Consumer Reviews on Retail Websites

Abstract

Consumer reviews on retail websites are now established as a common type of user-generated marketing communication online. To provide a comprehensive and well-defined framework for researchers and marketers who are interested in its implementation and evaluation, a synthetic review of existing studies on the consumer reviews are conducted here. More specifically, the prevalence and popularity of consumer reviews of retail websites, the motivations behind the review activities, and the effects are examined in detail. Three important message characteristics of the reviews - volume, valence, and value - are also identified and discussed. After this assessment of the current status is completed, the focus is shifted to a more existential question about the consumer reviews: Whether the reviews posted by consumers are essentially “commons,” an entity created by members of a wide open community and amendable to exploitation by consumers and marketers alike, or “intellectual properties” of the online retailers who collect and manage them. Subsequently, a view that regards the consumer reviews as social capital is presented, followed by a discussion concerning moderation and reputation systems as quality control mechanisms.