The impact of online reviews on consumer evaluations and decision making: an analysis of review volume and user-generated photos

This thesis investigates the impact of online social influence on consumer behaviour, specifically within the context of online reviews. It examines how review volume and user-generated photos affect consumer evaluations and decision-making. In Chapter 2, I introduce a novel phenomenon, the N-effect, which explores how opinion volume influences the content of online evaluations. I find that as the number of opinions increases, the content becomes more emotional and less analytical. In Chapter 3, I investigate the role of user-generated photos in shaping purchase intentions. This research demonstrates that photos can enhance review helpfulness, even when they lack diagnostic information. This effect is driven by the confidence signalled by the reviewer when posting a review with a photo, which is later assimilated by readers, leading to increased perceived helpfulness and purchase likelihood. This thesis makes several theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on human interaction with technology. Theoretically, it expands our understanding of online social influence by examining the dynamics of online opinion expression and content. I contribute to the literature on group size by demonstrating how responsibility may be lost in online contexts. Furthermore, the findings provide insights into the social influence of photos on viewers and the role of pseudo-evidence in shaping beliefs and attitudes. From a practical standpoint, this research offers valuable insights for online platform managers and marketers on interpreting and using consumer-written reviews. Overall, this thesis contributes to the existing literature on online social influence and provides insights for businesses to improve communication and interpretation with consumers by better understanding and leveraging online reviews and opinions.Open Acces

PENGARUH ONLINE CUSTOMER REVIEWS TERHADAP PURCHASE INTENTION (Survei pada Pengunjung Website Blibli di Indonesia)

Persaingan industri e-commerce pada saat ini semakin tinggi, dapat dilihat dari turunnya purchase intention. Purchase intention merupakan hal yang penting bagi perusahaan yang tidak bisa diabaikan. Meningkatkan purchase intention pada diri konsumen perusahaan harus memperhatikan kualitas produk, harga produk, dan meningkatkan berbagai strategi perusahaan, salah satunya meningkatkan online customer reviews. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui gambaran online customer reviews pada pengunjung website Blibli di Indonesia, mengetahui gambaran purchase intention pada pengunjung website Blibli di Indonesia, dan memperoleh temuan besarnya pengaruh online customer reviews terhadap purchase intention pada pengunjung website Blibli di Indonesia. Jenis penelitian yang digunakan adalah deskriptif eksplanatif, dan metode yang digunakan adalah metode survei menggunakan teknik simple random sampling dengan jumlah sampel 400 responden. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan adalah analisis jalur dengan alat bantu software komputer SPSS 22.0 for Windows. Hasil temuan penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa gambaran online customer reviews dalam kategori baik, gambaran purchase intention dalam kategori baik, variabel online customer reviews yang memiliki pengaruh tinggi terhadap purchase intention adalah dimensi kredibilitas sumber, sedangkan dimensi yang memiliki pengaruh terendah adalah kualitas argumen. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian purchase intention dipengaruhi oleh online customer reviews dengan kategori kuat dan pengaruh dari luar yang tidak diteliti juga dengan kategori sedang. Kata kunci: Online customer reviews, online reviews, purchase intention ABSTRACK Ririe Novianty (1601332), "The Effect of Online Customer Reviews on Purchase intention (Survey on Website Blibli in Indonesia)". Under the guidance of Prof. Dr. H. Agus Rahayu, M.P and Drs. H. Rd. Dian Herdiana Utama, M.Si. E-commerce industry competition at this time is increasingly high, can be seen from the decline in purchase intention. Purchase intention is important for companies that cannot be ignored. Increasing the purchase intention of the consumer company must pay attention to product quality, product prices, and improve various corporate strategies, one of which is increasing online customer reviews. This study aims to determine the description of online customer reviews on Blibli website visitors in Indonesia, knowing the description of purchase intentions on Blibli website visitors in Indonesia, and to find the magnitude of the influence of online customer reviews on purchase intention on Blibli website visitors in Indonesia. This type of research is descriptive explanative, and the method used is a survey method using a simple random sampling technique with a sample size of 400 respondents. Data analysis technique used is path analysis with SPSS 22.0 for Windows computer software. The findings of this study indicate that the description of online customer reviews is in the good category, the description of purchase intention in the good category, the variable online customer reviews that has a high influence on purchase intention is the source credibility dimension, while the dimension that has the lowest influence is the quality of the argument. Based on the results of research purchase intention is influenced by online customer reviews with a strong category and external influences that are not examined also with the medium category. Keywords: Online customer reviews, online reviews, purchase intention

The carrot and the stick in online reviews: determinants of un-/helpfulness voting choices

With increasing volumes of customer reviews, ‘helpfulness’ features have been established by many online platforms as decision-aids for consumers to cope with potential information overload. In this study, we offer a diferentiated perspective on the drivers of review helpfulness. Using a hurdle regression setup for both helpfulness and unhelpfulness voting behavior, we aim to disentangle the differential effects of what drives reviews to receive any votes, how many votes they receive and whether these effects differ for helpful against unhelpful review voting behavior. As potential driving factors we include reviews’ star rating deviations from the average rating (as a proxy for confrmation bias), the level of controversy among reviews and review sentiment (consistency of review content), as well as pricing information in our analysis. Albeit with opposite effect signs, we find that revealed review un-/helpfulness is consistently guided by the tonality (i.e., the sentiment of review texts) and that reviewers tend to be less critical for lower priced products. However, we find only partial support for a confirmation bias with differential effects for the level of controversy on helpfulness versus unhelpfulness review votings. We conclude that the effects of voting disagreement are more complex than previous literature suggests and discuss implications for research and management practice

Ranking online consumer reviews

YesProduct reviews are posted online by the hundreds and thousands for popular products. Handling such a large volume of continuously generated online content is a challenging task for buyers, sellers and researchers. The purpose of this study is to rank the overwhelming number of reviews using their predicted helpfulness scores. The helpfulness score is predicted using features extracted from review text, product description, and customer question-answer data of a product using the random-forest classifier and gradient boosting regressor. The system classifies reviews into low or high quality with the random-forest classifier. The helpfulness scores of the high-quality reviews are only predicted using the gradient boosting regressor. The helpfulness scores of the low-quality reviews are not calculated because they are never going to be in the top k reviews. They are just added at the end of the review list to the review-listing website. The proposed system provides fair review placement on review listing pages and makes all high-quality reviews visible to customers on the top. The experimental results on data from two popular Indian e-commerce websites validate our claim, as 3–4 newer high-quality reviews are placed in the top ten reviews along with 5–6 older reviews based on review helpfulness. Our findings indicate that inclusion of features from product description data and customer question-answer data improves the prediction accuracy of the helpfulness score.Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India for financial support during research work through “Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme for Electronics and IT”

How TripAdvisor’s reviewers level of expertise influence their online rating behaviour and the usefulness of reviews

The internet has improved the buying behaviour of customers. The development of technologies has led to the dissemination of opinions on social networks where customers buy goods and services. These comments on social networks started to be a part of the purchasing process. Until a few years ago, customers used to choose their itineraries based on tourist guides or brochures. Nowadays, customers’ reviews have changed the way a destination is portrayed, enhancing the description of a product or a service to a level that not even the supplier was able to reach before. There are different types of reviewers. The aim of this study is to identify both reviews, experts and non-expert reviewers and analyse the way they write their reviews. Reviews of five hotels taken from the TripAdvisor website were used in order to conduct this study. After analyzing a great set of variables, the results show that there is not much different on the amount of positive/negative reviews written by a reviewer, however, there is a difference in the deeper meaning of a review when it is positive than when it is negative. The expert reviewer tends to be more emotional when writing positive reviews than negative reviews. Regarding the usefulness of the reviews, there is no significant difference in usefulness of a review whether is an written by an expert reviewer or by a non-expert reviewer. The results also indicate that being an expert does not influence the rating a reviewer gives to a hotel stay either. The study was conducted by using Lexalytics program to analyze a Natural Language Processing (NLP) used to classify reviews according to their polarity. With this study, a new research in study was filled. This study gives insights on the polarity of a review depending on the type of reviewer. The results of this study are also important for hotel managers in order for them to understand the type of guest in house.O desenvolvimento da tecnologia, com ênfase na internet e nos seus desenvolvimentos ao longo dos anos, melhorou o comportamento dos clientes e levou à disseminação de opiniões em redes sociais onde os clientes compram productos e serviços. Os comentários feitos a um produto ou serviço nas redes sociais começaram a fazer parte do processo da compra. Até há uns anos atrás, os clientes escolhiam os itinerários para as suas viagens com base em guias turísticos e brochuras. Recentemente, os comentários de clientes mudaram a maneira que um destino é explicado e ilustrado, melhorando, desta forma, a descrição de um produto/serviço a um nível que nem mesmo os fornecedores destes tinham alcançado ainda. Há diferentes tipos de reviewers. O objectivo deste estudo é identificar ambos tipos, expert e non-expert e analisar o estilo de reviews escrita por estes. Experts são assim denominados se tiverem escrito mais de dez reviews; por outro lado os non-expert reviewers são assim denominados se tiverem escrito menos de 10 reviews. Para este estudo, foi utilizada informação de cinco hotéis de Orlando, Florida, retirada do TripAdvisor. Depois de uma análise das variáveis, os resultados mostram que não há grande diferença no que toca ao volume de comentários positivos/negativos escritos por um utilizador. Por outro lado, existe uma diferença na emoção dada a cada comentário, entre os utilizadores. O expert reviewer tende a ser mais emocional quando escreve comentários positivos do que quando escreve comentários negativos. Relativamente a utilidade de cada comentário, não há grande diferença no que toca a ser um expert reviewer ou um non-expert a escrever um comentário. Os resultados indicam, também, que ser um expert não tem qualquer influência na avaliação que um utilizador dá a sua estadia num hotel. Este estudo foi feito com base no programa Lexalytics, com objectivo de analisar a Natural Language Processing (NLP) usada para classificar os comentários de acordo com a sua polaridade

Online Ratings and Reviews: Are numerical ratings more persuasive than written reviews?

In this thesis, the aim is to investigate the effect of numerical values and words on the consumer decision process. Previous research has studied the effect of online rating and review systems and how they influence consumer behavior and purchase decisions. While some studies have argued that reviews have a greater impact on users, others have argued that rating scores are more important. The main purpose of this study is to question whether participants are more affected by numerical data. In order to understand this relationship, an online experiment was conducted to analyze people’s preference on numeral ratings and written reviews and how these two elements in a website affect their behavior. The online experiment with a survey was conducted on 303 participants, mainly NHH students. We tested three types of products: books (Goodreads), restaurants (TripAdvisor) and coffee machines (Amazon). Two dummy pages were created for each product type, one of them had high numerical rating and negative written reviews, the other one had low numerical rating and positive written reviews. Instead of showing all three categories to the participants, they were shown two of them. Results illustrate that participants prefer the combination of low numerical rating and positive written reviews rather than the combination of high numerical rating and negative reviews. In addition, participants that preferred high numerical rating and negative reviews had higher level of confidence than the other group. Furthermore, we present a nuanced discussion based on the presented results and findings.nhhma

Buyer beware : consumer response to manipulations of online product reviews

Online product reviews have become an important and influential source of information for consumers. Firms often manipulate online product reviews to influence consumer perceptions about the product, making it a research topic of urgent need for theory development and empirical investigation. In this thesis, we examine how consumers perceive and respond to the three commonly used manipulation tactics. Firstly, an exploratory pre-study via in-depth interviews with online shoppers indicates that consumers commonly have the knowledge for online review manipulations as well as for detecting them. In the first study, a survey was used to investigate the three popular manipulation tactics in terms of ethicality and deceptiveness. They rated hiding/deleting unfavorable messages as the most deceptive and unethical, followed by anonymously adding positive messages, and then offering incentives for posting favorable messages. In study 2, in a simulated field experiment, we introduce persuasion knowledge to further examine the negative influence of review manipulations on consumers’ attitudes. The results suggest that review manipulation increases suspicion of manipulations but can hardly reduce purchase intention of focal products. We also find that consumers’ persuasion knowledge enhances suspicion of manipulation, but lessens the negative impact of suspicion on purchase intention. The third study uses secondary data of a branded e-retailer and its third party website to cross-validate the effect of manipulations on product sales. The results confirm our hypotheses that review manipulation are effective in promoting sales; however, this influence would decrease over time. This research contributes to the online marketing literature by augmenting the Information Manipulation Theory and Persuasion Knowledge Model to examine the deceptive persuasion in the online context and its impact on consumer behavior. Furthermore, we also contribute to the literature of online WOM by empirically examining the influence of review manipulations on sales. Our findings provide valuable insights to practitioners and policy makers on the pitfalls of online manipulation activities and the need to ensure the healthy development of e-commerce

Proceedings der 11. Internationalen Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI2013) - Band 1

The two volumes represent the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik WI2013 (Business Information Systems). They include 118 papers from ten research tracks, a general track and the Student Consortium. The selection of all submissions was subject to a double blind procedure with three reviews for each paper and an overall acceptance rate of 25 percent. The WI2013 was organized at the University of Leipzig between February 27th and March 1st, 2013 and followed the main themes Innovation, Integration and Individualization.:Track 1: Individualization and Consumerization Track 2: Integrated Systems in Manufacturing Industries Track 3: Integrated Systems in Service Industries Track 4: Innovations and Business Models Track 5: Information and Knowledge ManagementDie zweibändigen Tagungsbände zur 11. Internationalen Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI2013) enthalten 118 Forschungsbeiträge aus zehn thematischen Tracks der Wirtschaftsinformatik, einem General Track sowie einem Student Consortium. Die Selektion der Artikel erfolgte nach einem Double-Blind-Verfahren mit jeweils drei Gutachten und führte zu einer Annahmequote von 25%. Die WI2013 hat vom 27.02. - 01.03.2013 unter den Leitthemen Innovation, Integration und Individualisierung an der Universität Leipzig stattgefunden.:Track 1: Individualization and Consumerization Track 2: Integrated Systems in Manufacturing Industries Track 3: Integrated Systems in Service Industries Track 4: Innovations and Business Models Track 5: Information and Knowledge Managemen

Knowledge Solutions: Tools, Methods, and Approaches to Drive Development Forward and Enhance Its Effects

[Excerpt] Today, sustainable competitive advantage derives from strenuous efforts to identify, cultivate, and exploit an organization’s core competencies. This calls for relentless design of strategic architecture, deployment of competence carriers, and commitment to collaborate across silos. Put simply, core competencies are the product of collective learning: their tangible fruits are composite packages of products and services that anticipate and meet demand. Knowledge is what you learn from experience before, during, and after the event. Since it is both a thing and a flow, the best way to manage knowledge is to cater at all times to the environment in which it can be identified, created, stored, shared, and used. Tools, methods, and approaches are needed to enable that. And so, to drive development forward and enhance its effects, the Asian Development Bank has, since 2008, published the Knowledge Solutions series, available at www.adb.org/knowledgesolutions. It aims to build competencies in the areas of strategy development, management techniques, collaboration mechanisms, knowledge sharing and learning, and knowledge capture and storage—all of which are essential to high-performance organizations

Responsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society

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