How Does Word of Mouth from Different Components Systems Influence Product Sales differently?

Online word-of-mouth (WOM) has become an important reference for customers’ online purchase decisions. However, current studies ignore the various effects of WOM in different components, i.e., online reviews and the replies in the question and answer (Q &A) discussion area. To fill such a research gap, this study explores the relationship between WOM in two different forms and product sales. We measure the semantic features and thematic consistency of two forms of WOM and product sales. The findings show that the review component and Q&A component differ significantly in terms of quantity and content richness, with the review component being richer and more voluminous and the Q&A section having less content and relatively less quantity in comparison. Besides, the OLS results suggest that topic consistency has a negative impact on product sales, while the richness characteristics of both have a positive impact on product sales, and that the content richness of the Q&A component has a greater impact on sales than the review component

Perceived helpfulness of eWOM: emotions, fairness and rationality

YesConsumers use online reviews to help make informed purchase decisions. This paper extends existing research by examining how content of online reviews influences perceptions of helpfulness by demonstrating how different emotions can influence helpfulness of both product and service online reviews beyond a valence-based approach using cognitive appraisal theory and attribution theory. This research contributes to existing knowledge regarding the theory of information processing, attribution theory, and cognitive appraisal theory of emotions. Using findings from this study, practitioners can make review websites more user-friendly which will help readers avoid information overload and make more informed purchase decisions

The Effect of Information Consistency and Information Aggregation on eWOM Readers’ Perception of Information Overload

This study examines the effects of information consistency and information aggregation on eWOM readers’ perception of information overload; we also examine the influence of information overload on eWOM readers’ perception of information usefulness. An online experiment using a stimulated online consumers’ review forum, which manipulated the two factors-information consistency (high and low) and information aggregation (yes and no), was conducted to test our hypotheses. The results indicate 1) eWOM readers perceive lower information overload when the review group comprises consistent information; 2) eWOM readers perceive lower information overload with the presence of information aggregation tool; 3) information consistency and information aggregation tool have an interactive effect on eWOM readers’ perception of information overload, and finally, 4) eWOM readers’ perception of information overload will negatively affect their perception of information usefulness. The theoretical and practical implications for this study are also introduced

PENGARUH REVIEWS ONLINE TERHADAP MINAT BELI PADA APLIKASI SHOPEE.CO.ID MELALUI KEBUTUHAN KOGNISI (SURVEI PADA SEKOLAH MENENGAH KEJURUAN GAMA TANGERANG)

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh reviews online tehadap minat beli (1) pengaruh kebutuhan kognisi terhadap minat beli (2) pengaruh reviews online dan kebutuhan kognisi secara bersama-sama terhadap minat beli (3). Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kuantitatif dengan metode survei yang bersifat deskriptif-korelasional dengan pendekatan elaboration likelihood models (ELM). Populasi pada pelajar SMK Gama Tangerang yang menggunakan aplikasi Shopee.co.id. sampel sebanyak 120 responden dengan teknik judgement sampling. Uji validitas menggunakan Pearson sedangkan uji reliabilitas menggunakan Alpha Cronbach. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan untuk menjawab hipotesis adalah analisis jalur (path) dengan bantuan analisis regresi berganda dan uji sobel menggunakan SPSS versi 21.Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa reviews online berpengaruh positif terhadap minat beli dengan tingkat signifikansi 0.000˂0.05. Elaboration likelihood models dalam pendekatan deskripsif yang dikembangkan dalam penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pelajar di SMK Gama Tangerang lebih mengandalkan central route. Kebutuhan kognisi tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap minat beli dengan tingkat signifikansi 0.062˃0.05. Reviews online dan kebutuhan berpengaruh positif terhadap minat beli dengan tingkat signifikansi 0.000˂0.05 dan terdapat pengaruh tidak langsung reviews online terhadap minat beli yang di mediasi secara parsial oleh kebutuhan kognisi sebesar 0.154

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

Are environmental-related online reviews more helpful? A big data analytics approach

Purpose–Based on more than 2.7 million online reviews (ORs) collected with big data analytical techniques from Booking.com and TripAdvisor.com, this study explores if and to what extent environmental discourse embedded in ORs has an impact on electronic Word-of-Mouth (e-WOM) helpfulness across 8 major destination cities in North America and Europe. Design/methodology/approach–This study gathered, by means of Big Data techniques, 2.7 million online reviews (ORs) hosted on Booking and TripAdvisor, and covering hospitality services in 8 different destinations cities in North America (New York City, Miami, Orlando, and Las Vegas) and Europe (Barcelona, London, Paris, and Rome) over the period 2017-2018. The ORs were analysed by means of ad hoc content analytic dictionaries to identify the presence and depth of the environmental discourse included in each OR. A negative binomial regression analysis was used to measure the impact of the presence/depth of online environmental discourse in ORs on e-WOM helpfulness. Findings–The findings indicate that the environmental discourse presence and depth influence positively e-WOM helpfulness. More specifically those travelers who write explicitly about environmental topics in their ORs are more likely to produce ORs that are voted as helpful by other consumers. Research implications/limitations – Implications highlight that both hotel managers and platform developers/managers should become increasingly aware of the importance that customer attach to environmental practices and initiatives and therefore engage more assiduously in environmental initiatives, if their objective is to improve online review helpfulness for other customers reading the focal reviews. Future studies might include more destinations and other operationalizations of environmental discourse. Originality/value – This study constitutes the first attempt to capture how the presence and depth of hospitality services consumers’ environmental discourse influence e-WOM helpfulness on multiple digital platforms, by means of a big data analysis on a large sample of online reviews across multiple countries and destinations. As such it makes a relevant contribution to the area at the intersection between big data analytics, e-WOM, and sustainable tourism research

Two Essays on Consumer-Generated Reviews: Reviewer Expertise and Mobile Reviews

Over the past few decades, the internet has risen to prominence, enabling consumers to not only quickly access large amounts of information, but also openly share content (e.g., blogs, videos, reviews) with a substantially large number of fellow consumers. Given the vast presence of consumers in the online space, it has become increasingly critical for marketers to better understand the way consumers share, and learn from, consumer-generated content, a research area known as electronic word-of-mouth. In this dissertation, I advance our understanding about the shared content generated by consumers on online review platforms. In Essay 1, I study why and how the expertise of consumers in generating reviews systematically shapes their rating evaluations and the downstream consequences this has on the aggregate valence metric. I theorize, and provide empirical evidence, that greater expertise in generating reviews leads to greater restraint from extremes in evaluations, which is driven by the number of attributes considered by reviewers. Further, I demonstrate two major consequences of this restraint-of-expertise effect. (i) Expert (vs. novice) reviewers have less impact on the aggregate valence metric, which is known to affect page-rank and consumer consideration. (ii) Experts systematically benefit and harm service providers with their ratings. For service providers that generally provide mediocre (excellent) experiences, experts assign significantly higher (lower) ratings than novices. Building on my investigation of expert reviewers, in Essay 2, I investigate the differential effects of generating reviews on mobile devices for expert and novice reviewers. I argue, based on Schema Theory, that expert and novice reviewers adopt different “strategies” in generating mobile reviews. Because of their review-writing experience, experts develop a review-writing schema, and compared to novices, place greater emphasis on the consistency of various review aspects, including emotionality of language and attribute coverage in their mobile reviews. Accordingly, although mobile (vs. desktop) reviews are shorter for both experts and novices, I show that experts (novice) generate mobile reviews that contain a slight (large) increase in emotional language and are more (less) attribute dense. Drawing on these findings, I advance managerial strategies for review platforms and service providers, and provide avenues for future research

The credibility of online consumer reviews. Case Lumene

Kuluttajien nettiarvostelujen määrä on kasvanut huimasti viimeisen vuosikymmenen aikana. Niistä on tullut yleinen muoto elektronista word-of-mouth viestintää (eWOM). Tämän päivän modernissa virtuaalisessa ympäristössä kuluttajien on tavanomaista selailla muiden kuluttajien kirjoittamia palautteita ja lajitella hakutuloksia tähtiarvosteluiden perusteella. Nykyään kun aikaa vietetään enemmän sosiaalisissa medioissa ja kuluttajien tuottaman sisällön alustoilla, henkilökohtaiset kokemukset ovat muuttuvat suullisesta muodosta digitaaliseen muotoon. Kuluttajien nettiarvostelut ovat raivanneet tiensä tavallisen Internet käyttäytymisen ytimeen. Tuoteinformaatiosta on tullut suuri apu kuluttajien ostopäätöksenteossa tarjoten hyödyllistä, puolueetonta ja luotettavaa tietoa muiden kuluttajien kokemuksista. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoitus on kuvata ja analysoida sitä, kuinka kuluttajat arvioivat elektronisen word-of-mouth viestinnän uskottavuutta kuluttajien nettiarvosteluissa. Tutkimus arvioi nettiarvosteluiden uskottavuutta informatiivisten ja normatiivisten tekijöiden pohjalta analysoiden kuluttajien tuottamia tekstejä netissä. Tutkimus keskittyy tutkimaan nettiarvosteluita, jotka koskevat kauneustuotteita ja täten analysoi eWOM -viestintää erityisesti kauneustuotteiden näkökulmasta. Tämä tutkimus toteutetaan tapaustutkimuksena, jossa keskitytään kuluttajien nettiarvosteluihin, jotka koskevat suomalaisen kosmetiikkabrändi Lumenen tuotteita. Tutkimus suoritetaan monimetodisena tutkimuksena, jossa netnografisen tutkimuksen tukena hyödynnetään sisällönanalyysia. Aineisto muodostuu 292 nettiarvostelusta, joista 161 nettiarvostelua on kerätty suomalaiselta Beautify.fi käyttökokemusfoorumilta ja 131 nettiarvostelua Saara Sarvaksen kauneusblogin kommenttikentältä. Tutkimus tarjoaa syvemmän ymmärryksen siitä, kuinka hyödyllisiä kuluttajien nettiarvostelut ovat tiedonlähteenä, etenkin kuluttajien tehdessä ostopäätöksiä kauneustuotteiden osalta. Tutkimus löytää ja kokoaa yhteen ne keskeiset tekijät, joiden avulla kuluttajien nettiarvosteluiden uskottavuutta voidaan arvioida. Näitä ovat argumentin laatu, viestin sävy, lähteen uskottavuus, informaation yhtenäisyys, normatiiviset elementit ja vahvistettu eWOM. Tutkimus tarjoaa myös hyödyllisiä liiketoiminnallisia neuvoja, joita voidaan käyttää hyväksi silloin, kun halutaan osallistua kuluttajien väliseen keskusteluun netissä

Conceptualizing the Electronic Word-of-Mouth Process: What We Know and Need to Know About eWOM Creation, Exposure, and Evaluation

Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) is a prevalent consumer practice that has undeniable effects on the company bottom line, yet it remains an over-labeled and under-theorized concept. Thus, marketers could benefit from a practical, science-based roadmap to maximize its business value. Building on the consumer motivation–opportunity–ability framework, this study conceptualizes three distinct stages in the eWOM process: eWOM creation, eWOM exposure, and eWOM evaluation. For each stage, we adopt a dual lens—from the perspective of the consumer (who sends and receives eWOM) and that of the marketer (who amplifies and manages eWOM for business results)—to synthesize key research insights and propose a research agenda based on a multidisciplinary systematic review of 1050 academic publications on eWOM published between 1996 and 2019. We conclude with a discussion of the future of eWOM research and practice

Antecedents of travellers' eWOM communication

Development of the internet and electronic media provide a convenient platform for travellers to instantly share their experiences. Known as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), it offers a powerful source of information and can also act as an effective marketing tool. Existing studies have focused on the conceptualisation and influences of eWOM communication, but limited attention has been given to the antecedents of it from the attitUdinal perspective within the tourism industry. This study aims to fulfil that gap. Data from international travellers having experience of eWOM communication was collected through online focus groups and survey questionnaire. Content analysis and structural equation modelling were employed for data analysis respectively. Based on the literature review and online focus group findings three key antecedents were identified, being: Adoption of Electronic Communication Technology, Motivation for eWOM Communication and Subjective Norm. Thereafter, a conceptual framework was proposed to bring these three antecedents together for the first time. This was empirically tested, particularly examining the influences of the overall attitude and behavioural intention of eWOM communication. Survey results showed that the overall attitude towards eWOM communication plays an important role in the understanding of the eWOM communication behaviour of travellers, serving as a mediator between antecedents and behavioural intention. From the theoretical perspective, this study fulfils the research gap through exploring the antecedents of eWOM communication from the attitudinal perspective. A new conceptual framework is therefore empirically validated providing the basis for replication within future studies. Through employing the Technology Acceptance Model, Functional Theory of Attitude, Subjective Norm and Consumer Attitude, this study contributes to extending those theories in the context of eWOM communication within the tourism industry. Regarding managerial implications, this research identifies the antecedents of eWOM communication behaviour of travellers, which could help practitioners stimu