Impact of Online Product Reviews on Purchasing Decisions (original) (raw)

Reseach Paper 4 Evaluating the influence of customer reviews and consumer trust on online purchase behavior

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.

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.

Online Reviews: What Drives Consumers to Use Them

Journal of Computer Information Systems, 2020

With the rapid E-commerce growth and changes in consumers' behaviors, many businesses are forced to adapt their business model to match their target customers' needs. To provide consumers with more product details and increase their confidence in making online purchases, online businesses offer online reviews as an alternative to customers physically interacting with a product. Although consumers have become familiar with the use of online product reviews, many aspects of users' perceptions of online reviews are still not well understood. This study explores the factors underlying the intention of Thai consumers to use online reviews when considering purchasing an item. The study results provide insight into the factors that affect consumers' use of online reviews prior to a purchase. This study furthers the body of knowledge that deals with online reviews and system use, providing results that allow E-businesses to adapt their business model to better fit consumers' expectations.

The impact of Online Customer Reviews (OCRs) on Consumer Purchasing Decision

المجلة العربية للإدارة

This paper investigates how online customer reviews (OCRs) can affect consumer purchasing decisions mediated by online reviews type and moderated by different demographics. The online customer reviews in this study is measured by valence (ranged from positive to negative), volume (many or few), recentness (whether the online review is recent or old), and the review length (long or short review). Moving to the mediating variable, the online review type is either (objective or subjective) and moderated by demographics (age, gender, income, and education). It' s important to note that there is no sufficient data regarding the effect of online customer reviews (OCRs) on consumer purchasing decisions in Egypt. Hence, this research can contribute to a deeper understanding of (OCRs), this is also necessary for developing valuable indications for the online platforms to enhance their services introduced to the Egyptian market. The current research is based on quantitative data derived from an online survey which was distributed among online users in Egypt. In this sense, the usefulness of this research is that it allows underlining significant issues and formulating vital findings: the online reviews dimensions showed a meaningful relationship between it and between the online purchasing decisions which emphasized the importance of the online customer reviews. Also, other dimensions indicated an effect on the consumer purchasing decision mediated by the online review type, whether it was subjective or objective review. On the other hand, demographics, education, job, and income moderated the relationship between dimensions of online customer reviews and consumer purchasing decisions.

Using Customer Review Systems to Support Purchase Decisions

Journal of Global Information Management, 2021

Online reviews have emerged as influential sources of information that greatly affect customers' prepurchase decisions. Some studies have found that culture impacts online reviews, but many aspects of online review usage are still not well-understood. This study seeks to understand what factors influence the usage of online reviews and consumers' intention to use online reviews influenced by culture. This study collects data from U.S. and Thai consumers to examine what factors affect user attitudes and intentions. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the data, and the findings reveal that most of the proposed factors influence online review adoption for these two nationalities. One significant difference was found between the respondents of the two countries. The results should help online businesses gain a better understanding of these factors and thus direct their efforts to develop features that positively influence online review usage.

The Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales in B2C E-Commerce

Word of mouth (WOM) has been proved to be one of the most effective marketing tools in increasing sales. With the availability of Internet and the growing popularity of electronic commerce, firms begin to build an online consumer opinion platform, extending the traditional WOM to online environment in order to foster sales in virtual environment. This paper examines the impact of consumer reviews, as the most effective form of eWOM on sales in online environment. The result of the discussion shows that only the quantity or volume of consumer reviews has positive impact on sales. The quality and valence of reviews, although has the capability of influencing consumers’ buying behavior, have not been proved to have any relation to sales. The result also indicates that the degree of consumer review impact on sales will vary, depending on the types and popularity of product. Keywords – Consumer reviews, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), buying behavior, sales, e-commerce

The Impact Of Online Consumer Reviews’ Quantity And Rating On Buying Decisions: A Perspective From Romanian Market

2017

In online environment, in order to evaluate a product, the visitors have special searching behaviors, looking for information that might infer the product characteristics. One of the cues used by buyers in this respect is represented by online customer reviews, a form of word of mouth communication which might have important implications on consumer behavior. The present study aims to understand the influence of reviews’ quantity and rating on some behavioral variables: perceived quality, perceived value and shopping intentions. For this purpose, it was conducted a 2x2 marketing experiment on Romanian online potential buyers of an electronic product. The results highlight the predominance of reviews’ rating over reviews’ quantity, the first characteristic having a significant influence on the behavioral variables studied. These findings highlight the importance of online reviews as a mean to infer product quality or value and to increase shopping intentions. The managerial implicati...

The Effect of Online Customer Reviews, Online Customer Ratings, and Influencers on Purchase Decisions

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.

How Online Reviews Affect Consumers' Purchase Intention and Product Perception: A Qualitative Study

2020

Online shopping has become one of the important resources of the internet, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, due to which rapid development has seen in online shopping. The consumer search has shifted to online gradually. Researchers have shown that online shoppers view reviews before making a transaction online to make their final decisions before purchasing. As these online reviews are a necessary form of spreading awareness, these reviews impact consumer purchase buying behavior. The more the product has positive reviews, the more the product's chance to be sold out. Many businesses have taken this strategy to manipulate the consumers by providing a significant number of positive reviews of that product. Internet users around the world are more interested in reading positive online reviews so that it would help them to trust the product easily. Based on the literature, the perception of negative or positive online reviews, purchase intention, and product perception is considered in the present study. This study aims to confirm that online reviews affect consumer purchase intention and product perception. Moreover, buying attitudes influence behavior intention.

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.