A Study Of The Impact Factors Of The Helpfulness Of B2C Online Reviews

In2011, B2C enterprises have become the absolute subject of today’s market, therapid development of B2C enterprises not only attracted the participation of buyers andled the increasing number of online users shopping. According to the survey,82%ofOnline shoppers will read user reviews before buy certain commodities, of which41.1%will read product reviews before buy each product,26%of people who buy the mostgoods will read online reviews; and most consumers believe that online reviews are themost important reference information. From the fact, online customer reviews have tobe got the attention of the enterprise, it has become crucial to the survival anddevelopment. Therefore, In order to help consumers make purchase decision, many B2Cwebsites have established online reviews system.At the same time, we found some general problems of information explosion eraon the site: when consumers search online product reviews, they often have to facehundreds or thousands of product reviews. Facing a large number of comments, theconsumer should be how to find what kind of information was valuable? In thiscompetitive era, the time is the opportunities to seize market, how to help consumers tofind reviews what they want to help consumers reduce the decision-making time? Forsome negative comments, how to manage, is the enterprise to hide the comments inorder to maintain a positive image or publish the real information?Based on these issues, this paper selects the Amazon online reviews for the studyand applying both qualitative and quantitative analysis to study the influencing factorsof the helpfulness of online reviews from the view of consumer’s perceptions. Then, wepropose detailed suggestions for B2C enterprises and consumers, enriching the theoryand practice on the impact factors of online reviews helpfulness. In this paper, threeparts refer to reviews helpfulness:(1) From the viewpoint of consumers, we exploredwhat kind of comments that consumers think more valuable, and studied the method ofidentify review helpfulness to improve the efficiency of decision-making.(2) Weestablished one model for the impact factors of reviews helpfulness, and explored whatfactors should pay attention to when the enterprise build an effective online commentsystem.(3) From the perspective of business, we put forward a solution about how tomotivate consumers to post high-quality comments for helping enterprises and consumers to better understand this emerging media of the online reviews, andultimately promote enterprises to obtain the maximum benefit.This paper attempts to achieve some innovation in the following three aspects:First, collecting the first-hand reviews of six products in the study, we empiricallyanalyzed the impact factors of online reviews helpfulness.Second, extending researches to both search goods and experience goods, wefurther explored how product type moderate the impact of online reviews features ononline reviews helpfulness.Third, We established one model for the impact factors of reviews helpfulness fromfour dimensions of reviewers, reader, comment itself and time, then analysis the impactfactors of the helpfulness of online reviews，and more complete the impact factorsmodel of the helpfulness of the review.