The Impact Of Online Customer Comments On Online Shopping Decision

Online customer reviews(OCRs) are important information source in online shopping, that can help consumers gain available products details in order to search quickly for a better choice and make a right decision. This study with two experiments defined three characteristics of OCRs, which includes the valence(positive/neutral/negative), the detailed degree(detailed/ brief) and the emotional characteristic(rational/emotional). Select the graduate students of Shanghai normal university as subjects, through the laboratory experiment method to verify how the three characteristics affect consumers’ impression to commodity, purchase intention and purchase decision.Experiment 1,try to be present commodity images with different characteristics of the OCRs, by the participants for goods brand Memory Recognition test, that result shows the valence had the greatest impact on participants’ impression of commodity brand, in detail, the negative reviews on commodity impressed most, followed by positive reviews, and finally neutral reviews. We also found that on negative OCRs, the impression of detailed and emotional reviews was better than the simple and emotional ones; the rational and simple reviews had the better impression than emotional and simple ones.Experiment 2,used same materials of experiment 1, the participants were asked to read each OCR, then they gave purchase intention rating and made a purchase decision on each of the commodities, the results show that the OCRs valence and detailed degree had significant effect on participants purchase intention and purchase decision, and both have interaction, namely on the positive reviews, the participants purchase intention and purchase rate on the detailed level are significantly higher than the simple level, and on the negative reviews, the participants purchase intention and purchase rate on the detailed level are significantly lower than the simple level. Meanwhile, the detailed degree and emotional characteristics have interaction on the purchase decision, namely on the rational OCRs, the participants purchase rate on the detailed level is higher than the simple level, but on the emotional OCRs, that purchase rate did not differ significantly on the detailed level and simple level.The above results show that the OCRs’ valence, detailed degree and emotional characteristics all effect online consumers’ commodity impression, purchase intention and purchase decision, which provides an inspiration for further analysis of OCRs effecting in online making purchase decision.