2014
DOI: 10.1509/jmr.13.0209
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Reviews without a Purchase: Low Ratings, Loyal Customers, and Deception

Abstract: We document that approximately 5% of product reviews on the website of a large private label retailer are submitted by customers for which there is no record they have purchased the product they are reviewing. These reviews are significantly more negative than other reviews. They are also less likely to contain expressions describing the fit or feel of the items, but more likely to contain linguistic cues associated with deception. The reviews without confirmed transactions are written by over twelve thousand … Show more

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Cited by 226 publications
(127 citation statements)
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“…Second, people who choose to leave a review may have different preferences than those who choose not to. In work that is concurrent to but independent from ours, Anderson and Simester (2014) show that in fact, some people who choose not to buy a product still leave a review. As mentioned above, our results are also complementary to findings by Mayzlin et al (2014), who investigate promotional reviews in the context of hotels, doing a cross platform comparison between Expedia and TripAdvisor.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 62%
“…Second, people who choose to leave a review may have different preferences than those who choose not to. In work that is concurrent to but independent from ours, Anderson and Simester (2014) show that in fact, some people who choose not to buy a product still leave a review. As mentioned above, our results are also complementary to findings by Mayzlin et al (2014), who investigate promotional reviews in the context of hotels, doing a cross platform comparison between Expedia and TripAdvisor.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 62%
“…single reviews) and considered how consumers interpret opinion dispersion and whether it is attributed the product or to reviewers' tastes being heterogeneous. Anderson and Simester [38] documented the prevalence of deceptive reviews posted by people who have not purchased a product, suggesting that the practice is not limited to competitors but includes existing customers with no financial incentive to bias online ratings. Finally, Barasch and Berger [39 ] examined social transmission behavior when consumers broadcast (to many, e.g., through massaudience posts on Facebook or Twitter) versus narrowcast (to few, e.g., through messages to a few friends), finding that people share information that will be helpful to receivers when narrowcasting (i.e., other focus), but share information that makes themselves not look bad when broadcasting (i.e., self focus).…”
Section: Online Wom and Reviewsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Anderson [2] presents evidence that a majority of deceptive reviews on private websites are negative with a motive to decrease overall sale of the product. Another study [3] documents that approximately 5% of reviews posted on websites are by users who have no records of purchasing that product or anything on that particular website. A meta-analysis on online reviews [11] focuses on understanding the effect of online reviews on retailers' performance and revenue using sales elasticity.…”
Section: Related Workmentioning
confidence: 99%