The Influence Of Fake Reviews On Consumers' Purchase Decision And Platform Revenue

In e-commerce transactions,consumers make purchase decisions by referring to online reviews and reputation information in the reputation system.It is because of the important role of online reviews and their commercial value that some sellers manipulate reviews for their own interests,and thus a large number of fake reviews are generated,which directly affects consumers' choices.This study focuses on the causes and effects of fake reviews and mainly answers the following questions:what kinds of sellers or under what conditions sellers are more likely to manipulate online reviews;How does fake reviews affect consumers' purchasing decisions?How will fake reviews affect the third-party e-commerce platforms which connect buyers and sellers,and then how to manage fake reviews?In order to answer the above questions,this paper does the following work:(1)Game analysis of merchants' review manipulation behavior.The online review and reputation information are important reference for consumers in the process of online shopping.Positive reviews and high reputation score make consumers form good expectations for the quality of goods or services,while negative reviews may reduce consumers' purchase intention.In order to improve the reputation score and attract more consumers,some merchants manipulate online reviews in various ways,resulting in a large number of fake reviews.However,there are also risks in review manipulating.Whether a merchant chooses to manipulate depends on the cost and benefit of the behavior.Generally,the higher the profit,the greater the possibility of manipulation;similarly,the higher the cost,the smaller the possibility of manipulation.In different market competition environments,the costs and benefits of manipulating behavior may vary.Analyze the cost and benefit factors for different types of merchants.The game model of merchants' review manipulation is constructed by taking into account the purchase behavior of consumers and the punishment measures of the platform.Merchant strategies include manipulating reviews or not manipulating reviews.The game equilibrium under different conditions is solved,and the conditions for different types of merchants to manipulate online reviews are given.(2)Research on the influence of fake reviews on consumers' purchase decisions.The second problem to be solved in this study is how the fake reviews affect the reputation score and thus the purchase decision of consumers.Generally,consumers will form an initial set of choices for online purchases consulting reputation scores.Therefore,the influence of fake reviews on consumers' purchasing decisions needs to focus on the effectiveness of reputation scores.If reputation score is effective,consumers can make wise purchase decisions.First,constructs the validity criteria of reputation score.And then establishes the model for consumers' reporting behavior,analyzes the conditions for the effectiveness of reputation score under different reputation aggregation modes in the existing reputation system,further,analyzes how the review manipulation influence the effectiveness of the reputation score.It is found that the probability of consumers' reporting behavior in the case of satisfaction and dissatisfaction affects the effectiveness of reputation score.However,the manipulation behavior by some merchants change the probability of submission of review among different products,so that the reputation score may be ineffective.In addition,this study constructs a Bayesian inference model to perceive the true reputation of merchants and further analyzes how these factors affect perceived reputation.The research results provide a basis for the management of fake reviews in the following thesis.(3)Research on the impact of fake reviews on platform revenue.The third-party e-commerce platform connects buyers and sellers,provides services for them to reach a transaction,and generally charges the seller a service fee.Regarding the third-party e-commerce platform as a two-sided market,the platform should provide a good trading environment.Only by reducing the transaction costs between buyers and sellers can more consumers be attracted and more sellers enter the platform,and the platform can gain greater profits.The existence of fake reviews causes the deviation of reputation rating in the reputation system.The inauthenticity of online reviews and the deviation of reputation score will increase the uncertainty of consumers' purchasing process,increase the cost of information searching,and even mislead consumers' purchasing decisions.At the same time,high-quality sellers have to pay extra costs in order to send high-quality signals to consumers,such as free return insurance.Transaction costs of both buyers and sellers have been increased.In the framework of two-sided market theory,game theory is used to analyze the impact of fake review on consumers' utility,sellers' profit and platform revenue.The effects of fake reviews on platform revenue in different market structures under registration fee model and transaction fee are respectively constructed.The results showed that under the fixed fee model,the lower the level of review bias,the higher the platform revenue will be.Under the monopoly market structure,if the platform charges a transaction fee according to a certain proportion of the transaction volume,and the seller takes measures to convey quality information to consumers,the relationship between level of review bias and the platform is uncertain,and is related to the demand and supply elasticity of commodities.However,when a new platform enters the market,the higher the level of review bias,the lower the revenue of the platform will be.(4)Fake review management.According to the above research conclusions,measures for fake reviews management are given:to reduce the generation or impact of fake reviews through mechanism design.Studies have suggested that consumers should be encouraged to provide more online reviews.On this basis,we pay attention to the problem of who should pay for more online reviews.Establishes the game model and concludes that the platform should incentivize consumers to provide more authentic online reviews.Moreover,the upper bound and lower bound of the cost of incentivize from the platform are given in this part.At last,summarizes the whole paper,evaluates the limitations in the research process and further proposes the research direction in the future.