Perceived Usefulness Factors of Online Reviews: A Study of Amazon.com

Lee, Sang-Gun; Trimi, Silvana; Yang, Chang-Gyu

doi:10.1080/08874417.2016.1275954

Cited by 38 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…More recently, Yang et al (2017) show that review length and readability affect review usefulness. Lee et al (2017) find that potential customers perceive that both high star ratings and lengthy review postings are more helpful to their purchase decisions. Food and beverage images are shown to affect both review usefulness and review enjoyment (Yang et al, 2017).…”

Section: Imds 1184mentioning

confidence: 90%

Usefulness, funniness, and coolness votes of viewers

Lee

2018

IMDS

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between five characteristics of social shoppers’ online reviews (the number of all reviews made by a reviewer, the number of friends of a reviewer, the review score, the number of review words, and images/photos) and the usefulness, funniness, and coolness to viewers for the restaurant businesses and the health and wellness businesses. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 1,114 online reviews of social shoppers was collected from Yelp.com. A zero-inflated Poisson regression was used due to a high number of zero votes in the dependent variables for usefulness, funniness, and coolness. The regression identified the review characteristics that are strongly associated with the number of usefulness, funniness, and coolness votes made by viewers. Findings The analysis shows that for the health and wellness businesses, all three dependent variables (usefulness, funniness, and coolness) have the number of reviews, the number of friends, and the number of words as significant independent variables. The results indicate that a reviewer who has more friends and is more experienced in giving reviews is likely to be more influential in generating a perceived value of the online review. The analysis also shows that all three dependent variables of the restaurant businesses have the number of words as a significant independent variable. It is found that there is a negative relationship between the review score and the usefulness votes for both restaurant businesses and health and wellness businesses. The effect of the review score on the coolness votes was not consistent. Research limitations/implications This study is the first research attempt in understanding social shoppers’ online reviews and their usefulness, funniness, and coolness to viewers, and therefore makes significant contributions to research and practice. The comparison was made between restaurant businesses and health and wellness businesses. The result indicates that for the health and wellness businesses, managers need to pay attention to social shoppers with a high number of friends and high number of words in a review. It is also noted that it is necessary to analyze review characteristics separately for each business type. However, as is typical in many empirical studies, this study is not without limitations. While the author limited the analysis of social shoppers’ online reviews to the five characteristics, additional variables may influence the number of votes, too. This study is limited to social shoppers’ reviews and the findings may not be generalized to regular customers’ online reviews. Future research should also examine whether similar results can be obtained at other review sites such as TripAdvisor and Zagat. Originality/value Despite the potential significance of social shoppers’ online reviews, the critical mass of empirical studies still lacks in this area. For a more comprehensive interpretation of review characteristics, this study develops hypotheses based on the literature review on electronic word of mouth and source credibility models and investigates the effect of the five review characteristics on the viewers’ perceived usefulness, funniness, and coolness. Unlike previous studies focused on a single business type, this study compares the results obtained for restaurant businesses and health and wellness businesses and demonstrates that viewers in each business type respond differently to social shoppers’ online reviews.

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Section: Imds 1184mentioning

confidence: 90%

Usefulness, funniness, and coolness votes of viewers

Lee

2018

IMDS

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“…In academic circles there is growing interest in attempts to demonstrate a positive correlation between text comments and numerical ratings ( Kim H.-S. et al, 2015 ; Lee et al, 2017 ; Yoon et al, 2019 ). This would allow unstructured qualitative data about users’ opinions to be transformed into quantitative scores.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of Quality on eWOM: A Digital Transformation in Hotel Management

Sánchez-González

González-Fernández

2021

Front. Psychol.

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There is no doubt that the use of Internet for purchasing products and services has constituted a crucial change in how people go about buying them. In the era of digital transformation, the possibility of accessing information provided by other users about their personal experiences has taken on more weight in the selection and buying processes. On these lines, traditional word-of-mouth (WOM) has given way to electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), which constitutes a major social change. This behavior is particularly relevant in the services area, where potential users cannot in advance assess what is on offer. There is an abundant literature analyzing the effects of eWOM on different variables of interest in this sector. However, little is known about the factors that determine eWOM. Thus, the main objective of the present paper is to analyze the impact of two variables (objective quality and perceived quality) on eWOM. Both of them are crucial for potential customers in the process of finding hotel accommodations and they can motivate people to make such comments. The results demonstrate that these variables truly have a significant impact on whether or not users make comments on line. Moreover, it proved possible to observe certain differences according to the profile of the tourist involved and the destination where the hotel is located. In the current changing environment, this information is of great use for hotel managers in order to design strategies according to the type of guest they wish to attract.

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“…The core functions and economic model of Amazon have been topics of investigation. The usefulness of Amazon reviews for consumer purchases has been analysed (Chi, 2008;Trimi;Yang, 2018), as have aspects of its business model (Hadgkiss; Morris; Paget, 2019; Ritala; Golnam; Wegmann, 2014; Zhu; Liu, 2018) and legal issues (Rühl, 2018). Its recommender system technology is important to the site and has wider commercial value (Smith; Linden, 2017).…”

Section: Amazonmentioning

confidence: 99%