Which kinds of online reviews predict the online purchase behavior?

Abstract

As the continuous growth of online shopping, the massive data behind this are valuable sources for website to study and adjust marketing strategies. Therefore, it is of great significance to scrutinize the consumers ' purchase behaviours and the related factors that have major effects on purchase intention or behaviour. This study analysed the data from laboratory setting first, then the online sales data from Taobao.com to explore how the influential factors, such as online reviews (positive vs. negative mainly), risk perception (higher vs. lower) and product types (experiencing vs. searching), interacted on the online purchase intention or online purchase behaviour. The results showed that: (1) in the laboratory setting, the online purchase intention was greatly affected by the online reviews and the interaction between the reviews and the product types. In particular, the purchase intention was higher presented with positive reviews than negative ones, especially for experiencing products. Furthermore, stronger purchase intention was found for experiencing goods with lower risk perception and positive reviews. (2) For the real online transaction data, interestingly, the positive reviews had no effects on purchase, but the neural/negative reviews may negatively affect the purchase behaviour for products with higher risk perception. In addition, these findings were discussed from theories and practice perspectives respectively.