Whose Opinions do We Listen to? The Influence of Online Product Ratings and Price on Consumers (original) (raw)
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Impact of Online Product Reviews on Purchasing Decisions
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, 2016
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 process.
World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2025
With the evolution of new-age technology, consumers make up the significant influence for consumer behavior and purchasing decisions. This study explores complex interplay between consumer decision-making in brand choice and end-user verdicts. The power of collective consumer opinions, with the help of social media and online pledge, has never been available in such a great scale for consumers. We estimate peer reviewed comments’ effects on consumer perceptions and trust, which in turn affects consumers’ attitudes and purchases. This study is to evaluate the customer reviews relevance, authenticity as well as legitimacy. Transaction cannot be processed without their verification as if customer was not happy with the product claimed that is irrelevant, unjustified to the extent of misleading. It investigates the reasons behind the seemingly misplaced faith most customers put on peer reviews and testimonials. The study explores how online review aggregators and aggregate review platforms help contribute visibility and access to customer reviews and how these aggregates affect consumer behavior. There have been several studies done showing how important customer reviews are for brand loyalty and reputation. The positive reviews are strong testimonials that encourage potential purchasers to trust you. On the other hand, negative reviews can drive consumers away and towards a rival brand. It also examines the phenomenon of fake reviews and its repercussions on consumer trust and brand authenticity. It also explores how numerous factors — product type, brand reputation, volume of reviews moderate review impact. It explains how consumers wade through mountains of input to be able to make smart decisions, tiptoeing their way to find and use consumer feedback.
Navigating by the Stars: Investigating the Actual and Perceived Validity of Online User Ratings
This research documents a substantial disconnect between the objective quality information that online user ratings actually convey and the extent to which consumers trust them as indicators of objective quality. Analyses of a data set cover-ing 1272 products across 120 vertically differentiated product categories reveal that average user ratings (1) lack convergence with Consumer Reports scores, the most commonly used measure of objective quality in the consumer behavior literature, (2) are often based on insufficient sample sizes which limits their infor-mativeness, (3) do not predict resale prices in the used-product marketplace, and (4) are higher for more expensive products and premium brands, controlling for Consumer Reports scores. However, when forming quality inferences and purchase intentions, consumers heavily weight the average rating compared to other cues for quality like price and the number of ratings. They also fail to moderate their reliance on the average user rating as a function of sample size sufficiency. Consumers' trust in the average user rating as a cue for objective quality appears to be based on an "illusion of validity."
Journal of Interactive Marketing, 2013
Consumers assess the credibility of online product reviews to guide their purchase decisions. However, little is known about how consumers determine the credibility of online product reviews. This article examines the effect of the level of detail in a product review and the level of reviewer agreement with it on the credibility of a review and consumers' purchase intentions for search and experience products. Overall, the results indicate that more credible reviews lead to higher purchase intentions. Interestingly, the findings also demonstrate that consumers determine the credibility of a review differently for search and experience products. For search products, consumers deem online reviews to be more credible when the reviews contain detailed information about the product. However, for experience products, consumers determine the credibility of a review by assessing the level of reviewer agreement with a review. The lack of diagnosticity of detailed information in online reviews of experience products is attributed to the idiosyncratic nature of experiences. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
How Does Customer Rating Affect Product Purchase?
EPRA international journal of multidisciplinary research, 2023
A customer's buying behavior is largely governed by the needs, preferences and tastes of the consumers for whom the product/service is ultimately purchased. Traditionally, consumers' purchasing habits were solely relied on word of mouth. With the growth of the internet and technology, online consumer evaluations, product and service recommendations, and peer opinions play an increasingly important role in the customer's decision-making process. According to the literature, buyers seek online product reviews for four reasons: information seeking, risk reduction, quality seeking, and social belonging. Before purchasing a product, the buyer actively gathers and integrates information from a variety of sources, the most costeffective and immediately accessible of which are online reviews. These reviews will have both positive and negative effect on the consumer's mindset. One bad review will drastically drop down the sales of the particular product as these opinions are considered as trustworthy and less risky than marketer information. This article will assist us in understanding how these ratings, reviews, and recommendations influence consumer product purchases and purchasing patterns.
Telaah Bisnis
This study aims to determine the influence of online consumer reviews, online customer ratings, and influencers on purchase decisions among Shopee consumers. The sampling was conducted using a non-probability sampling technique with a purposive sampling approach. The study was carried out in November 2022, with a total sample size of 160 respondents. The criteria used to select respondents for this study were females who are Shopee account holders, have made fashion product purchases on the platform, and are aged between 18 to 25 years old. The data analysis technique used for this study was multiple linear regression. The results of this study indicates that: online consumer reviews have a positive effect on purchase decisions, online customer ratings also have a positive effect on purchase decisions, and Shopee influencers also have a positive effect on purchase decisions.
Online consumer review: Word-of-mouth as a new element of marketing communication mix
Management Science, 2008
A s a new type of word-of-mouth information, online consumer product review is an emerging market phenomenon that is playing an increasingly important role in consumers' purchase decisions. This paper argues that online consumer review, a type of product information created by users based on personal usage experience, can serve as a new element in the marketing communications mix and work as free "sales assistants" to help consumers identify the products that best match their idiosyncratic usage conditions. This paper develops a normative model to address several important strategic issues related to consumer reviews. First, we show when and how the seller should adjust its own marketing communication strategy in response to consumer reviews. Our results reveal that if the review information is sufficiently informative, the two types of product information, i.e., the seller-created product attribute information and buyer-created review information, will interact with each other. For example, when the product cost is low and/or there are sufficient expert (more sophisticated) product users, the two types of information are complements, and the seller's best response is to increase the amount of product attribute information conveyed via its marketing communications after the reviews become available. However, when the product cost is high and there are sufficient novice (less sophisticated) product users, the two types of information are substitutes, and the seller's best response is to reduce the amount of product attribute information it offers, even if it is cost-free to provide such information.
Social Influence Effects in Online Product Ratings
Journal of Marketing, 2012
Websites prominently display consumers’ product ratings, which influence consumers’ buying decisions and willingness to pay. Few insights exist regarding whether a consumer's online product rating is prone to social influence from others’ online ratings. Examining this issue, the authors hypothesize that other consumers’ online ratings moderate the effects of positive and regular negative features of product experience, product failure, and product recovery (to address product failure) on the reviewer's online product rating. The results from a model using 7499 consumers’ online ratings of 114 hotels support the hypotheses. Other consumers’ online ratings weaken the effects of positive and regular negative features of product experience but can either exacerbate or overturn the negative effect of product failure, depending on the quality of product recovery. For marketing theory, the findings indicate that consumers who influence others are themselves influenced by other con...
Decision Support Systems, 2015
Many online retailers and other product-oriented websites allow people to post product reviews for use by shoppers. While research indicates that these reviews influence consumers' shopping attitudes and behaviors, questions remain about how consumers evaluate the product reviews themselves. With the current research, we introduce a new methodology for identifying the review factors that shoppers use to evaluate review helpfulness, and we integrate prior literature to provide a framework that explains how these factors reflect readers' general concerns about the diagnosticity (uncertainty and equivocality) and credibility (trust and expertise) of electronic word-of-mouth. Based on this framework, we offer predictions about how the relative importance of diagnosticity and credibility should vary systematically across search and experience product types. By analyzing secondary data consisting of over 8000 helpfulness ratings from product reviews posted by shoppers on Amazon.com, we find that, while review content affects helpfulness in complex ways, these effects are well explained by the proposed framework. Interestingly, the data suggest that review writers who explicitly attempt to enhance review diagnosticity or credibility are often ineffective or systematically unhelpful. Our findings have implications for both IS developers and retailers for designing online decision support systems to optimize communication practices and better manage consumer-generated content and interactions among consumers.
Impact of Online Reviews on Purchasing Decisions
Capturing, Analyzing, and Managing Word-of-Mouth in the Digital Marketplace, 2016
Internet has enabled today's consumer to transform himself from passive to an active and an informed consumer who can share his experiences, opinions about product or services with an infinite number of consumers around the globe. These reviews or opinions are further used by potential buyers of that particular product or service via electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM). The study on the impact of e-WOM on online sales has gradually emerged but a number of questions still remain unanswered. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of one type of e-WOM i.e., the online consumer reviews, on purchasing decisions of electronic products. This empirical study also focuses on the relationship between reviews and purchasing behaviour. An instrument was prepared to measure the proposed constructs, with questionnaire items taken from prior studies but adapted to fit the context of e-commerce. The survey was applied to academicians in India through internet. The results show that consumer reviews have a causal impact on consumer purchasing behaviour and they have an effect on choosing the products by consumer. Finally, the results and their implications are discussed.