The influence of online customer reviews on the purchase decision process for handmade products

Abstract

Studying the behavior of consumers of various goods and services in the offline and online environment is a necessary element of an effective business in any field. Consumer behavior studies provide insight into how the process of making a decision to purchase a product takes place, and also allows you to identify the tools of influence on consumers on the part of manufacturers and sellers. The author presents a review of the literature on the influence of online reviews on customer behavior, and the author also conducted a study to clarify the presence and level of influence of online customer reviews on the purchase decision process for handmade products. Based on the analysis of the literature, the article identifies the factors of online customer reviews that influence the purchase decision process for handmade products: the quality of online customer reviews, the characteristics of online customer reviews and the number of online customer reviews. The quality of online customer reviews is determined by relevance, reliability, understandability, sufficiency, number of words in the online review, usefulness of the online reviews, and enjoyment of the online reviews. The characteristics of online customer reviews are determined by the text, images and rating in the online customer review. The results of the study showed that online reviews, among other sources of information, are considered quite reliable by buyers, online reviews have an impact on the purchase decision process for handmade products. Among the online review quality metrics, the perceived reliability of an online review, the number of words in an online review, and the perceived usefulness of an online review have the biggest impact on the purchase decision process for handmade products. Among the specific characteristics of an online review, the images in the online review are the most influential. The number of online reviews is also one of the important factors influencing the purchase decision process for handmade products. The results obtained are important for developing directions for improving the marketing tools of the master of handmade products.