from experience goods. In short, consumers consume reviews through the complex interaction of various factors related to reviews, and the factors affecting the usefulness of search goods and experience goods are different

The impact of online reviews on consumers' purchasing decisions : evidence from an eye-tracking study

This study investigated the impact of online product reviews on consumers purchasing decisions by using eye-tracking. The research methodology involved (i) development of a conceptual framework of online product review and purchasing intention through the moderation role of gender and visual attention in comments, and (ii) empirical investigation into the region of interest (ROI) analysis of consumers fixation during the purchase decision process and behavioral analysis. The results showed that consumers' attention to negative comments was significantly greater than that to positive comments, especially for female consumers. Furthermore, the study identified a significant correlation between the visual browsing behavior of consumers and their purchase intention. It also found that consumers were not able to identify false comments. The current study provides a deep understanding of the underlying mechanism of how online reviews influence shopping behavior, reveals the effect of gender on this effect for the first time and explains it from the perspective of attentional bias, which is essential for the theory of online consumer behavior. Specifically, the different effects of consumers' attention to negative comments seem to be moderated through gender with female consumers' attention to negative comments being significantly greater than to positive ones. These findings suggest that practitioners need to pay particular attention to negative comments and resolve them promptly through the customization of product/service information, taking into consideration consumer characteristics, including gender

The impact of review valence, rating and type on review helpfulness : a text clustering and text categorization study

Dissertation presented as partial requirement for obtaining the Master`s degree in Information Management, with specialization in Marketing IntelligenceConsumers trust on online reviews to help them making their purchasing decisions. Online reviews provide consumers with clues about the quality of the products that they want to buy. Consumers rely on clues, such as, review helpfulness votes and rating to infer product quality. In this study, we perform a Text Clustering and a Text Categorization analysis to uncover the review characteristics and to predict the review rating, helpfulness votes and the product price, based on review corpus. We use a dataset with 72 878 reviews of unlocked mobile phones sold on Amazon.com to perform this analysis. The main goal of this research is to understand the impact of review valence, rating and type on helpfulness votes on Amazon, for unlocked mobile phones. This research aims, also to understand the impact of price on customer satisfaction and the relationship between customer satisfaction and ratings. Our results suggest that positive reviews that emphasize the feature level quality of the products receive more helpful votes than the positive reviews that contain mainly subjective expressions or negative reviews. Another important finding of this research is on the influence of the price of the product. The phones with high price tend to receive more positive reviews and more helpful votes. These findings have important managerial and theoretical implications. To best of our knowledge, our study is the first one to analyze the effect of the combination of valence, rating and subjectivity of the review text on helpful votes

An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Price Decreases on Online Product Reviews: Focusing on Amazon’s Kindle 2

As online shopping proliferates, online product reviews (OPRs) play a crucial role in online consumers’ purchasing decisions. Although prior research on the effects of price changes on consumer reactions has provided insightful implications, little is known about the impact of price changes on the characteristics of OPRs. With the growing importance of OPRs as a key social recommendation system for potential consumers’ decision-making, it is important to understand the dynamics of OPRs around price changes. We select the Kindle 2 from Amazon.com as our focal product and conduct an exploratory case study. By analyzing 6,714 reviews on the Kindle 2, we examine how consumers respond to price decreases using OPRs. The results show that all four characteristics of OPRs (star-rating, review depth, positive emotion, and negative emotion) are significantly influenced by price decreases. Moreover, we found that the impacts of price decreases on OPRs’ characteristics are different between the first and the second attempts at price reduction. Interestingly, the number of reviews per day significantly soars immediately after the first price decrease, while there is no significant change in the number of reviews after the second price cut. We conclude the paper with a discussion of our findings

Essays on the Influence of Review and Reviewer Attributes on Online Review Helpfulness: Attribution Theory Perspective

With the emergence of digital technology and the increasing availability of information on the internet, customers rely heavily on online reviews to inform their purchasing decisions. However, not all online reviews are helpful, and the factors that contribute to their helpfulness are complex and multifaceted. This dissertation addresses this gap in the literature by examining the antecedents that determine online review helpfulness using attribution theory. The dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay examines the impact of authenticity (review attribute) on review helpfulness, showing that the expressive authenticity of a review enhances its helpfulness. The second essay investigates the relationship between the reviewer attributes i.e., motivation, activity, and goals in online reviews. The study employs various machine learning techniques to investigate the influence of these factors on reviewers\u27 goal attainment. The third essay explores how the reviewer attributes are related to the helpfulness of online reviews. The dissertation offers significant theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, the dissertation provides new insights into novel review and reviewer attributes. The study proposes a taxonomy of online reviews using means-ends fusion theory offering a framework for understanding the relationships between different components of online reviewer attributes and their contribution to the attainment of specific goals, such as emotional satisfaction. The study also highlights the importance of understanding the motivations and activities of online reviewers in predicting emotional satisfaction and the conditional effects of complaining behavior on emotional satisfaction. The findings inform review platform owners, business owners, reviewers, and prospective consumers in decision-making through helpful reviews. To review platform owners, the findings help segregate helpful reviews from the humongous number of reviews by determining the authenticity of the review. To business owners, the findings can help in understanding consumer behavior and taking necessary actions to provide better service to their customers. To reviewers, this dissertation can act as a guideline to write helpful reviews and to determine their helpfulness. Finally, to consumers or review readers, this dissertation provides an understanding of helpful reviews, thus allowing them to take product or service purchase decisions

The Impact of Online Consumer Reviews, Web Atmospherics, and Exogenous Factors on Consumer Behaviours and Their Purchase Decisions

Consumer reviews, web atmospherics, and other specific exogenous factors currently play a key role in everyone’s purchase decisions, and thus the proposed research will include efforts of the researcher to analyse the impact of online consumer reviews, web atmospherics, and exogenous factors on consumer behaviours and their purchase decisions. In brief, it is observed that more and more consumers are now making their decisions based on product- related reviews available on the internet before they buy a product, and thus the proposed research will endeavour to analyse such an impact by using both secondary and primary research methodology to fulfil the aims and objectives of the research. The aim of this research is to evaluate the collective influence of web atmospherics, consumers’ reviews and ratings, and major exogenous forces on consumer behaviours and their purchase decisions, and to explore possible inter-linkages between these three factors within the process. The study will seek the opinions of specialists and web marketers on this topic, and will utilise secondary research to gather information concerning the significance of web atmospherics on consumer behaviour. The study will explore how access to web atmospherics impacts on consumer reviews/ratings and its eventual influence on consumer purchasing behaviour. For this study, the data will be collected using a survey for respondents who sell and purchase goods online, not involving the opinions of buyers who have no experience of online purchases. Geographically, this research will only be conducted in UK. A generic model that studies the combined effects of these three factors on the e-tail purchase decision is introduced in this research, providing a visual overview of these primary impact factors including web atmospherics, consumer reviews and exogenous factors. Although each of these dimensions has been independently shown to impact on behavioural outcomes, this study will provide a comprehensive analysis, incorporating these factors to Page 5 of 241 create a more accurate model of behavioural affectation. This detailed framework is a combination of multiple concepts and models, combining different factors that have not yet been explored collectively in any prior research. The outcomes of this research will yield a comprehensive study which considers all the factors that could possibly shape online consumer behaviour. The current study conducted a major survey of a sample of over 500 participants from the online shopping community in the UK, as a global leading economy. The study claims that it has achieved such a collective approach using the analysis of various factors (represented here by web atmospherics, customers’ reviews, and many other external factors), these being analysed together in realistic real-life conditions, as was attempted previously. The study findings bridge a gap in knowledge in several different facets that can benefit various parties who are usually involved with the online shopping industry. Thus, this research will be beneficial to the managers of online stores to assess the effectiveness of their online purchase services. Not only for managers, the quality of such services is also brought to light for the benefit of customers, organisations and researchers, and consequently to the global Internet shopper community, which is expanding exponentially in numbers and locations. The results of the research are also expected to contribute to the design and development of proper online shopping services, in terms of policies, privacy, security, trust, information provision, navigation and procedures in the area of online services needed by the users. To conclude, the current research contributes to exploring consumer satisfaction, purchasing and repeated purchasing via online stores’ websites, as seen from different angles within a major economy of the world