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Exploring the Influence of Online Consumer Reviews on Purchase Decisions
In fact, the efficacy of online reviews in influencing purchase choices has a more soaring potential than all promotional marketing mix tools clubbed together. They allow for the removal of tangible-touchable factors like the look and feel of a product, store, and simultaneous judgment for it. A versatility provider, not only do the reviews qualify as words of mouth but also provide handy comparative acumen resulting in the heterogeneous array of consumer reviews – both epistemic and opinionated, negative and positive. As with Augereau and Green, consumer reviews have the power to “raise awareness” and “develop commodity culture” which pique the interest of marketers of consumer goods. Today, as consumers are bombarded with the digital info-bombs that are the commercial advertisements, websites, and banners promoting products and services, “buyers reading precious moments” spend an average 83 seconds on an e-commerce site. In this hyperbolized age of marketing, the role and relevance of consumer reviews have broadened to be an item of study and research for many academicians and organizations – market researchers and of course e-business practitioners, whose seek is to develop new forms of interactions and commerce through the internet.
Off the lush gardens of the digital world, online consumer reviews are the new-fangled terracotta for trading. Moved by the opinion of their guides (read peers on buying hierarchy), potential consumers all on a world-stage are either intensifying the retailers’ pitch or busting the deals for them. A panacea for current age spam, these reviews function as veritable testimonials. Today, with an increasing number of netizens engaging in online shopping, consumer reviews are not just limited to but spread across actualized to avant-garde goodies, tangs, events, movies, technicalities, and such, acquiring an extra dimension in forms of eWOM, iWOM, and viral marketing.
Firstly, the IT-mediated online consumer reviews could provide social contagions, which reduce the risk of trying new products because people can incur risk to some extent when they learn from others’ experiences. Secondly, due to the popularity of the reviews, potential online consumers could be guided by the reviews of the experienced ones. Thirdly, online consumer reviews can provide a trust relationship, which can attract potential consumers, making it easy to induce their purchase. The main advantage of many-sampled information lies in the fact that the review would eliminate the information asymmetries between consumers and the wallet providers because consumers have obtained information to evaluate the quality of the products. Furthermore, the more reviews there are, the more likely they can obtain income because of the potential spread of word of mouth. Consumers’ experiences have a direct impact on their consumption behaviors. Many reasons lead to this phenomenon, for example, the different reliability of online consumer reviews, which can be influenced by the review informativeness. The order of informative reviews and mass reviews problems would have different impacts on their informativeness.
Online consumer reviews have a profound influence on purchase decisions. They reveal the products’ actual performance by reflecting real customer experiences that could differ from the descriptions or ads provided by sellers. Importantly, the new type of word of mouth in the online environment can spread to a wide range of people at a relatively low cost. Based on the social learning theory, people tend to conduct social comparisons and infer their own preferences via others’ experiences. Since negative feedback will arouse fear and reduce the consumption utility, new products will have a low probability of purchase, while new products will have a high probability of purchase if there are more positive feedbacks. In conclusion, for a potential online consumer, the larger the number of sample reviews, the more likely the reviews are informative of the service or product features.
It is well established that the ambiance of the review source (e.g., the blog or review center), rather than content, can affect perceived author credibility. Existing research has shown how trustworthiness can be inferred by examining a source’s design or interface as well as its tools of governance. When reviews are accessed via more mainstream platforms – which confer the pros of being high-traffic sites with correspondingly large review bodies – the credibility and trustworthiness of the reviewer can be positively affected. Recent research, however, raises concerns about ex ante assessments of trust-offs related to the bias toward salient, popular sources. Chua and Banerjee have shown that the trustworthiness of opinions displayed on popular review centers can be severely overstated. Findings suggest that the complexity of evaluating anonymous user’s opinions, and possibly real person’s opinions too, can be severe, illustrating that trust is firmly grounded in social networks. Therefore, consumer profiling on sites where only a person’s opinion, rather than connections, is displayed may be, in some cases, fundamentally misguided. Strictly, the per number of real friends a person has is at best an imperfect indication of the person’s real-world credibility, a fact understood by Google, as it permits multiple trusted individuals to grant any single voter an infinitesimally small but non-zero level of trust.
Reviews displaying greater authenticity (e.g., sounding more spontaneous, containing less googled content, or describing unexpected incidents) are generally rated as more credible. Another well-established factor that is expected to enhance perceived reviewer credibility is source credibility. Source credibility is further influenced by the disclosed affiliations, sponsorships, or sample compensation of the review author. Recent studies show that the perceived fairness of a review is, in some cases, influenced by judgments regarding the reviewer’s potential biases, which may damage perceptions of the reviewer’s honesty or the review’s trustworthiness. For example, knowing that a reviewer may have incentives to say more positive things could reduce perceptions of the fairness of the rating system as well as the perceived quality of the ratings. Review characteristics, including whether the review sounds authentic and the length or language used in the review, are antecedents of perceptions of source credibility. The potential impact of reviewer motivations on the perceived credibility of online consumer reviews has been largely neglected, making this a promising area for future research.
One vital aspect that determines the influence of a review is its credibility. Dwyer and Marsh interviewed 1,690 Australian Internet users and found that credibility was consistently among the top four reasons people consult online travel reviews, further confirming the importance of reviewer credibility. Several factors are expected to be influential in shaping the credibility of online consumer reviews.
Businesses who are able to provide a positive online shopping experience and participate in social listening by addressing the needs of their consumers see the most benefits of online reviews. Businesses need to incorporate advice of ordinary consumers, as inputs from professional consumers may cloud reviews. Companies that are able to integrate consumer review analysis into their operations strategy, marketing, human resource or operations management can enhance the company’s long-term value and reputation. One of the first questions that we are asked by potential clients or new team members is, “Does online customer reviews really matter?” This is particularly true for business owners who simply haven’t taken advantage of the power of collecting, distributing, and advertising their reviews to potential customers. Most have no idea where to start, so they simply don’t bother. This article will explore the influence of online consumer reviews and strategies to move consumers to make a purchase.
In light of these findings, we provide businesses with several actionable insights that they can utilize to leverage word-of-mouth marketing. Since businesses are able to showcase positive reviews from their customers on their official websites, business review platforms, or other mediums, it can serve as social proof in promoting to potential customers. Additionally, businesses can reward, request, and remind their satisfied customers to leave online reviews. This may help to further grow a business’s reputation and brand loyalty through the engagement of its customers. Based on the perceived value from user reviews, collecting them is very much worth the effort. Similarly, adopting an efficient plan for dealing with poor reviews is beneficial for businesses.
Given the critical importance of online word-of-mouth communications for businesses, further research that could provide other influencing factors of online consumer reviews would be valuable. For instance, research that delves deeper into consumer reviews as a channel or process belonging to consumer learning and decision-making would be valuable. In addition, research on online consumer reviews is mostly conducted in online retailer settings. Moreover, as the conclusion of this study demonstrated, online consumer review characteristics influence consumer attitudes, which in turn influence purchasing intention. Therefore, considering online consumer review characteristics that influence consumer attitudes also determines what drives purchasing decisions is very useful because spawning purchase intent is the prime concern of most online retailers. Furthermore, the cost of online consumer review monitoring is also very inconspicuous in broad research studies. Given the cost makes the results more operable for online retailers, particularly those who often underestimate the budget, research on the review-monitoring cost is urgently needed. In addition, just as mentioned, the comparison results in this paper facilitate the selection of the most cost-efficient way derived from the same consumer review system. Since the individual purchasing decision behavior of consumers in an electronic market can change over time, it is indeed a necessary condition to conduct research on the user behavior of online consumer reviews in the presence of monitoring in the future. Importantly, the study of the effect of monitoring on consumer decision is a dynamic problem, and thus the further research problems are still intriguing.
With a comprehensive review and assessment, this study identifies the potential influencing factors of online consumer reviews on purchasing decisions. First, this study finds that the appearance of online consumer reviews is one of the most important factors influencing consumer attitudes towards online consumer reviews and their subsequent purchasing decisions. Second, review informativeness is identified as another attribute that influences consumer attitudes towards reviews. Third, more negative ratings have more influence on attitudes, while more negative comments and minor reviews can significantly influence purchasing intention. Fourth, negative numerical ratings have more influence on consumer attitudes than positive numerical ratings. Furthermore, the results show that the interaction between valence and format has an asymmetrical effect on consumer attitudes, while that of valence and monitoring has a symmetrical effect on consumer attitudes towards reviews. These insights not only extend the existing literature on online consumer reviews and trust but also provide theoretical and practical implications for managers and researchers.
Recent years have witnessed the phenomenal growth of online reviews, with practitioners and scholars observing consumers’ reliance on reviews when making purchasing decisions. Researchers argue that the reason why consumers consider online consumer reviews as credible and detailed information is because the sources are trustworthy, unbiased, and can provide comprehensive opinions and evaluations. Online consumer reviews can also provide information about attributes of the goods and services that are difficult to evaluate before purchase.
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