The effect of negative online customer reviews on brand equity and purchase intention of consumer electronics in South Africa

This study investigated the effect that negative online customer reviews have on brand equity and purchase intention. This research examined the influence of negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on brand equity, as influenced by customer review quality, product involvement and source credibility. A 3 (high quality review versus low quality review versus no review) × 2 (high product involvement versus low product involvement) factorial experiment with 236 respondents was conducted. The results revealed that the presence of negative eWOM has a significant detrimental effect on brand equity and purchase intention. Furthermore, the effect of negative online customer reviews is more detrimental to the brand equity of a high involvement product than a low involvement product. The results also revealed that high quality reviews are more influential than low quality reviews with respect to brand equity, and the difference between the levels of eWOM source credibility has no significant effect on brand equity.     

Do consumers still believe what is said in online product reviews? A persuasion knowledge approach

The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of knowledge about manipulated online product reviews on the effectiveness of such reviews in influencing consumers' product evaluations. The results of two empirical studies show that consumers clearly differ with regard to their knowledge that product reviews can be manipulated and that consumers who have such knowledge are less influenced in their product evaluations by reviews, specifically by negative ones. Furthermore, the effects of negative reviews are even weaker when consumers acquire their knowledge through a highly credible source (compared to a less credible source).     

Experiential goods with network externalities effects: An empirical study of online rating system

This paper uses online users' reviews and sales information from May 2003 to March 2007 to study a new experiential product: online video game (or virtual world). The results suggest that, first of all, for a hedonic product such as an online video game, the availability of online review system could not fully transform experience attributes into search attributes. The empirical study confirms that negative word-of-mouth has more significant impact than positive reviews. The study empirically verifies that the existence of direct network externalities (i.e. a product's value increases when more consumers join the network) is crucial for a hedonic product. The size of the user base signals the quality of the game, and works like a search attribute for potential users. A large user base will reduce the negative impact from unfavorable reviews.     

Have “Millennials” Embraced Digital Advertising as They Have Embraced Digital Media?

Consumers’ attitudes toward advertising ethics are of interest to marketers who understand that negative attitudes can be harmful to brands. Today advertisers increasingly depend on internet advertising. This study compares attitudes of Millennials (the first generation to use digital media more than traditional media) toward internet advertising with attitudes toward advertising in traditional media. Similar to previous generations who had more negative attitudes toward TV advertising, which was their most frequently used medium, Millennials’ attitudes appeared to be more negative toward internet advertising. Thus, we conclude that advertisers must work to engender positive relationships with Millennials through more ethical internet advertising and other innovative strategies.     

Online Shopper Reviews: Ramifications for Promotion and Website Utility

Today's consumers are empowered with online shopper reviews which are mostly written and posted by buyers, customers, users, or visitors at a website. Shopper reviews will become more popular and ubiquitous in e-tailing in the near future. However, the marketing literature is still limited when it comes to knowledge of how shoppers perceive and use online reviews in their purchase decisions. Hence, this study explored shoppers’ predispositions toward positive or negative reviews and examined the impact of consumers’ attitudes and usage patterns on their perceived helpfulness and credibility of online shopper/peer reviews. One interesting finding from our study of 342 online shoppers was that consumers who would pay greater attention to positive reviews gave reviews more credible and usefulness ratings than their counterparts who would focus on the negative reviews.     

How online reviews and coupons affect sales and pricing: An empirical study based on e-commerce platform

With rapid economic growth largely fueled by digital technologies, online reviews are among the new wave of technologies that still make a significant contribution to this new digital economy. However, there is scarce academic research in promoting or responding online reviews using reduction coupons with threshold issued by sellers and pricing decisions. We employ a three-stage least squares (3SLS) model to estimate the effects of online reviews and coupons on online product sales and price. We also extend our research using the data of two product categories. Our results mainly include: (1) Negative impact of negative online reviews on sales is moderated by price, and consumers are more tolerant of negative reviews of high-priced products. (2) Consumers' perceived usefulness of online coupons helps promote more sales and weaken the relationship between negative reviews and sales. (3) Positive online reviews weaken the negative relationship between online negative reviews and the price of product. (4) Consumers’ increased perceived usefulness of online coupons will encourage sellers to set a higher price and weaken the negative relationship between negative reviews and the price of product. (5) Compared with the search product, sellers regard negative reviews from the product with experience attributes as less helpful and apply less effective coupon promotion to response to negative reviews. Our study clarifies the interaction between online reviews and online coupons on e-commerce platforms under the operation scenario. We also provide empirical support for accurate promotion and higher sales revenue through reasonable pricing decisions and specified reduction coupons.     

The Differential Effects of Online Word-of-Mouth and Critics' Reviews on Pre-release Movie Evaluation

In this paper, we examine the persuasive influences of online user comments (or word-of-mouth) and of the reviews by movie critics on moviegoers' evaluation of to-be-released movies. Two distinctive features of this study are: (1) moviegoers are considered to be heterogeneous in their movie going frequency and (2) word-of-mouth and critical reviews are concurrently available, and the views expressed in the two messages are in conflict. Using three experiments with natural stimuli, we find that the persuasive effect of online word-of-mouth is stronger on infrequent than on frequent moviegoers, especially when it is negative (Study 1). The effect of negative word-of-mouth on infrequent moviegoers is enduring even in the presence of positive reviews by movie critics (Study 2). The relative influence of word-of-mouth and critical reviews are asymmetric with infrequent moviegoers more influenced by word-of-mouth, while frequent moviegoers more influenced by the reviews (Study 3). We validate this source–segment alignment through secondary data analysis.     

基于网络的消费者社会互动及管理研究

消费者的购买决策受到其他消费者意见和行为的影响,现代技术的发展极大地提升了消费者社会互动作为市场力的重要性,同时信息技术的发展也为企业促进这两种社会互动创造了越来越多的机会。通过介绍口碑传播和观察模仿的内涵,分析其对销售的不同影响及产品生命周期对消费者社会互动的影响,认为企业应在产品的投入期关注消费者社会互动,应在网站上提供现有消费者的选择信息,应慎重提供消费者发布评语的平台,应区分不同等级的顾客;应根据不同的产品市场状况,制定不同的反应策略,正确应对第三方的产品评论,以此管理消费者的社会互动。     

The informational value of multi-attribute online consumer reviews: A text mining approach

In the digital age, customers use online reviews to minimize the risks associated with purchasing a product. Major online retailers help customers choose the right product by exposing reviews that received many “helpful” votes at the top of the review section. Given that reviews that have received the maximum helpfulness votes are considered more important in purchase decisions, understanding determinants of helpfulness votes offers clear benefits to online retailers and review platforms. This study focuses on the effect of review informativeness, which is measured by the number of attributes discussed in a review, and its interplay of review valence on customers' perception of review helpfulness. We applied a word-level bigram analysis to derive product attributes from review text and examined the influence of the number of attributes on the review's helpfulness votes. More importantly, we also suggested the moderating role of review valence. Estimation results of the Zero-inflated Poisson models on 21,125 reviews across 14 wireless earbuds indicated that as more attributes are discussed in a review, the more the review can earn helpfulness votes from customers. Furthermore, the positive association between the number of attributes and helpfulness was enhanced among negative reviews. This study contributes to customers' information processing literature and offers guidelines to online retailers in designing a better decision support system.     

When does electronic word-of-mouth matter? A study of consumer product reviews

Online consumer product reviews, a form of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), have attracted increased attention from researchers. This paper examines the persuasiveness of eWOM. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, the authors propose that the consumption goals that consumers associate with the reviewed product moderate the effect of review valence on persuasiveness. Data from lab experiments and actual online retailers suggest that consumers who evaluate products associated with promotion consumption goals perceive positive reviews to be more persuasive than negative ones (i.e., a positivity bias). Conversely, consumers who evaluate products associated with prevention consumption goals perceive negative reviews to be more persuasive than positive ones (i.e., a negativity bias).     

Too Popular to Ignore: The Influence of Online Reviews on Purchase Intentions of Search and Experience Products

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.     

In Search of Negativity Bias: An Empirical Study of Perceived Helpfulness of Online Reviews

A basic tenet of psychology is that the psychological effects of negative information outweigh those of positive information. Three empirical studies show that the negativity bias can be attenuated or even reversed in the context of electronic word of mouth (eWoM). The first study analyzes a large sample of customer reviews collected from Amazon.com and concludes that negative reviews are no more helpful than positive ones when controlling for review quality The second study follows up with a virtual experiment that confirms the lack of negativity bias in evaluating the helpfulness of online reviews. The third study demonstrates that the negativity effect can be reversed by manipulating the baseline valences. This work challenges the conventional wisdom of “bad is stronger than good” and contributes to the understanding of the eWoM phenomenon.     

时间间隔何时能够提高在线评论的有用性感知——基于归因理论的视角

文章从归因理论的视角出发,探索了购买与评论间的时间间隔与产品类型（物质性产品Vs体验性产品）如何相互作用以影响评论的有用性感知。通过将产品分为物质性产品和体验性产品,文章运用实验检验了时间间隔对不同产品类型的评论影响作用产生的不同作用。结果表明,对于体验型产品来说,时间间隔近（Vs远）可以提高评论的有用性感知;而对于物质型产品来说,时间间隔近（Vs远）可以降低评论的有用性感知。除此之外,实验结果也证实归因倾向中介于时间间隔与评论有用性感知。但是时间间隔对评论有用性的影响还会受到评论效价的调节,时间间隔只会改变正面评论的有用性感知,但是并不能显著影响负面评论。研究结论有助于深入理解阅读者对在线评论的有用性判断的反应,并为在线零售商提供了一个更好利用和维护在线产品评论提高新的视角。     

The power of beauty? The interactive effects of awe and online reviews on purchase intentions

Prior research has established that online consumer reviews can have significant influences on the evaluations of a product or a service. In particular, studies show that negative (vs. positive) reviews lead to unfavorable evaluations because they heighten purchase risk. The present research seeks to examine a contextual cue that can alleviate this potential problem. Across three studies, this research demonstrates how the emotion of awe – elicited by a beautiful product in the advertisement – can reduce the perception of purchase risk, leading to favorable consumer evaluations of a product or service even though it has negative reviews. The implications of this research are beneficial for advertisers by highlighting the potentials of eliciting awe (e.g., by utilizing beauty) in their advertisements.     

How managerial responses to online reviews affect customer satisfaction: An empirical study based on additional reviews

This study investigates the internality of managerial responses (MRs) to online reviews on the responded customers' (i.e., customers who have posted an initial review and then being responded by the company through an MR) satisfaction. By utilizing the data of additional reviews (ARs), an innovative social media module for customers to express follow-up opinions that complement their initial reviews, we examine the impact of MR treatment on the customers' AR valence. We leverage the insight that the observability of MR at the time of the responded customer posts an AR is a crucial condition to the impact of the MR, and thus regard the observability of MR as an exogenous treatment for model identification. Fixed effects models with extensive control variables are proposed to estimate the MR treatment effects. The results show that MRs have significant positive impacts on customers' satisfaction in ARs. Further explorations show that the positive impacts are mainly due to the positive effects of MRs on nonpositive initial reviews (MR-Ns), suggesting that MR-Ns are an effective management tool for customer complaints. Moreover, this study identifies MR delay as a boundary condition for the internality of MRs because MR delay negatively moderates the positive impacts of MRs. Therefore, companies should promptly respond to customers' negative opinions in their reviews. This study is among the very first to clearly identify the internality of MRs on the responded customers’ satisfaction. We show that the existing results on the externality of MRs are not directly applicable to the internality of MRs, highlighting the novelty of this study. The obtained new insights provide practical guidelines for companies to adjust their intervention strategies on e-commerce platforms.     

How Online Product Reviews Affect Retail Sales: A Meta-analysis

A growing body of research has emerged on online product reviews and their ability to elicit performance outcomes desired by retailers; yet, a common understanding of the performance implications of online product reviews has eluded us. Scholars continue to navigate an array of studies assessing different design elements of online product reviews, and various research settings and data sources. We undertake a meta-analysis of 26 empirical studies yielding 443 sales elasticities to examine how these variables relate to retail sales. Building on well-established meta-analytical methods, we address the following questions: How does review valence influence the elasticity of retailer sales? What about review volume? For which product types and usage situations do online product reviews have a greater impact on retailer sales elasticity? Which types of online reviewers and websites exert the greatest influence on retailer sales elasticity? Our study answers these important questions and provides a much needed quantitative synthesis of this burgeoning stream of research.     

Do consumers who conduct online research also post online reviews? A model of the relationship between online research and review posting behavior

The purpose of the research is to investigate whether consumers who conduct online product research also more likely to post online product reviews. An information theory-based classification algorithm is used to estimate the likelihood of a consumer posting an online review conditional on having conducted online product research. Data from a nationally representative probability sample of American internet users are used to estimate the model. The results indicate that the characteristics of consumers who have a greater propensity to conduct online product research but a lower tendency to post online product reviews differ substantially from those who are more likely to post online product reviews but less likely to conduct online product research. The research is important because the degree to which consumers who conduct online product research are similar to those who post online product reviews can be used to track the effectiveness of online word-of-mouth marketing campaigns.     

Development of methodology for classification of user experience (UX) in online customer review

In e-commerce, customer feedback has become an essential source of insight into a product or service's user experience (UX). The study of UX helps to integrate customers' potential needs into the product's design. Because customer reviews in e-commerce are not structured and categorized, it is necessary to analyze UX based on customer opinions systematically. This study tries to structure UX in a product's positive/negative context through a neural network-based self-organizing map (SOM). As a result of analyzing 10,482 reviews on wireless earbuds in BestBuy, an electronic product e-commerce platform, it was confirmed that it is a suitable method for categorizing user experiences between reviews and deriving important factors. In particular, the difference in core UX elements by positive/negative context of the product was verified based on the star rating. The results of this study are expected to contribute to product improvement and business improvement that reflect customer needs by companies or designers who design products for end-users.     

Delight the experts,but never dissatisfy your customers! A multi-category study on the effects of online review source on intention to buy a new product

Online reviews are a pervasive form of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) that potentially accelerate—or slow down—the diffusion of recently launched services in the marketplace. While empirical research largely supports the effects of online reviews on attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, less is known about the impact the source of the review—i.e., if it comes from a peer consumer or an expert—has on the recipient. Two experiments that combine reviewer- (expert, consumer), service type- (mobile package, restaurant, car repair), consumer- (level of general innovativeness), and review-related (positive, negative) characteristics reveal a challenging interaction between the review’s source and its valence: while—compared to an established baseline—a positive expert review seems more effective in increasing the recipient's intention to purchase than a review by a peer consumer, a negative consumer review lowers the recipient's intentions to a larger extent than a negative expert review. We further find effects of the consumer's innovativeness and the service category across the experiments. Our research contributes to the topical and increasing body of empirical research on the effects of involved characteristics within online reviews across several product types.     

体验型产品在线评论与消费意愿及销量的关系——以价格为调节变量

随着网络在线交易的迅猛发展,在线评论等网络口碑传播的重要性日益凸显。以体验型产品为研究对象,以信号理论和"刺激-反应"理论为指导,建立"在线评论-消费意愿-在线销量"模型分析三个要素之间的关系机理,并采用中介效应检验和调节效应检验进行验证,结果显示:在线评论作为一种信息刺激,其数量对体验型产品在线销量具有显著的正向影响,但在线评论质量效价评分对体验型产品在线销量的影响不显著,这与产品的类型有关;在线评论一是直接对在线销量产生影响,一是通过中介变量(即作为消费意愿替代变量的收藏量)传递影响,对在线销量产生作用;商品价格在在线评论和在线销量的直接和间接关系中都起到了正向调节作用,这与体验型产品交易过程中价格质量信号功能强于促销功能有关。实践中,企业可通过一些激励设计提高消费者在线评论参与度;进行更加科学化的网页设计,完善收藏功能,以方便消费者进行筛选和比较;注意防止盲目降价行为给消费者带来的负面影响,发挥好价格的信号作用。