Importance of Online Product Reviews from a Consumer's Perspective

Georg Lackermair,Kenan Kanmaz,Daniel Kailer

doi:10.13189/aeb.2013.010101

Georg Lackermair, Kenan Kanmaz + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.13189/aeb.2013.010101

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Abstract

Product reviews and ratings are popular tools to support buying decisions of consumers. These tools are also valuable for online retailers, who use rating systems in order to build trust and reputation in the online market. Many online shops offer quantitative ratings, textual reviews or a combination of both. This paper examines the acceptance and usage of ratings and reviews in the context of e-commerce transactions. A survey among 104 German online shoppers was conducted to examine how consumer reviews and rat- ings are used to support buying decisions. The survey shows that reviews and ratings are an important source of information for consumers. However, qualitative feedback from the survey indicates that the perceived helpfulness of rating systems varies. Especially the comparison of user reviews is a very time consuming process for the customer, because of the unstructured nature of textual user reviews. In this paper we summarize similar problems and show corresponding examples to them. This will give new insight for future research in the area of user ratings and reviews.

Highlights

Nowadays, more and more e-commerce platforms offer product reviews or product ratings
For the indication of importance we used the following aspects: (a) awareness: users are aware of reviews and ratings and use the information purposely in their selection process; (b) frequency: online shoppers do frequently use reviews and ratings as source of information; (c) comparison: importance is indicated if consumers read reviews carefully and compare them with the opinion of other users; (d) effect: reviews and ratings can be considered important, if they affect the product selection
The results in the previous section demonstrated that user reviews are very important for the decision making of customers

Summary

Introduction

More and more e-commerce platforms offer product reviews or product ratings. The terms review and rating are often used interchangeably, but for our work it is important to distinguish these two terms. A product review is a textual review of a customer, who describes the characteristics (e.g. advantages and disadvantages) of a product. A product rating on the other hand represents the customer’s opinion on a specified scale. A popular rating scheme in online shops is the star-rating, where more stars indicate better ratings. Product reviews and ratings are generated by the user (i.e. the customer of an online shop) and published on the website of the retailer.

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