scholarly journals Distribution characteristics of star ratings in online consumer reviews

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Venkatesakumar ◽  
Sudhakar Vijayakumar ◽  
S. Riasudeen ◽  
S. Madhavan ◽  
B. Rajeswari
Keyword(s):  
Online Reviews ◽  
Online Review ◽  
Online Retailing ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Product Categories ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Online Retailers ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
Analyse Data

Purpose The star rating summarises the review content and conveys the message faster than other review components. Star ratings influence helpfulness of the reviews, and extreme reviews are considered as less helpful in the decision process. However, literature has rarely addressed variations in star ratings across product categories and variations between two online retailers. In this paper, the authors have compared the distribution of star ratings across 11 products and among the retailers. Design/methodology/approach Online reviews for 11 product categories have collected, and the authors compared the distribution of star ratings across 11 products and retailers. Correspondence analysis has been applied to show the association between star ratings and product categories for the e-retail firms. Findings The Amazon site contains proportionately more number of 1-star rated reviews than Flipkart. In Amazon reviews, few product categories are closely associated with 1-star and 2-star reviews, whereas no product categories are closely associated with 1-star and 2-star reviews in Flipkart reviews. The results indicate two distinct communication strategies followed by the firms in managing online consumer reviews. Research limitations/implications The authors did not analyse data across demographic details because of access restriction policies of the websites. Practical implications Understanding the distribution of review characteristics will improve the consumer’s decision-making ability and using online review content judiciously. Social implications This study’s results show significant insights on online retailing by providing cues in using shopping sites and online review characteristics of two prominent retailers. Originality/value This paper has brought out a distinct distribution pattern of online review between Amazon and Flipkart. Amazon allows a higher degree of negative contents, whereas Flipkart allows more number of positive reviews.

scholarly journals The influence of e-word-of-mouth on hotel occupancy rate

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 2035-2051 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giampaolo Viglia ◽  
Roberta Minazzi ◽  
Dimitrios Buhalis
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Occupancy Rate ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
Occupancy Rates ◽  
The Impact

Purpose Online consumer reviews have become increasingly important for consumer decision-making. One of the most prominent examples is the hotel industry where consumer reviews on websites, such as Bookings.com, TripAdvisor and Venere.com, play a critical role in consumers’ choice of a hotel. There have been a number of recent studies analyzing various aspects of online reviews. The purpose of this paper is to investigate their effects in terms of hotel occupancy rates. Design/methodology/approach This paper measures through regression analysis the impact of three dimensions of consumer reviews (i.e. review score, review variance and review volume) on the occupancy rates of 346 hotels located in Rome, isolating a number of other factors that might also affect demand. Findings Review score is the dimension with the highest impact. The results suggest that after controlling for other variables, a one-point increase in the review score is associated to an increase in the occupancy rate by 7.5 percentage points. Regardless the review score, the number of reviews has a positive effect, but with decreasing returns, implying that the higher the number of reviews, the lower the beneficial effect in terms of occupancy rates is. Practical implications The findings quantify the strong association of online reviews to occupancy rates suggesting the use of appropriate reputational management systems to increase hotel occupancy and therefore performance. Originality/value A major contribution of this paper is its comprehensiveness in analyzing the relation between online consumer reviews and occupancy across a heterogeneous sample of hotels.

scholarly journals Understanding and Encouraging Online Reviewing With a Selection-Based Review System

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 446-464
Author(s):  
Rowanne Fleck ◽  
Benjamin R Cowan ◽  
Eirini Darmanin ◽  
Yixin Wang
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Review System ◽  
Personal View ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Mobile Interface ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
The Cost

Abstract Online consumer reviews are important for people wishing to make purchases online. However, not everyone contributes online reviews. This paper looks at consumer motivations of reviewing and rating behaviour in order to motivate the design of a mobile interface for online reviewing. An interview study found that people tend to contribute reviews and ratings based on their perception of whether they would be helpful or not to others as well as their own personal view of the usefulness of reviews and ratings when buying products. There also seems to be a cost-benefit trade-off that influences people’s decisions to review and rate: people tend to make a decision based on the perceived value of that review or rating to the community against the effort and costs of contributing. A mobile interface was designed that was intended both to reduce the cost of leaving reviews and to increase the perception of the usefulness of the reviews to others. An initial evaluation of this reviewing interface suggests that it could encourage more people to leave reviews.

Effects of online consumer reviews on firm-based and expert-based communications

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianjun Zhu ◽  
David K.C. Tse ◽  
Qiang Fei
Keyword(s):  
Information Sources ◽  
Communication Channels ◽  
The Other ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Expert Opinions ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
Online Consumer

PurposeTo explain and empirically test how different marketing communication channels interact with each other and contribute to brands’ diverging marketplace performance.Design/methodology/approachWith a unique data set combining key variables of major passenger car brands, the paper takes a source-based perspective to investigate how firm-based communications, expert opinions and online consumer reviews interact and affect brands’ marketplace performance. Then the paper studies the three special boundary conditions under which online consumer reviews’ influence varies in competition with the other two established information sources. Lastly, a study was done to demonstrate the financial significance of investing in different information sources.FindingsThe results show that online consumer reviews mitigate the effectiveness of the other two information sources in driving brand sales. This mitigation effect is also magnified when the brand is weak, firm-based communications are modest and expert opinions are less favorable. The findings further suggest that in the emerging communication enterprise, firm-based and expert-based communications remain the core while user-based communication plays an indispensable competing and complementary role.Practical implicationsIn the new digital era, firms are facing the daunting task of understanding and integrating multiple communication channels. The study provides important implications for both researchers and practitioners with respect to brand management and integrated communications.Originality/valueExisting studies have demonstrated that each of the three communication efforts (by firms, experts and consumers) exerts a significant influence on product sales, but few studies have been conducted in settings marked by the coexistence of these efforts. In addition, the three communication efforts are likely to have different effects on brands with different market positions. The current study is contributing to the literature by filling the above gaps.

Roles of negative emotions in customers’ perceived helpfulness of hotel reviews on a user-generated review website

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 762-783 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minwoo Lee ◽  
Miyoung Jeong ◽  
Jongseo Lee
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Text Mining ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Mining Method ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
Perceived Helpfulness

Purpose This paper aims to explore how emotional expressions embedded in online hotel reviews influence consumers’ helpfulness perceptions. In particular, this study develops and tests hypotheses analyzing empirical data with a text-mining method in the context of hotels to investigate how review valence influences the perceived helpfulness of online hotel reviews and to examine the role of negative emotional expressions embedded in online consumer reviews with respect to perceived helpfulness. Design/methodology/approach This study collected 520,668 online reviews involving 488 hotels in New York City (NYC) on Tripadvisor.com. Of these reviews, 69,202 reviews (13.29 per cent) that had received helpfulness votes were analyzed by a text mining method and negative binomial regression. Findings This study demonstrates that negative reviews are considered more helpful than positive reviews when potential customers read online hotel reviews for their future stay. However, when intensively negative emotions were expressed, the degree of helpfulness regarding negative reviews was diminished. Originality/value While emotional expressions prevail in online consumer reviews, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the consequences of emotional expressions in consumers’ information processing and decision-making. Due to the nature of service, given the inseparability of production and consumption, which often hinders the execution of flawless service, consumers tend to be more dependent on reviews to minimize any potential failures they may encounter later on. Therefore, this study fills a gap by demonstrating that negative reviews and emotional expressions play a more crucial role in consumers’ information processing and decision-making.

scholarly journals “Worse Than What I Read?” The External Effect of Review Ratings on the Online Review Generation Process: An Empirical Analysis of Multiple Product Categories Using Amazon.com Review Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 10912
Author(s):  
Young Joon Park ◽  
Jaewoo Joo ◽  
Charin Polpanumas ◽  
Yeujun Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Online Reviews ◽  
Online Review ◽  
Generation Process ◽  
Product Categories ◽  
Consumer Review ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
Multiple Product ◽  
Online Consumer Review ◽  
Fake Reviews ◽  
Better Than

In this paper, we study the online consumer review generation process by analyzing 37.12 million online reviews across nineteen product categories obtained from Amazon.com. This study revealed that the discrepancy between ratings by others and consumers’ post-purchasing evaluations significantly influenced both the valence and quantity of the reviews that consumers generated. Specifically, a negative discrepancy (‘worse than what I read’) significantly accelerates consumers to write negative reviews (19/19 categories supported), while a positive discrepancy (‘better than what I read’) accelerates consumers to write positive reviews (16/19 categories supported). This implies that others’ ratings play an important role in influencing the review generation process by consumers. More interestingly, we found that this discrepancy significantly influences consumers’ neutral review generation, which is known to amplify the effect of positive or negative reviews by affecting consumers’ search behavior or the credibility of the information. However, this effect is asymmetric. While negative discrepancies lead consumers to write more neutral reviews, positive discrepancies help reduce neutral review generation. Furthermore, our findings provide important implications for marketers who tend to generate fake reviews or selectively generate reviews favorable to their products to increase sales. Doing so may backfire on firms because negative discrepancies can accelerate the generation of objective or negative reviews.

What about “U”? The influence of positive online consumer reviews on the individual's perception of consumption benefits

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 863-885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blanca Hernandez-Ortega
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Functional Forms ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
Positive Valence ◽  
Consumption Benefits

PurposeThis study examines the influence that the positive valence intensity of online consumer reviews (OCRs) has on the benefits that individuals perceive they have derived from consumption. A distinction is made based on whether the performance obtained during the consumption was high or low, that is, whether the product/service met the objectives set by the consumer.Design/methodology/approachThe study is a between-subjects experiment with two manipulations: the positive valence intensity of OCRs (highly positive vs neutral-indifferent) and the performance obtained by the consumer (high vs low). The manipulations were measured on 11-point Likert-type scales, the lowest perception being scored at 0 (strongly disagree) and the highest at 10 (strongly agree). A total of 249 useable questionnaires were returned.FindingsThe results demonstrated that the influence of positive OCRs on the consumer's perception of consumption benefits follows concave curvilinear functional forms for low performance (inverted U-shaped) and convex for high performance (U-shaped). Thus, highly positive OCRs not corroborated by performance lead to negative perceptions, whereas neutral-indifferent OCRs verified by performance create positive perceptions.Originality/valueThis study goes beyond the immediate influence of positive OCRs on purchases and argues that their influence remains important for the individual's final perception of the consumption benefits that she/he, in the event, received. In addition, the results of the present study show that OCRs are important reference points from which individuals make social judgments and comparisons during consumption. Finally, this study provides theoretical and empirical support to explain the U-shaped functional forms associated with the influence of OCRs.

Engaging consumers in multichannel online retail environment

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shekhar Singh ◽  
Sandeep Srivastava
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Consumer Behaviour ◽  
Online Shopping ◽  
Perceived Usefulness ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Product Categories ◽  
Online Retailers ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Online Consumer Behaviour

Purpose With India becoming world’s second largest user of smartphones (Ming, 2017) and with more users adopting mobile devices for online shopping, Indian online retailers now have to manage mobile channel in addition to existing traditional channel (of computers). Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the mapping of product characteristics with individual channel capabilities and its effect on online consumer behaviour, so that e-tailers can create enhanced online shopping experience for consumers. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive research model is developed on the basis of the knowledge gained from multichannel retailing and e-commerce literature. Then, the model is empirically tested, with primary data collected from 344 customers, using structural equation modelling. The data are collected from customers across two product categories: electronics and fashion. Findings The results reveal that perceived usefulness, perceived risk and perceived self-efficacy are important drivers of online consumer behaviour for continued usage. The multi-group analysis confirms the moderation influence of platform type for some relationships across electronics and fashion. Practical implications The findings underline the importance of multichannel complementarity across electronics and fashion. The preference of mobile devices for fashion and traditional devices such as computers for electronics provides valuable insights for online retailers towards management of multichannel e-commerce ecosystem. Originality/value In Indian context, this is the first empirical research on online multichannel retail setting, studying the impact of diverse channel formats on different product categories. The study’s findings give empirical basis to online retailers to look out for right product–channel fit strategy for engaging consumers in the long run.

Aspect context aware sentiment classification of online consumer reviews

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-128
Author(s):  
Barkha Bansal ◽  
Sangeet Srivastava
Keyword(s):  
Sentiment Classification ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Context Aware ◽  
Lexical Resources ◽  
Real World Data ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Online Consumer

Purpose Aspect based sentiment classification is valuable for providing deeper insight into online consumer reviews (OCR). However, the majority of the previous studies explicitly determine the orientation of aspect related sentiment bearing word and overlook the aspect-context. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an aspect-context aware sentiment classification of OCR for deeper and more accurate insights. Design/methodology/approach In the proposed methodology, first, aspect descriptions and sentiment bearing words are extracted. Then, the skip-gram model is used to extract the first set of features to capture contextual information. For the second category of features, cosine similarity is used between a pre-defined seed word list and aspects, to capture aspect context sensitive sentiments. The third set of features includes weighted word vectors using term frequency-inverse document frequency. After concatenating features, ensemble classifier is used using three base classifiers. Findings Experimental results on two real-world data sets with variable lengths, acquired from Amazon.com and TripAdvisor.com, show that the advised ensemble approach significantly outperforms sentiment classification accuracy of state-of-the-art and baseline methods. Originality/value This method is capable of capturing the correct sentiment of ambiguous words and other special words by extracting aspect-context using word vector similarity instead of expensive lexical resources, and hence, shows superior performance in terms of accuracy as compared to other methods.

scholarly journals Purchase Intention: Can Brand Awareness Mediates Online Consummer Reviews?

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-172
Author(s):  
Heni Susilowati ◽  
Titin Hargyatni
Keyword(s):  
Purchase Intention ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Brand Awareness ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Consumer Review ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
Online Consumer Review

This study aims to determine the effect of Online Consumer Review on Purchase Intention with Brand Awareness as an Intervening Variable at Shopee into STEKOM University’s students. The primary data was obtained by distributing questionnaires to buyers who have shopped at Shopee which consists of 23 questions. Samples of 130 respondents taken by random sampling technique. The analytical tool used in data processing uses Multiple Linear Regression with the help of SPSS version 25. The results show that Online Consumer Reviews ( Online Reviews on Website, Consistency of Online Reviews and Website Popularity) have a positive effect on brand awarensess at Shopee. Online Consumer Reviews (Online Reviews on Website, Online Consistency of Reviews and Popularity of Website) variables also have a positive and significant effect on Purchase Intention.  Meanwhile, the Brand Awareness variable is not able to mediate Online Consumer Reviews on Purchase Intentions at the Shopee shopping platform.  

scholarly journals Shifting consumers’ sustainable behavior in the hospitality industry

2021 ◽  
Vol 280 ◽  
pp. 02001
Author(s):  
I Wayan Edi Arsawan ◽  
Viktor Koval ◽  
Ni Putu Santi Suryantini ◽  
Yuriy Polyezhayev
Keyword(s):  
Millennial Generation ◽  
Linear Regression Analysis ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Consumer Reviews ◽  
Online Consumer Reviews ◽  
Online Consumer ◽  
Positive Valence ◽  
Booking Intentions ◽  
Hotel Booking

Although research on hotel booking intention has been carried out in the last decade, the research that reveals the role of hotel reservation information through online consumer reviews in the millennial generation is still very rare. This study aims to determine the factors of online consumer reviews that affect hotel booking intentions for the millennial generation in Bali, Indonesia. This study uses a quantitative approach by distributing questionnaires to 385 respondents through a non-probability sampling technique, namely purposive sampling. The data analysis technique of this research is a multiple linear regression analysis processed using the SPSS 25.0 program. The results reveal that usefulness, timeline, and comprehensiveness have a significant effect on hotel booking intentions. Meanwhile, the volume of online reviews, the positive valence of online reviews, and the negative valence of online reviews are not significant for hotel booking intentions. The research findings reveal the characteristics of the millennial generation which are in line with the theory of reason action that they have their views in making decisions. The research implications are discussed in the paper.

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