Research On The Effect Of Neutral Reviews On Group-Buying Sales

With the rapid development of the Internet,group buying has become a popular shopping method due to its advantages of low prices and strong personalization.Group buying has improved consumers' user experience.In the offline context,product attributes and other people's recommendations will have a huge effect on consumers'decision-making,but in the context of online shopping,consumers rely more on Internet word-of-mouth.Online review is a typical online word of mouth and has become the most important source of information for consumers to understand the product before buying a group-buy product.On the one hand,unlike traditional B2C and C2C e-commerce models that complete transactions through logistics,online group-buying consumers pay online and must complete the transaction offline in the physical stores before posting comments.This feature make online reviews of group purchases more authentic.On the other hand,past research mainly focuses on reviews from the stars and polar reviews.The impact of online reviews on sales is rarely analyzed from the perspective of neutral reviews and repeat customers.Therefore,this article starts with dividing online reviews into positive comments,negative comments,completely neutral comments,and mixed neutral comments.Then we distinguishes repeat users among reviewers.Use data obtained above to analyze the influencing factors of sales of group-buying products.It is of great significance to solve the problems of low stickiness and loyalty of users for group-buy platforms and promote the sound development of group-buy platform.This study selected the group-buying platform as research object,and studied the influencing factors of group purchase sales from the aspects of reviews' emotional characteristics,number of returning customers,and product characteristics.Quantitative analysis research method is used to analyse product data and review data of the merchants on group-buying platforms,which is grabbed using web crawlers.With sentiment analysis of online reviews,we can get the calculation of emotional values of reviews,and divide online reviews into positive,negative,completely neutral and mixed neutral reviews;text reviews are performed on online reviews to distinguish repeaters among reviewers.Then we construct a theoretical model and use stepwise regression and hierarchical regression methods to analyze and process the above data,finally we draw the following conclusions:(1)Mixed neutral reviews have a positive effect on group purchase sales;completely neutral reviews have a negative effect on group purchase sales.(2)The number of returning customers has a positive impact on group purchase sales.(3)Mixed neutral comments negatively moderate the relationship between ratings and group purchase sales,and completely neutral reviews positively moderate the relationship between ratings and group purchase sales.(4)Product characteristics will moderate the relationship between neutral reviews and group purchase sales.The lower the price of group purchase products,the weaker the effect of mixed neutral reviews on group purchase sales.The higher the brand awareness,the weaker the effect of completely neutral reviews on group sales.Theoretically,this article enriches the research,on group purchase from the perspective of neutral reviews and repeated purchases of customers.In practice,the research results of this article can provide reference for the group-buying platform optimize review system and adjust marketing programs for merchants.