This research examines buyer perceptions of product reviews while shopping online. Adaptations of the Consumer Self-Confidence Scale and personality inventories were used to address our research objectives in an online setting. Primary data was obtained using an online data collection instrument. Using a convenience-based random sampling methodology email, social media, and texting, were used to generate participation and yielded 207 participants. The survey collected both demographic and psychographic data, followed by responses on the use of online reviews in reaching online purchase decisions, and frequency of purchase in various product categories. Based on our data we draw several conclusions of interest to both, marketing scholars and practitioners. Our findings will allow online companies to gain insight into how consumers factor in reviews posted by others in making online purchase decisions and consequently design effective marketing strategies to serve their customers. The paper concludes with avenues for future research in the area.
Bagozzi, R. P. (1993). Assessing Construct Validity in Personality Research: Applications to Measure of Self-Esteem, Journal of Research in Personality, 27(1), 49-87.
https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.1993.1005
Bearden, W. O., Hardesty, D. M., & Rose, R. L. (2001). Consumer Self Confidence: Refinements in Conceptualization and Measurement, Journal of Consumer Research, 28(1), 121-134. https://doi.org/10.1086/321951
Bearden, W. O., Netemeyer, R. G., & Haws, K. L. (2011). Handbook of Marketing Scales: Multi-item Measures for Marketing and Consumer Behavior Research. (3rd ed.). SAGE.
Bounie, D., Bourreau, M., Gensollen, M., & Waelbroeck, P. (2020). Do Online Customer Reviews Matter? Evidence from the Video Game Industry, Telecom ParisTech Working Paper No. ESS-08-02. http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1091449
Constantinides, E. & Holleschovsky, N.I. (2016). Impact of online product reviews on purchasing decisions, Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b8d6/15ca5baeca53105f3f450b56b3f744052737.pdf
Cronbach, L.J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16(2), 297-334.
Cui, G., Lui, H. K., & Guo, X. (2012). The Effect of Online Consumer Reviews on New Product Sales, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 17(1), 39-58. https://doi.org/10.2753/jec1086-4415170102
Floyd, K., Freling, R., Alhoqail, S., Cho, H. Y., & Freling, T. (2014). How Online Product Reviews Affect Retail Sales: A Meta-analysis, Journal of Retailing, 90(2), 217-232.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2014.04.004
Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A Very Brief Measure of the Big-Five Personality Domains, Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504-528. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0092-6566(03)00046-1
Ho-Dac, N. N., Carson, S. J., & Moore, W. L. (2013). The Effects of Positive and Negative Online Customer Reviews: Do Brand Strength and Category Maturity Matter? Journal of Marketing, 77(6), 37-53. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.11.0011
John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five Personality Trait Taxonomy: History, Measurement, and Theoretical Perspectives. In L.A. Pervin and O.P. John (Eds.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. Guilford.
Lawrence, M., & O’Connor M. (2000). Sales forecasting updates: How good are they in practice? International Journey of Forecasting, 16(3), 369-382.
https://doi.org/10.1016/s0169-2070(00)00059-5
Liu, Z., & Park, S. (2015). What makes a useful online review? Implication for travel product websites, Tourism Management, 47, 140-151.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2014.09.020
Matos, C. A., & Rossi, C. V. (2008). Word-of-mouth communications in marketing: a meta-analytic review of the antecedents and moderators, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36(4), 578-596. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-008-0121-1
Murphy, R. (2020). Local Consumer Review Survey 2020. Brightlocal. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
Nunnally, J. C. (1978). Psychometric theory (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
Otterbacher, J. (2009). “Helpfulness” in online communities: a measure of message quality. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1518701.1518848
Park, J. S. (2012). Effects of online consumer reviews on attitudes and behavioral intentions toward products and retailers [Doctoral dissertation, University of Tennessee]. TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange.
https://trace.tennessee.edu//utk_graddiss/1552
Patrali, C. (2001) Online Reviews: Do Consumers Use Them? In M.C. Gilly & J. Meyers-Levy (Eds.), Advances in Consumer Research. Association for Consumer Research.
Reich, T., & Maglio, S. J. (2020). Featuring Mistakes: The Persuasive Impact of Purchase Mistakes in Online Reviews. Journal of Marketing, (84)1, 52-65.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242919882428
Siering, M., & Muntermann, J. (2013). What drives the helpfulness of online product reviews? From stars to facts and emotions. Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Informatics. http://wi2013.de/proceedings/WI2013%20-%20Track%201%20-%20Siering.pdf
Singh, J. P., Irani, S., Rana, N. P., Dwivedi, Y. K., Saumya, S., & Roy, P. K. (2016). Predicting the "helpfulness" of online consumer reviews. Journal of Business Research, 70, 346-355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.08.008
Weinjing, D., Gu, B., & Whinston, A. B. (2008). Do online reviews matter? —An empirical investigation of panel data, Decision Support Systems, 45(4), 1007-1016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2008.04.001
Zhu, F., & Zhang, M. (2010). Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales: The Moderating Role of Product and Consumer Characteristics. Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 133-48. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.74.2.133.
In-Text Citation: (Venkatakrishnan & Devasagayam, 2022)
To Cite this Article: Venkatakrishnan, A., & Devasagayam, R. (2022). Online Reviews and Buying Decisions: A Demographic and Psychographic Analysis. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(5), 93–112.
Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)
Published by Knowledge Words Publications (www.kwpublications.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
