The Dynamic Interaction Effects Among Brands,Online Reviews And Product Sales-An Empirical Study Based On Panel Vector Auto-regression Model

As an important form of online word-of-mouth,online reviews are the evaluation of products or services.Online reviews are made by online consumers based on their purchase and use of products or services.In the Web2.0 era,online reviews have become an important source of information for consumers to infer product quality and improve their shopping experience.Meanwhile,online reviews have become an important marketing tool for businesses to boost sales and improve brand image.In the context of the mobile internet wave and e-commerce legislation,facing the increasingly fierce brand competition environment,it is significant to study how enterprises apply online reviews to promote sales and fairly participate in market competition.The existing literature has generally recognized that online reviews have a significant impact on the sale of goods.However,so far there are not explicit results on the dynamic interaction effects among brands,online reviews and product sales.By combing and studying the relevant literature of social impact theory and online review,this paper distinguishes the different dimensions of online reviews from the perspective of two typical influence modes of social impact theory(observation of learning information,word of mouth information).The two-way relationship between reviews and sales brings difficulties to existing research.This paper chooses a more robust PVAR model to study the dynamic relationship between reviews and sales.Additionally,based on the comparative analysis of strong and weak brands,this paper uses the theory of signal cost to explain the intrinsic difference of comment elements to study the influence of brands on online reviews.This paper focuses on exploring the dynamic interactive effects and further investigating a question about whether brands weaken online reviews.We collect a unique panel data with a span of 14 weeks only containing televisions form JD.com.Based on signaling theory and ELM model,we introduce the PVAR(panel vector auto-regression)model into the study and propose a new model for depicting the dynamic interaction effects among brands,online reviews and product sales.From the perspective of comparative analysis between strong brand and weak brand,we use SGMM(System Generalized Method of Moments),impulse response function and variance decomposition to deal with the model.The findings show that:(1)There is a positive dynamic interaction system between online reviews(observation of learning information,word of mouth information)and sales of goods.(2)Whether the brand weakens or strengthens review effects depends on the comparison between the signal of strong and weak brands and the signal of social impact Information.For weak brand products,observation of learning information has a comparative advantage.For strong brand products,word of mouth information has a comparative advantage.Based on the above research,this paper provides marketing advice and competition guidance for business enterprises.