Research On The Impact Of Online Fake Reviews On Consumers’ Purchase Behavior

Online reviews are an important source for consumers to obtain product information and play an important role in consumer purchase behavior.However,this important role is exploited by purposeful businessmen,who try to manipulate online reviews by employing people to write fake reviews,trying to interfere with consumers’ understanding of products and mislead consumers’ purchase decisions.The existence of online fake reviews had seriously affected consumers’ judgment and greatly reduced the credibility and reference value of online reviews.Although online fake reviews widely exist in e-commerce platforms,which have become a serious problem affecting the healthy development of e-commerce,and consumers’ purchase behavior is increasingly affected by fake reviews,but the academic research on online fake reviews and consumer purchase behavior is relatively lacking.This paper focuses on consumer purchase behavior in the context of online fake reviews,focusing on the impact of online fake reviews on consumer purchase behavior and the underlying mechanism when the emotions of fake reviews are positive.In order to solve the problem of this study,two experiments were designed in this study.In experiment 1,the effect of fake reviews on consumers’ purchase intention was studied when consumers recognized and did not recognize fake reviews.Research shows that when consumers fail to recognize online fake reviews,positive fake reviews can significantly enhance consumers’ purchase intention.However,when consumers identified online fake reviews,positive fake reviews will significantly reduce consumers’ purchase intention,in addition,when consumers identified fake reviews,the impact of fake reviews on purchase intention is greater than that when consumers do not recognize online fake reviews.The second experiment aims to study the factors influencing consumers’ identification of online fake reviews and the mechanism of online fake reviews’ influence on consumers’ purchase behavior.Among them,the consumer’s recognition of fake reviews is reflected by the consumer’s trust to these reviews.In addition,the influence of online fake reviews on consumers’ purchase behavior is discussed from two aspects: consumers’ purchase intention and consumers’ avoidance intention.Research shows that consumer trust plays a mediating role in fake reviews and consumer purchase behavior.Consumers showed lower confidence in reviews with low level of identity disclosure(vs reviewers with high level of identitydisclosure),too long or too short reviews(vs medium length reviews),and extreme emotional reviews(vs emotional neutral reviews).By significantly reducing consumers’ trust in reviews,consumers’ intention to buy the product is significantly reduced,and consumers’ intention to avoid the business and similar businesses is further triggered.From the perspective of consumer behavior,this study studies the impact of online fake reviews on consumer purchase behavior,enriching the research content of online reviews and online fake reviews.The research results have certain practical guiding significance to help consumers identify online fake comments so as to avoid being misled by fake reviews,to guide online businesses to face up to the adverse consequences of using fake reviews,and to promote the formation of a legitimate and orderly competitive environment for e-commerce platforms.