Chinese E-Commerce:Evaluating The Impact Of Ratings And Reviews Mechanisms On Consumer Trust

When it comes to e-commerce,consumer trust and vendor reputation are often tested.Unlike traditional face-to-face market,exchanges in the online environment generate transaction risks such as product quality uncertainty or insecurity.Those risks are all the more intensified in the Chinese online marketplace.Indeed,Chinese vendors are often criticized as fraudsters even on traditional marketplace.Therefore consumers assume that the risks would be higher on a marketplace without physical interaction and the need to develop more reputational systems becomes urgent.The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the impact of reputational systems such as online feedbacks(ratings and reviews)on consumer trust and analyze to what extent the implementation of such systems influences the purchasing intention of customers and in turn enhances customer trust in a particular vendor.Through an empirical research,I investigated consumers' familiarity and attitude towards ratings and reviews systems.A survey was conducted as the research strategy and primary data were collected through a questionnaire.The results of the research show that on the Chinese electronic market,ratings and reviews play a significant part in consumer/vendor relationship.Consumers are positively influenced by positive ratings or reviews.However,a low amount of reviews or a presence of negative reviews durably impacts any future business relationship.In order to create a trustworthier marketplace,vendors need to interact more with consumers and compensate the physical interaction missing on the online marketplace with tools such as instant messaging applications.