Business Commons^™

Whose Opinions Do We Trust? Some Thoughts On Online Product Ratings And Consumer Decision Making, David Ackerman, Barbara Gross, Jing Hu

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2024

User-generated reviews play a crucial role in assessing market offerings and informing consumers’ purchase decisions. This study applies extant theory to examine the influence of online product ratings and reviews on consumers. The findings from experiments suggest that the impact of online ratings is heightened for higher-priced products in comparison to their lower-priced counterparts during both the information search and product evaluation stages of consumer decision making. Results also indicate that consumer ratings on social media may have more of an impact on consumers than do the ratings of experts. Consumers demonstrated a greater purchase intention for products that received …

Empirical Studies On Global Product Reviews, Maneesh Reddy Ajjuguttu

All Dissertations

This dissertation comprises three interconnected essays investigating the impact of global reviews on Amazon.com and their significance for consumer behavior and decision-making. The first chapter analyzes the interplay between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and global review sharing, focusing on Nike products available on the platform. The study finds that higher levels of USA EPU negatively affect product review rates, while China EPU positively influences review rates. EPU volatility also impacts the sharing of non-English and English reviews, influencing sales and review-sharing behavior. The research also explores the effect of global reviews on customer decision-making for products at different lifecycle stages, …

B2b Ewom On Alibaba: Signaling Through Online Reviews In Platform-Based Social Exchange, Zsófia Tóth, Mona Mrad, Omar S. Itani, Jun Luo, Martin J. Liu

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highlights

• The study explores buyers' signaling of observable and unobservable supplier characteristics on the Alibaba e-platform.

• Key B2B eWOM themes that the study identifies are: product/service quality, human touch, responsiveness, and resilience.

• Findings demonstrate that human touch is vital in B2B e-platform environments too, not only in physical reality.

• Buyers' signals aim at suppliers as well as at prospective buyers and implicitly buyers send signals about themselves too.

• Signaling Theory is applied to address the signaling process, while Social Exchange Theory informs relevant cost-benefit assessments.

Abstract

This study investigates the contemporary role of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in business exchanges through …

The Role Of Browsing In The Relationship Between Online Reviews To Impulse Buying, Rifelly Dewi Astuti, Sara Almira Nindyaswari

ASEAN Marketing Journal

Manuscript type: Research

Research Aims: to analyse the impact of online reviews on Instagram on online impulse buying behaviour for the beauty product category, with the role of browsing as a mediator.

Design/methodology/approach: A conclusive study with 441 respondents, analysed by SEM

Research Findings: Browsing mediates the online review perceived value (both utilitarian and hedonic value) significantly toward the urge to buy impulsively, which will further enhance the impulse buying

Theoretical Contribution/Originality: (1) this study enriches the relationship between online reviews and impulse buying, using browsing as the critical factor to link the relationship, and (2) consumers perceived both utilitarian …

Innocent Until Proven Guilty: Suspicion Of Deception In Online Reviews, Maria Petrescu, Philip Kitchen, Costinel Dobre, Selima Ben Mrad, Anca Milovan-Ciuta, Deborah Goldring, Anne Fiedler

Publications

- Purpose: This study formulates a new framework for identifying deception in consumer reviews through the lens of Interpersonal Deception Theory and the Persuasion Knowledge Model. It evaluates variables contributing to consumer intentions to purchase after reading deceptive reviews and proposes deception identification cues to be incorporated into the interpersonal communication theoretical framework.

- Methodology: The first study is qualitative and quantitative, based on sentiment and lexical analysis of 1000 consumer reviews. The second study employs a USA national consumer survey with a PLS-SEM and a Process-based mediation-moderation analysis.

- Findings: The study shows deceptive characteristics that cannot be dissimulated …

The Impact Of Online Reviews On The Information Flows And Outcomes Of Marketing Systems, Forrest Watson, Yinglu Wu

2022 Faculty Bibliography

Online reviews are changing the way that consumers shop and firms respond to consumer feedback. Viewed more broadly, online reviews are a type of information flow altering the functioning of marketing systems at the micro, meso, and macro levels. A systematic review of the past two decades of research shows great attention to the impact of online reviews on information flows, as well as the nuances of micro-and meso-level efficiency outcomes. However, there is scant consideration for the effectiveness related outcomes of online reviews (such as customer well-being, distributive justice, and externalities). Through a macromarketing lens, online reviews are an …

What Are Tour Guides Most Praised For? A Sharing Economy Perspective, Derya Demirdelen-Alrawadieh, Ibrahim Cifci

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

This study aims to identify the key themes featuring tour guides who promote their services through the sharing economy landscape. A content analysis approach was applied to 229 online reviews posted on Tours by Locals by tourists who bought tours in Istanbul. Findings reveal two key themes that summarize how tourists view local tour guides in the sharing economy. These were labelled as interpersonal skills (e.g., good communication, helpfulness) and competence (e.g., knowledge about the history and culture of the attractions). The proposed themes can be useful for both service providers and destination management organizations.

Online Review Solicitations Reduce Extremity Bias In Online Review Distributions And Increase Their Representativeness, Hülya Karaman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Representative online customer reviews are critical to the effective functioning of the Internet economy. In this study, I investigate the representativeness of online review distributions to examine how extremity bias and conformity impact it, and explore whether online review solicitations alter representativeness. Past research on extreme distribution of online ratings commonly relied solely on observed public online ratings. One strength of the current paper is that I observe the private satisfaction ratings of customers regardless of whether they choose to write an online review or not. I show that both extremity bias and conformity exist in unsolicited online word-of-mouth (WOM) …

J Mich Dent Assoc October 2020

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Every month, The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association brings news, information, and features about Michigan dentistry to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200+ members. No publication reaches more Michigan dentists!

In this issue, the reader will find the following original content:

• A cover story, “Michigan’s New Hypertension Screening Guidelines: What Do They Mean for You?”
• Three feature articles: “The Mask Ask: Understanding and Addressing Mask Resistance”, “An Election-Year Message from Your MDA Dental PAC”, and “How to Respond to Online Reviews Without Violating HIPAA”.
• News you need, Editorial and regular department articles on MDA Foundation activities, …

A Fine-Grained Sentiment Analysis Of Online Guest Reviews Of Economy Hotels In China, Jiaqi Luo, Songshan Huang, Renwu Wang

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020, © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This study aims to investigate the experiences of Chinese economy hotel guests by applying deep learning fine-grained sentiment analysis on 363,723 Chinese-text online reviews. Findings reveal that location is the domain that most of the positive sentiments are associated, followed by facilities, service, price, image, and reservation experience. Prominent features with negative sentiments include sound insulation, air conditioning, beddings, windows, toilets, TV sets, WiFi signals, towels, elevators, hair dryers, slippers, toilet bowls, return cash, invoices. Positive and negative sentiments are compared. This research offers an alternative approach and a more comprehensive …

Qualitative Analysis Of Users’ Negative Reviews On Tripadvisor: International Tourists’ Reviews On Gyeongbokgung Palace In Seoul, Korea, Jung Eun Hong

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

With the rise of Internet, many people have shared quantitative and qualitative feedback on their travel experiences on travel websites. As the largest travel site, TripAdvisor allows users to post reviews; conduct discussions with other users; and rate destinations, hotels, restaurants, and attractions. Through thematic and discourse analysis of user reviews on TripAdvisor, this study gives tourists’ negative reviews of visiting Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, Korea. The study findings show that tourists evaluated the palace was not real, impressive, interesting, tourist friendly, and neither was it worth visiting. The findings of this study may be helpful in expanding research scopes …

Seeking Reward Or Avoiding Risk From Restaurant Reviews: Does Distance Matter?, Esther Kim, Sarah Tanford

Department of Hospitality and Tourism Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which consumers will exert more effort to avoid risk (negative reviews) versus seek reward (positive reviews) when making a restaurant decision.

Design/methodology/approach

This study investigates the influence of distance and review valence on restaurant decisions. A 2 (base restaurant review valence: negative, neutral) × 2 (target restaurant review valence: neutral, positive) × 2 (distance: 30 min, 60 min) between-subjects factorial design was used.

Findings

People exert more effort to seek a reward versus avoid a risk. People will drive any distance to dine at a restaurant with positive …

Two Essays On Consumer-Generated Reviews: Reviewer Expertise And Mobile Reviews, Peter Nguyen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Over the past few decades, the internet has risen to prominence, enabling consumers to not only quickly access large amounts of information, but also openly share content (e.g., blogs, videos, reviews) with a substantially large number of fellow consumers. Given the vast presence of consumers in the online space, it has become increasingly critical for marketers to better understand the way consumers share, and learn from, consumer-generated content, a research area known as electronic word-of-mouth. In this dissertation, I advance our understanding about the shared content generated by consumers on online review platforms. In Essay 1, I study why and …

Monitoring Airport Service Quality: A Complementary Approach To Measure Perceived Service Quality Using Online Reviews, Kiljae Lee, Chunyan Yu

Chunyan Yu

Based on 42,063 airport reviews collected from Google Maps, we conducted a sentiment analysis and a topic modeling. We showed that the sentiment scores computed from textual reviews are good estimates of their paired star-ratings (r=0.63, p<0.01). Next, using the LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), we extracted latent topics from the textual reviews and compared them with the standard categories utilized in the Airport Service Quality survey (ASQ). The topics extracted from reviews correspond well with the categories used in ASQ. We, in turn, compared the online ratings with the ratings annually updated by ASQ. While online reviews discuss almost identical topics with those of ASQ, the correlation between the ratings from two was weak (r=0.2). We suggest that the text mining approach using online reviews not only provides an inexpensive, dynamic, and locally customizable means of monitoring airport quality but also complements the standard survey by offering an alternative metric. ><0.01). Next, using the LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), we extracted latent topics from the textual reviews and compared them with the standard categories utilized in the Airport Service Quality survey (ASQ). The topics extracted from reviews correspond well with the categories used in ASQ. We, in turn, compared the online ratings with the ratings annually updated by ASQ. While online reviews discuss almost identical topics with those of ASQ, the correlation between the ratings from two was weak (r=0.2). We suggest that the text mining approach using online reviews not only provides an inexpensive, dynamic, and locally customizable means of monitoring airport quality but also complements the standard survey by offering an alternative metric.

Customer Evaluation Of Managers' Responses To Online Complaints, Eric Olson

Eric D. Olson

Managers have begun to respond to customers' online reviews of services on online review websites. However, it is not known how viewers evaluate company-initiated service recovery in the form of manager responses to online reviews. This research has three objectives: (1) to explore how managers are currently responding to electronic word of mouth; (2) to investigate whether a manager's response to electronic negative word of mouth (eNWOM) positively influences viewers' behavioral intentions; (3) to examine which elements in a manager's responses increases viewers' evaluations of trust and behavioral intentions towards the company. Three studies were conducted, one for each objective. …

Speaking For “Free”: Word Of Mouth In Free- And Paid-Product Settings, Samuel Bond, Stephen He, Wen Wen

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This research examines drivers of consumer word of mouth (WOM) in free-product settings, revealing fundamental differences with traditional, paid-product settings. The authors build and investigate a theoretical model that highlights two unique characteristics of free products (reciprocity motivation and diminished adoption risk) and considers their implications for WOM sharing. Results of a retrospective survey, two controlled experiments, and an analysis of more than 5,000 mobile apps at Google Play and Apple’s App Store reveal that consumers are generally more likely to share their opinions of free products than paid products, because of feelings of reciprocity toward the producer. However, this …

Matching Reviewers To Customers: The Role Of Demographics And Preferences In Hotel Online Booking, Cheng Chu Chan, Long W. Lam, Cheris W. C. Chow, Lawrence Hoc Nang Fong, Rob Law

ICHRIE Research Reports

Travelers can easily refer to online reviews as a source of advice before booking a hotel; however, online reviews are not structured which make gathering useful information uneasy. What if online review sites can prioritize and direct the reviews that are most relevant to the customers and save them a lot of time? The value and usefulness of reviews are affected by the reviewers’ background. This study investigated whether customers tend to value the reviews written by similar people more than those written by dissimilar people. The first experiment showed that positive reviews increased consumers’ intention to book a hotel, …

A Look Into Electronic Word-Of-Mouth: The Willingness Of Consumers To Write Online Reviews, Michelle Le

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine the willingness of a consumer to write an online review in relation to their love for a brand, their attachment to a brand and their satisfaction with shopping online for that brand. There are limited empirical studies that investigate the impact of Brand Love, Brand Attachment, and Electronic Shopping Experience Satisfaction on online reviews. Brand Love is the extent of emotional attachment that a content consumer feels for a certain brand or trade name whereas Brand Attachment measures the degree or strength to which consumers connects themselves with a brand. Lastly, a …

Tell It Like It Is: The Effects Of Differing Responses To Negative Online Reviews, Carol L. Esmark Jones, Jennifer L. Stevens, Michael Breazeale, Brian I. Spaid

Management Faculty Research and Publications

Negative electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM) has a notable impact on a consumer's online purchase decisions and attitude toward a company or product. Despite substantial research examining this phenomenon, little attention has been given to the impact of responses to negative eWOM. The authors examine negative eWOM in the form of online reviews to understand how responses may impact a consumer’s product satisfaction and attitude toward the company. Three studies examine specific aspects of responses, including responder type, attribution, and severity of negative review. Consistent findings across the studies reveal while any response is better than no response, a fellow consumer responding …

Double Learning Or Double Blinding: An Investigation Of Vendor Private Information Acquisition And Consumer Learning Via Online Reviews, Nan Hu, Kevin E. Dow, Alain Yee Loong Chong, Ling Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, building upon information acquisition theory and using portfolio methods and system equations, we made an empirical investigation into how online vendors and consumers are learning from each other, and how online reviews, prices, and sales interact among each other. First, this study shows that vendors acquire information from both private and public channels to learn the quality of their products to make price adjustment. Second, for the more popular products and newly released products, vendors are more motivated to acquire private information that is more precise than the average precision to adjust their price. Third, we document …

Numerical Framing And Emotional Arousal As Moderators Of Review Valence And Consumer Choices, Anh Dang

Marketing Theses & Dissertations

Online reviews are gaining importance in determining consumers’ purchase decisions since many consumers trust them as much as personal word-of-mouth. One aspect of reviews that has received great research attention is valence. Valence refers to consumers’ positive or negative evaluations of products. It can be reflected by star ratings or dichotomous choices such as recommendation rates and thumbs up or down rates. The effects of valence reported in previous studies have been equivocal at best. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to identify factors that help reconcile these inconclusive findings.

The first essay examined emotional arousal (e.g., sad versus …

Monitoring Airport Service Quality: A Complementary Approach To Measure Perceived Service Quality Using Online Reviews, Kiljae Lee, Chunyan Yu

Publications

Based on 42,063 airport reviews collected from Google Maps, we conducted a sentiment analysis and a topic modeling. We showed that the sentiment scores computed from textual reviews are good estimates of their paired star-ratings (r=0.63, p<0.01). Next, using the LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), we extracted latent topics from the textual reviews and compared them with the standard categories utilized in the Airport Service Quality survey (ASQ). The topics extracted from reviews correspond well with the categories used in ASQ. We, in turn, compared the online ratings with the ratings annually updated by ASQ. While online reviews discuss almost identical topics with those of ASQ, the correlation between the ratings from two was weak (r=0.2). We suggest that the text mining approach using online reviews not only provides an inexpensive, dynamic, and locally customizable means of monitoring airport quality but also complements the standard survey by offering an alternative metric. ><0.01). Next, using the LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), we extracted latent topics from the textual reviews and compared them with the standard categories utilized in the Airport Service Quality survey (ASQ). The topics extracted from reviews correspond well with the categories used in ASQ. We, in turn, compared the online ratings with the ratings annually updated by ASQ. While online reviews discuss almost identical topics with those of ASQ, the correlation between the ratings from two was weak (r=0.2). We suggest that the text mining approach using online reviews not only provides an inexpensive, dynamic, and locally customizable means of monitoring airport quality but also complements the standard survey by offering an alternative metric.

How Online Reviews Influence Consumer Restaurant Selection, Nefike Gunden

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since social media has been growing rapidly, the restaurant industry has been exploring this area extensively. Given that social media provides restaurant consumers with an opportunity to share their dining experiences, several studies have examined the impact of social media on consumer restaurant selection (Tran, 2015). As a part of the social media umbrella, online reviews are significant factors that influence consumer restaurant selection (Park & Nicolau, 2015; Yang, Hlee, Lee, Koo, 2017). However, there is a lack of understanding with regard to which attributes of restaurant online reviews are the most influential when it comes to customer decision making. …

The Effects Of Text Complexity On Online Review Helpfulness, Michael J. Hine

Communications of the IIMA

This research reported in this paper extends the literature on the helpfulness of online reviews. Previous research has assessed online reviews using standard unidimensional readability algorithms. This research extends previous work by investigating a multidimensional framework, and associated measures, of text complexity and its impact on the helpfulness of online reviews. Results show that as the amount of passive voice and negation in online reviews increase, the helpfulness of said review decreases. Other significant predictors of review helpfulness include word meaningfulness, lexical diversity, and the number of modifiers per noun phrase.

Using Focus Groups And Correspondence Analysis To Explore The Relationship Between Millennials' Online Behavior And Their Opinions Of Online Reviews, James E. Stoddard, Michael J. Dotson, Neel Das

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Consumer decision-making regarding a purchase is usually influenced by feedback received from other people in addition to prior experiences/beliefs/attitudes and marketer dominated information. Such diverse sources of influence are collectively referred to as the influence mix (Simonson and Rosen 2014). Of the different sources in the influence mix, word-of-mouth (i.e., feedback received from other people) is one of the most impactful sources of information (Duan, Gu, and Whinston 2008). With the advent of e-tailers on the Internet, the influence of word-of-mouth communication has grown significantly in the form of online consumer reviews (Schindler ad Bickart 2012). Research has shown that …

Consumer Experiences Of Accommodation Deals Purchased Via Social Coupon Promotions: An Australian Perspective, Carmen Cox

Carmen Cox

The growing popularity of social coupons presents new marketing opportunities for the travel industry, with accommodation properties promoting deals to entice new visitors through the promise of a highly discounted stay. While their popularity has been well determined, little is known about the experience of guests who have purchased via these deals. This article explores guests’ evaluations of Australian accommodation properties by travelers who purchased their accommodation through daily deals, otherwise known as “social coupons.” A qualitative analysis of approximately 500 online reviews from travelers who had purchased an accommodation “daily deal” reveals 11 key themes in their poststay evaluations. …

Consumer Reviews And The Creation Of Booking Transaction Value: Lessons From The Hotel Industry, Edwin N. Torres, Dipendra Singh, April Robertson-Ring

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In recent years, much has been said about online consumer-generated feedback. Concern typically emerges regarding consumer decision-making as well as the preservation of an organization's image. Additionally, a company's financial performance can be affected by customer online ratings. The present study explores the impact of a hotel's rating and number of reviews on the value generated through online transactions. Through collaboration with consulting company Travel Click, the research team gathered a sample of 178 hotels representing various companies and brands within the United States. Research results demonstrate that TripAdvisor ratings as well as the number of reviews had positive relationship …

Why Is The Crowd Divided? Attribution For Dispersion In Online Word Of Mouth, Stephen He, Samuel Bond

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The widespread availability of online word of mouth (WOM) enables modern consumers to assess not only the opinions of others about products and services, but also the extent to which those opinions are consistent or dispersive. Despite longstanding calls for greater understanding of mixed opinions, existing evidence is inconclusive regarding effects of WOM dispersion, and theoretical accounts have relied primarily on the notion of reference dependence. Extending prior work, this research proposes an attribution-based account, in which consumer interpretation of WOM dispersion depends on the extent to which tastes in a product domain are perceived to be dissimilar, so that …

The Phenomenon Of Online Reviews - Digital Headache Or Golden Opportunity For The Tourism Sector?, Jennifer Lawlor, Geraldine A. Gorham, Colin O'Connor

Conference papers

This conceptual paper presents a research agenda for tourism operators by examining the literature pertaining to the phenomenon of online reviews in the tourism sector. The objective is to examine tourist motivations for posting online reviews and their potential impact on the consumer decision making process. Furthermore, this paper seeks to explore how tourism operators may respond to, and act upon, this source of customer word-of-mouth.

The Effect Of Online Reviews On Attitude And Purchase Intention: How Consumers Respond To Mixed Reviews, Chatdanai Pongpatipat

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Three studies investigate how consumers respond to mixed reviews under personal and social influences. The first study looks at how individual self-construal influences the way consumers process mixed reviews from professional critics vs. regular consumers. The study finds consumers with an independent (interdependent) self construal to have less favorable attitude and to be less likely to purchase the product when the negative review comes from professional critics (consumers). Study 2 explores how consumption social context determines the way consumers respond to mixed reviews and how consumer knowledge moderates this behavior. For public consumption, the study finds that both attitude and …