The effect of online reviews on the purchase intention.

Abstract

With online reviews having an important place in consumer's decision journey, the effect of online review on the final purchase intention is an interesting aspect for marketers. Particularly because the number of consumers using online reviews continues grow. Therefore, this research studies the effect of online review characteristics on the purchase intention. This study made a distinction in the online review characteristics and selected word count, review readability, sentimental content, reviewer experience, reviewer disclosure, and product rating. The difference in product type, experience vs. search good, is taking into account during the online experiment. For this online experiment, 12 manipulated reviews were used in a conjoint analysis (N=300). The expected effect was that reviews which contain long word count, easy to read, which contain sentimental content, written by reviewer with experience, review contains reviewer disclosure and moderate product rating have a positive effect on the purchase intention. As expected these characteristics have indeed an effect on the purchase intention. In order of importance the characteristics consist of review readability, word count, sentimental content, product rating, reviewer experience, and reviewer disclosure. The marketing communication mix is renewed with online reviews as new aspect these study results are therefore socially relevant. Besides, these results are an addition to the existing literature.