Understanding the process of writing fake online reviews

Abstract

Although the prevalence of fake online reviews for products and services is deemed to have become an epidemic, little is known about the strategies used to write such bogus entries. Hence, this paper conducts an exploratory study to understand the process by which fake reviews are written. Participants were invited to write fake reviews for hotels in a research setting. Thereafter, they were asked to answer a questionnaire which solicited qualitative responses about their strategies. Results indicate that the process of writing fake reviews commences with extensive information gathering via common review websites such as TripAdvisor as well as search engines such as Google. The gathered information is then used as cues to write short, catchy and succinct fake review titles, as well as informative and subjective fake review descriptions. Adequate efforts are generally invested to blur the lines between fake reviews and authentic entries.