Unveiling The Power Of Supplementary Reviews:Three Essays On Mechanisms,Characteristics,and Motivations Of Online Reviews

Online reviews act as free sales agents.Manipulation and fraud of online reviews,however,decrease their efficacy.Online shopping platforms in China facilitate customers by giving them a choice to read the relevant reviews that they want to read.For instance,“negative reviews,” “positive reviews,” “reviews with pictures,” and “reviews with additional comments.” The last category of reviews with additional comments,also known as supplementary reviews,are usually provided after experiencing the product making them more useful than the primary reviews.The new feature of supplementary reviews enables consumers to post two reviews of the same product on different times.This new review type in isolation and in combination with primary review is considered more useful since it aims to provide a better and more detailed account of customer experience about product quality and functional benefits.The scant literature on supplementary reviews confirms this usefulness proposition by providing empirical support;existing research has also found out that they impact sales more than their primary counterparts.The research,however,did not unearth what happen in the mind consumers when they confront both reviews.This dissertation is an attempt to test the impact of combinations of supplementary reviews with primary reviews,having same and different valence,on intention to buy in the following ways.First,it unveils the psychological mechanisms operating in consumer mind by using dual process theory.These mechanisms are supposed to arise as a result of the potential consumers being exposed to different configurations of consistent and inconsistent reviews further resulting into four conditions.Second,it suggests different ways to handle those combinations to increase their efficacy and reduce the detrimental effect arising mainly from inconsistent reviews.We test that seller response to reviews can manage the negative effect of inconsistent review information to the extent that provision of seller replies significantly improves intention to buy in almost all reviews combinations.Third,the overall perceived truthfulness of reviews appearing on a particular platform reduces the psychological confusion arising from inconsistent reviews.This can serve as an important strategy for platforms that they should strive to improve the truthfulness of reviews so that customer get a clear message that platform is not involved in review manipulation and have zero tolerance policy for fake or biased reviews.Fourth,we tested consistent and inconsistent supplementary reviews effect on the intention to buy,how the provision of seller response affect this relationship,and the contingent effect of different psychological perceptions of these and online reviews in general.This finding further reinforced the proposition that efficient use of seller replies could potentially serve as an effective reputation management strategy instead of following the industry practice of review manipulation and using financial incentives to motivate consumers for providing good reviews.Additionally,we undertook a qualitative study to reveal motivations to post primary as well as supplementary reviews.The purpose of this study is to guide sellers on how they can motivate their consumers to provide a supplementary review.Successful stimulation of supplementary reviews helps other potential consumers to make good purchase decisions which in turns can also help the seller to sell more.Contrary to the mainstream literature on motivations for providing reviews we identify a new type of altruism of using social appeals by sellers in the form of personalized messages as a chief motivation to supply primary reviews.This dissertation consists of three essays—two essays use experiments while the third is a qualitative study.The two experimental essays reveal that effective management of primary and supplementary reviews can boost the consumer's intention to buy by mitigating the detrimental consequences of inconsistent supplementary reviews.Specifically,the first essay proposes the underlying mechanisms of confidence and ambivalence caused by consistent and inconsistent supplementary reviews respectively using cue-consistency and dual-process theories.It identified the boundary conditions of perceived review manipulation and seller replies,influencing the intention to buy.The second essay tests the efficacy of seller response to different supplementary review combinations in improving intention to buy through perceived truthfulness,usefulness of reviews,and skepticism of reviews.The third essay unveils the motivations to post primary and supplementary reviews.We find that emotional regulation and altruism influence the posting behavior of both the primary and supplementary reviews.This essay identifies that social appeal is the most dominant motivation for posting the primary reviews in contrast to mainstream literature.These findings are especially relevant for the emerging e Commerce markets since online reviews can act as key persuasive medium to facilitate the growth of e Commerce.This dissertation adds to the literature on online reviews by providing a detailed investigation of supplementary reviews in the context of online shopping platforms.The findings are especially useful to promote e Commerce in emerging economies taking China as an exemplar.