The impact of monetary rewards for online reviews

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1486-1515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongrui Duan ◽  
Chen Chen ◽  
Jiazhen Huo
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Monetary Reward ◽  
Product Reviews ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Monetary Rewards ◽  
Stage 1 ◽  
The Impact

Purpose To encourage buyers to contribute product reviews, some online sellers offer monetary rewards. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of monetary rewards on buyers’ purchase decisions and review contributions, as well as the impact on the seller’s price decisions and profit. Design/methodology/approach The authors consider an online seller in a two-stage setting. Prior to Stage 1, the profit-maximizing seller sets the price and decides whether to offer a monetary reward secretly to motivate online reviews. Then, a continuum of buyers arrives and makes purchase decisions at the beginning of each stage. First-stage buyers may contribute reviews if they are satisfied, which will affect demand in the second stage. Using this analytical framework, the authors analyze the impact of monetary rewards. Findings If the monetary reward is small, it decreases the seller’s profit and fails to generate more reviews. It also increases price, leading to a decline in total demand. Thus, when the reward is lower than a certain threshold, all buyers are worse off. Only when the reward exceeds the threshold are buyers who contribute reviews better off. Profit and total demand both increase in review quality, while the price may either increase or decrease in it. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to analyze theoretically the impact of monetary rewards on buyers’ purchase decisions, review contributions and on online sellers’ decisions.

scholarly journals May we buy your love? psychological effects of incentives on writing likelihood and valence of online product reviews

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 805-820
Author(s):  
Ina Garnefeld ◽  
Sabrina Helm ◽  
Ann-Kathrin Grötschel
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Online Review ◽  
Product Reviews ◽  
Monetary Rewards ◽  
Online Product Reviews ◽  
The Impact

AbstractAcknowledging the impact on their sales, companies strive to increase the number of positive online reviews of their products. A recently popular practice for stimulating online reviews is offering monetary rewards to customers in return for writing an online review. However, it is unclear whether such practices succeed in fulfilling two main objectives, namely, increasing the number and the valence of online reviews. With one pilot and two experimental studies, this research shows that offering incentives indeed increases the likelihood of review writing. However, the effect on review valence is mixed, due to contradictory psychological effects: Incentive recipients intend to reciprocate by writing favorable reviews but also perceive a need to resist marketers’ influence, which negatively affects their review valence. Finally, recipients who are less satisfied with the product are particularly prone to psychological costs and decrease the positivity of their online reviews. Consequently, incentives should be applied carefully.

Product weakness finder: an opinion-aware system through sentiment analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 114 (8) ◽  
pp. 1301-1320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongwei Wang ◽  
Wei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Comparative Evaluation ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Product Reviews ◽  
Network Algorithms ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sentiment Mining ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Sentiment Score

Purpose – Extant methods of product weakness detection usually depend on time-consuming questionnaire with high artificial involvement, so the efficiency and accuracy are not satisfied. The purpose of this paper is to propose an opinion-aware analytical framework – PRODWeakFinder – to expect to detect product weaknesses through sentiment analysis in an effective way. Design/methodology/approach – PRODWeakFinder detects product weakness by considering both comparative and non-comparative evaluations in online reviews. For comparative evaluation, an aspect-oriented comparison network is built, and the authority is assessed for each node by network analysis. For non-comparative evaluation, sentiment score is calculated through sentiment analysis. The composite score of aspects is calculated by combing the two types of evaluations. Findings – The experiments show that the comparative authority score and the non-comparative sentiment score are not highly correlated. It also shows that PRODWeakFinder outperforms the baseline methods in terms of accuracy. Research limitations/implications – Semantic-based method such as ontology are expected to be applied to identify the implicit features. Furthermore, besides PageRank, other sophisticated network algorithms such as HITS will be further employed to improve the framework. Practical implications – The link-based network is more suitable for weakness detection than the weight-based network. PRODWeakFinder shows the potential on reducing overall costs of detecting product weaknesses for companies. Social implications – A quicker and more effective way would be possible for weakness detection, enabling to reduce product defects and improve product quality, and thus raising the overall social welfare. Originality/value – An opinion-aware analytical framework is proposed to sentiment mining of online product reviews, which offer important implications regarding how to detect product weaknesses.

Are attractive reviewers more persuasive? Examining the role of physical attractiveness in online reviews

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 728-739
Author(s):  
Marie Ozanne ◽  
Stephanie Q. Liu ◽  
Anna S. Mattila
Keyword(s):  
Physical Attractiveness ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Brand Evaluations ◽  
The Impact

Purpose While online reviews are of paramount importance in brand evaluations and purchase decisions, the impact of a reviewer’s attractiveness is not well understood. To bridge that gap, this paper aims to explore how physical attractiveness cues through profile photos influence customers’ brand evaluations. Design/methodology/approach The first study assesses the impact of attractiveness and review valence on brand evaluations. The authors used an experimental design and tested the model with an ANCOVA. Study 2 examines the impact of attractiveness in the context of multiple reviews and tests attractiveness heuristic as the underlying mechanism. Findings The findings indicate that when an attractive (vs less-attractive) reviewer writes a positive review, brand evaluations are enhanced. However, such an effect does not occur with a negative review. With multiple reviews varying in valence, cognitive load activates the use of an attractiveness heuristic when a positive review is written by an attractive (vs less-attractive) reviewer, thus leading to enhanced brand evaluations. Originality/value These findings highlight the presence of the attractiveness halo effect in online reviews and offer important implications to social media marketers. While previous studies have largely focused on review characteristics (e.g. star ratings, strength of the argument, etc.), this study focuses on reviewer characteristics (i.e. attractiveness) and cognitive biases associated with online brand evaluations.

The impact of COVID-19 on online product reviews

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Omer Cem Kutlubay ◽  
Mesut Cicek ◽  
Serdar Yayla
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Product Reviews ◽  
Product Evaluations ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Product Reviews ◽  
Online Product Ratings ◽  
Negative Tone ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Product Ratings

Purpose The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led to drastic changes in the lives of customers. Social isolation, financial difficulties, fear of being infected and many other factors have caused the psychological well-being of customers to deteriorate. By taking up the role of online reviews in the regulation of consumers’ moods, this study aims to examine the changes that have occurred in online product ratings, as well as the negative tone and word counts of product reviews during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This study examines the online reviews of 321 products in the pre-COVID, immediate COVID and extended COVID periods. This paper compares the changes that have taken place in product evaluations via various analysis of variance analyses. The authors also test the effect of COVID-related deaths on product evaluations via regression analyses. Findings The results indicate that online product ratings decreased sharply just after the outbreak of COVID-19. The study also found that the tone of reviews was found to be more negative and the length of reviews appeared to be longer in comparison to the pre-COVID-19 period. The results also revealed that the product type (experience vs search) moderated the effect of the pandemic in online reviews and the impact of COVID-19 on online product reviews diminished in the later stages of the ongoing pandemic. Practical implications Managers should be aware of the detrimental impact of pandemics on online product reviews and be more responsive to customer problems during the early stages of pandemics. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyzes the effects of a pandemic on online product ratings and review content. As such, this study offers a timely contribution to the marketing literature.

The effect of emotions, eWOM quality and online review sequence on consumer intention to follow advice obtained from digital services

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Ruiz-Mafe ◽  
Enrique Bigné-Alcañiz ◽  
Rafael Currás-Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Structural Model ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Moderating Effect ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Bias Effect ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Digital Services ◽  
Information Cues ◽  
Cognitive Information ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThis paper analyses the interrelationships between emotions, the cognitive information cues of online reviews and intention to follow the advice obtained from digital platforms, paying special attention to the moderating effect of the sequencing of review valence.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected from 830 Spanish Tripadvisor users. In a two-step approach, a measurement model was estimated and a structural model analysed to test the proposed hypotheses. SmartPLS 3.0 software was used. The moderating effect of sequencing of reviews is tested.FindingsThe data analysis showed a bias effect of review sequence on the impact of online information cues and emotions on intention to follow advice obtained from Tripadvisor. When the online reviews of a restaurant begin with positive commentaries, their perceived persuasiveness is a stronger driver of the pleasure and arousal elicited by online reviews than when they begin with negative reviews. On the other hand, the perceived helpfulness of online reviews only triggers arousal when the user reads negative, followed by positive, comments. The impact of pleasure on intention to follow the advice provided in an online travel community is higher with positive-negative than with negative-positive sequences.Originality/valueWhile researchers have demonstrated the benefits of customer reviews on company sales, a largely uninvestigated issue is the interplay between emotions and cognitive information cues in the processing of online reviews. This is one of the first studies to examine the moderating effect of conflicting reviews on the impact of emotions and cognitive information cues on consumer intention to follow the advice obtained from digital services.

Business Data Analytics Applications to Online Product Reviews and Nationalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-39
Author(s):  
Charles C. Willow
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Data Analytics ◽  
Big Data Analytics ◽  
Smart Phone ◽  
Consumer Preference ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Product Reviews ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Control Factors

This paper investigates the data analytics between consumer purchase decisions relative to the on-line reviews. The multi-attributes associated with purchase decisions are comprised of nationalism and consumer preference to be correlated with online reviews using big data analytics. By far, a small fraction of meaningful studies have sought to correlate nationalism and ethnocentrism with big data analytics to date. Globally accepted generic products are selected to expedite the process of data engineering. Two sets were arranged: passenger automobiles for transportation with an estimated $9 trillion global market and the smart phone, boosting its market size of approximately $5 billion. Both products provide minimized cultural, linguistic, gender, age, and/or custom barriers of entry for prospective digital consumers, thereby allowing relatively unrestricted engagement with online reviews and purchases. A series of hypothesis tests indicate that there is a positive correlation between nationalism and automobiles. As to smart cell phones, however, nationalism had nominal control factors. Multi-variate analytics were performed by using R and Tableau Public.

Benchmarking the efficiencies of Indonesia’s municipal water utilities using Stackelberg data envelopment analysis

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 588-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Wibowo ◽  
Hans Wilhelm Alfen
Keyword(s):  
Data Envelopment Analysis ◽  
The Body ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Restrictive Assumption ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Municipal Water ◽  
The Impact

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a yardstick efficiency comparison of 269 Indonesian municipal water utilities (MWUs) and measures the impact of exogenous environmental variables on efficiency scores. Design/methodology/approach – Two-stage Stackelberg leader-follower data envelopment analysis (DEA) and artificial neural networks (ANN) were employed. Findings – Given that serviceability was treated as the leader and profitability as the follower, the first and second stage DEA scores were 55 and 32 percent (0 percent = totally inefficient, 100 percent = perfectly efficient), respectively. This indicates sizeable opportunities for improvement, with 39 percent of the total sample facing serious problems in both first- and second-stage efficiencies. When profitability instead leads serviceability, this results in more decreased efficiency. The size of the population served was the most important exogenous environmental variable affecting DEA efficiency scores in both the first and second stages. Research limitations/implications – The present study was limited by the overly restrictive assumption that all MWUs operate at a constant-return-to-scale. Practical implications – These research findings will enable better management of the MWUs in question, allowing their current level of performance to be objectively compared with that of their peers, both in terms of scale and area of operation. These findings will also help the government prioritize assistance measures for MWUs that are suffering from acute performance gaps, and to devise a strategic national plan to revitalize Indonesia’s water sector. Originality/value – This paper enriches the body of knowledge by filling in knowledge gaps relating to benchmarking in Indonesia’s water industry, as well as in the application of ensemble two-stage DEA and ANN, which are still rare in the literature.

Sharing tourism experiences in social media

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marios D. Sotiriadis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Research Themes ◽  
Consumer Perspective ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: to perform a synthesis of academic research published between 2009 and 2016 regarding the changes in tourism consumer behavior brought about by the use of social media (SM); and to suggest a set of strategies for tourism businesses to seize opportunities and deal with resulting challenges. Design/methodology/approach A volume of 146 peer-reviewed journal articles were retrieved from two major databases. Content analysis of this academic research has been performed, exploring the effects of online reviews on tourism consumers and providers. Findings The content analysis identified three main research themes that were investigated by scholars and classified into two major categories, namely, consumer perspective and provider perspective: the antecedents (factors motivating and influencing tourists); the influence of online reviews on consumer behaviour; and the impact of these reviews on tourism businesses (providers’ perspective). Research limitations/implications This study is based on a literature review and outcomes reported by previous studies; hence, the suggestions are indicative rather than conclusive. Some publication sources were not included. Practical implications This paper suggests a range of adequate strategies, along with operational actions, formulated for industry practitioners in the fields of management and marketing. Originality/value It provides an update of the state of published academic research into SM and an integrated set of management and marketing strategies for tourism providers in seizing the opportunities and dealing with the challenges raised in a digital context.

Tit for tat: understanding the responding behavior of property hosts on peer-to-peer rental platforms

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 1105-1126
Author(s):  
Sai Liang ◽  
Xiaoxia Zhang ◽  
Chunxiao Li ◽  
Hui Li ◽  
Xiaoyu Yu
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Tit For Tat ◽  
Hotel Managers ◽  
The Impact

Purpose Due to their very different contexts, the responses made by property hosts to online reviews can differ from those posted by hotel managers. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of the responding behavior of hosts on peer-to-peer property rental platforms. Design/methodology/approach This study applied a comprehensive framework based on the theory of planned behavior. Empirical models are constructed based on 89,967 guest reviews with their associated responses to reveal the responding pattern of property hosts. Findings Unlike hotel managers, property hosts are more likely to reply to positive than to negative reviews; moreover, when they do choose to respond to negative reviews, they are likely to do so negatively, in a “tit-for-tat” way. This study also finds that one reason for the difference of responding patterns between property hosts and hotel managers is the hosts’ lack of experience of consumer relationship management and service recovery. Research limitations/implications This study provides a good start point for future theoretical development regarding effective responding strategy on peer-to-peer property rental platforms, as well as some useful implications for practitioners. Originality/value This study is an early attempt to analyze the impact of the particularity of emerging platforms on the responding behavior of service providers based on a comprehensive conceptual framework and empirical model thus provides a good starting point for the further investigation of effective response strategies on these emerging platforms.

The impact of online reviews on product returns

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaofei Li ◽  
Baolong Ma ◽  
Hongrui Chu
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Quantitative Model ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Product Returns ◽  
Content Type ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Product Return ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThe value of online reviews has been well documented by academics and practitioners. However, to maximise the benefits of consumer reviews, online sellers must avoid the negative consequences associated with customer feedback, such as reputation loss, or product returns after purchase. In developing a better understanding of the relationships between online reviews and their potential for negative impacts, this research aims to explore product returns. Through a quantitative model, this research demonstrates why online reviews can result in product return behaviours.Design/methodology/approachThe hypotheses were tested via two studies. In Study 1, the authors examine the direct effects of review valence and review volume on product returns by analysing secondary data on 4,995 stores on China's Taobao.com. Study 2 further extends and validates the findings of Study 1 with a survey sample of 795 participants across several online shopping platforms. This analysis examines the mechanics and conditions that influence the relationships between online reviews and product returns through partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).FindingsThe results show that both review valence (i.e. average star ratings) and the number of reviews can increase the probability of product returns due to the high expectations that result from positive online reviews. Further, the effect of review valence on product returns is stronger for first-time purchasers at a store. In terms of mitigation, the analysis shows that bilateral communications between sellers and buyers can temper the unrealistic expectations set by positive reviews, leading to fewer product returns.Originality/valueThis research adds to the literature on online reviews by exploring the negative consequences of online reviews and the role they play in online purchasing decisions. The findings also provide direct evidence as to why online reviews can result in more product returns, adding clarity to extant research which contains conflicting conclusions as to how online reviews affect product return behaviours.

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