| In recent years, with the rapid development of Web2.0technologies, thetraditional way of information dissemination is changing rapidly. People whoappeal purchasing-decision help from offline friends gradually turn to theUser-Generated Content (UGC) appearing in the Internet, especially productreviews. In online shopping, online reviews reflecting user views and attitudeshave received the unprecedented attention from customers. Online reviews havebecome an important vehicle for consumers to seek information beforepurchasing, and also an important channel for potential consumers to understandthe quality of goods and services. At the same time, online reviews provide aeffective way for enterprises to communicate with customers and increase sales.Online reviews are playing a more and more important role in the Internetplatform, and have the vitality of sustainable development. However, for theimpact of constant changes and innovations of onine reviews, scholars have notfully understood. It is urgent to understand the evolutions of new mechanismsand new laws, then to provide suggestions for consumers and companies to useonline reviews effectively.Driven by theories, this study explored the impact of online reviews onconsumer perceptions and product sales based on a behavior-oriented andtechnology-oriented research methodology. First, using a series of search goodsand experience goods, combined with content analysis and empirical analysismethods, based on the properties of the product reviews this study explored thehelpfulness of online reviews and identified the factors that affect thehelpfulness of online reviews, which is the foundation of the whole paper. Wefound that the polarity of product reviews, review content length, productattributes mentioned in the review, the total number of helpful ness votes, thenumber of reply can affect the helpfulness of online reviews, and product typeplayed a moderating role in the relationship between helpfulness and thepolarity of product reviews.Second, to explore the impact online reviews on consumer perceptions, thispaper analyzed the impact of online reviews on customer satisfaction, and theimpact of price in online reviews on perceived quality and value by crawlingonline hotel reviews. With the application of content analysis, this paper gave acomprehensive understanding of customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry,also gave a relatively comprehensive summary of the influencing factors of customer satisfaction. We found that location and transportation, food andbeverage management, and value are important factors that influence consumersatisfaction, and customers are satisfied with these services. However, despitecustomers paid more attention to the bed, room size and decoration, andreception, they did not get satisfactory service. In addition, this paper made acomparative analysis of these key factors between luxury hotels and budgethotels, and the results could help hotel managers better enh ance consumersatisfaction. Results showed that, except the factors of lobby and soundinsulation, customers staying in luxury and budget hotels could reach aconsensus on the the degrees of satisfaction and importance of the most factors.Consumers booking luxury hotels were more concerned about the lobby, and theguests staying in budget hotels are more concerned about sound insulation. Totest the impact online reviews on perceived quality and perceived value, thispaper verified the impact of price in online reviews on perceived service qualityand value in a network environment, also the moderating role of star rating andtravel type that affect the relationship between price and the perceived qualityand value. The results showed that the price had a significant positive effect onperceived service quality, and had negative effect on perceived value. Inaddition, star rating could moderate the relationship between price andperceived quality and value, and travel type played a moderating role in therelationship between price and perceived quality.In addition, around the impact of online reviews on product sales, thispaper launched a study in the following two aspects: First, through aneye-tracking experiment design, this study captured customers’ concerns basedon the hotspots of goods, and discussed the necessity and usefulness of customeronline reviews embedded in the descriptions of goods. Through the eye trackingexperiment, we find that the participants will take the initiative to browse theonline reviews embedded in product descriptions, after controlling the factors,such as reputation, price, historical sales. Aaccording to the results, this type ofonline reviews will influence consumers’ decision-making process. Secondly,from the perspective of online reviews embeded in the product descriptions,with online reviews data in Taobao, we established a conceptual model toexplore the impact of online reviews on sales, as well as the moderating role oftrust playing in the relationship between online reviews and sales. Empiricalanalysis showed that the online reviews embedded in the descriptions have apositive effect on the sales, and reputation could can affect sales through theonline reviews embedded in the descriptions. Sellers with the same reputation will obtain higher sales if they embed online reviews to the productdescriptions. |
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