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Student ID Number(s): 2433594

Programme: MSc.management
Module: 27159 Research method
Name of Tutor: Chengang Wang; Lin dong
Assignment Title: The impact of online reviews on consumers' purchase intention
Date and Time of Submission: 18/01/2023
Actual Word Count: 2417
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 The impact of online reviews on consumers' purchase intention

Introduction

The development of e-commerce websites makes consumers accustomed to online

shopping. In 2021, global retail e-commerce sales were about $5.2 trillion. This figure

is expected to increase by 56% in the next few years and reach about 8.1 trillion US

dollars by 2026 (Statista, 2022). A study explains the surprising facts and statistics

that every enterprise wants to know and the importance of online reviews (the wall

journal, 2020). Online review is an alternative to physical or visual interaction with

products provided by e-commerce companies. Because of information asymmetry,

consumers cannot obtain all information before purchasing. They must collect online

comments before purchasing to improve their awareness. Online reviews provide

consumers with a real shopping experience and a reference to understand products

(Mo et al.,2015). Customers believe that "online review" is an important source of

information that affects their purchase intention (Shin and Darpy, 2020). Purchase

intention refers to the subjective probability or possibility of consumers purchasing a

particular product (Dodds et al., 1991). Therefore, enterprises need to use online

reviews to increase the purchase intention of online shoppers. Online consumer

reviews provide an electronic form of word-of-mouth, considered a reliable source of

information about products or services for various consumers, and a potentially

important sales asset (Lee et al., 2011). Many researchers also divided online reviews

into different attributes (quality, quantity, star rating, credibility, reviewer identity) to

study whether online reviews impact consumers' purchase intention (Filieri et al.,

2020). Therefore, online reviews are very important for enterprises. If consumers

browse online reviews, it will affect their purchase intention, which can enable
enterprises to use online reviews to continuously improve the quality of products and

services, so as to improve reviews, and consumers can also purchase products with

higher cost performance. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to study whether

consumers affect their purchase intention after browsing online reviews.

Literature review and research questions

Unlike offline purchases, customers cannot touch or feel products online, and can

only learn more about businesses and products through different types of comments

from other buyers (Schneider and Zielke, 2020). Some scholars believe that the

driving force of consumer search for online reviews is information asymmetry, lack of

available information, the authority of cognitive perception and perceptual economy.

Therefore, it is an important step to search consumers' online comments before

purchasing (Mo et al., 2015). Online content in the form of online comments is

increasingly popular in Internet-based marketing (Choi and Maasberg, 2021). Many

studies have focused on the impact of online reviews on consumers' purchase

intention. Huang et al. found that online comments have a significant impact on

purchase intention by receiving data from the Taobao shopping website (Huang et al.,

2019). Mo et al. divided online reviews into merchant ratings, logistics reviews,

customer service quality reviews, picture reviews, and cumulative reviews. They

found that online reviews are related to consumer purchase intentions (Mo et al.,

2015). Semila et al. identified the source credibility, quantity, language and

understanding of online reviews to reach the conclusion that online reviews affect

consumers' purchase intention (Semila et al., 2022). By collecting data on inbound

tourists from China, researchers found that online reviews are related to purchasing

behavior and have an impact on consumer goods sales (Siddiqi et al, 2020). In the
hotel industry, some studies have proved the impact of online reviews on travelers'

online hotel booking intentions (Fu et al., 2021). Comments usually reflect that

consumers divide them into positive and negative views (Risselada et al., 2018).

Negative reviews disconfirmation has more significant and stronger effects than

positive reviews disconfirmation (Li et al., 2020). In addition to positive and negative

comments, the type of comments will also affect consumers and may lead to better

purchase intention results (Semila et al., 2022). Research shows that online reviews

generated through Internet forums are considered more reliable and credible than

corporate websites generated by marketers. Consumers comment online through

multiple websites and Internet forums (Thakur, 2018). The quantity and type/quality

of these comments have a positive impact on the credibility and credibility of

sellers/products (Ismagilova et al., 2020). Research shows that the review area of

shopping websites in recent years displayed logistics reviews, product quality reviews

and customer service quality reviews to consumers (Chang et al., 2011; Luo, 2020).

Logistics comments include other buyers' views on logistics speed, product damage

during transportation, and service of express delivery personnel, Etc. Customer

service quality comments include other buyers' views on after-sales service, the

merchants' service attitude, the merchants' reply speed, Etc. Product quality includes

the views of other buyers on colour, quality, packaging, practicality, Etc. With the

increase in the number of comments in the online environment, it becomes difficult to

obtain specific information. Consumers search for comments based on product

logistics, customer service quality, product quality to simplify the search and

evaluation process (Yi and Oh, 2022). Therefore, inspired by Mo and others

mentioned above, this paper divided online reviews into logistics reviews, customer

service quality reviews and product quality reviews, so as to study whether they have
an impact on consumers' purchase intention after reading these online reviews, and

analyze which aspects of reviews consumers are more concerned about. Unlike Mo et

al. and Semila et al. this paper focuses on the development trend of the times. This

paper collected the latest data in the form of a questionnaire to get the actual response

of the respondents to study the impact of online reviews on consumers' purchase

intention.

Data collection and analysis method

This paper collected data from an online questionnaire and set the questions in the

questionnaire according to the literature review. The questionnaire was made by using

the WenJuanXing software and distributed to the dormitory group of Birmingham

University. The primary data were collected from 32 young online shoppers aged 18-

30 who spent online shopping every month, with the proportion of men and women

being 37.5%/62.5%. Set the option to "yes, no, uncertain" on the questionnaire's key

question to obtain the respondents' answers. After collecting data, conducted

descriptive statistical analysis on the data, and then used SPSS to analyze the

correlation between online comments and consumers' purchase intention.

About the setting of the questionnaire, the questionnaire covers 13 questions. First,

the respondents are asked about some basic information and whether they have an

online shopping experience. If the respondents have no online shopping experience, it

is meaningless for this study. Therefore, five respondents with no online shopping

experience were excluded, and the data of these 32 respondents who had online

shopping experience were retained.

In this paper, the Pearson correlation coefficient was used to analyze the correlation

between variables, and the significance of the correlation can be seen according to the

p-value. If the p-value is less than 0.01, there is a significant correlation between the

two variables. The correlation coefficient is generally between - 1 and 1. If the

correlation coefficient is zero, there is no relationship between variables. If the

absolute value of the correlation coefficient is between 0 and 0.2, the correlation is

very weak, and between 0.2 and 0.4, the correlation is relatively weak, and there is a

strong correlation between 0.6 and 0.8, which indicates that the correlation is strong.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether online reviews have an impact on

consumer purchase intention, so the Pearson correlation coefficient was used to

analyze the correlation between online reviews and consumer buying intention. The

absolute value of the correlation coefficient between the three variables of online

review (logistics review, customer service quality review, product quality review) and

consumer buying intention can be used to determine whether there is a correlation and

the strength of the correlation. For example, if the p-value is less than 0.01 and the

absolute value of the correlation coefficient is above 0.8, it will be concluded that

there is a strong correlation between online reviews and consumers' purchase

intention, which means that online reviews affect consumers' purchase intention.

Descriptive statistical analysis includes the frequency, median, standard deviation,

and average value of the data to facilitate the description of various characteristics of

the measured sample and the characteristics of the population it represents. This paper

used a pie chart to explain and compare the data frequency, which can intuitively

reflect the proportion of a certain part in the whole. The pie chart reflects the

frequency distribution of respondents choosing "yes, no, uncertain". It can be seen

which option has the highest frequency. If the respondents choose "Yes" most

frequently on the question of "Will the purchase intention affect after you read the

logistics review", we can be seen that the purchase intention of most respondents will

be affected by the logistics review. According to the setting of the last question in the

questionnaire, it can be seen which comment the respondents choose has the largest

percentage, so it can be concluded which comment the respondents pay more

attention to, which can guide the company to focus on improving this type of

comment.

Analysis and discussion of results

This paper divided online reviews into three independent variables: logistics reviews,
customer service quality reviews and product quality reviews, and purchase intention
was the dependent variable. In order to study the correlation between online reviews
and purchase intention.

Regression Results

Table1
According to Table 1, the p-value is less than 0.01, indicating a significant correlation

between logistics review and consumer purchase intention. The correlation coefficient

is 0.911, and its absolute value is greater than 0.8. It can be seen that there is a strong

correlation between logistics reviews and consumers' purchase intention, which can

prove that logistics reviews affect consumers' purchase intention.

Table 2

According to Table 2, the p-value is less than 0.01, which indicates that there is a

significant correlation between customer service quality reviews and consumers'

purchase intention. The correlation coefficient is 0.837, and its absolute value is

greater than 0.8, which shows that there is a strong correlation between customer

service quality reviews and consumer purchase intention, which can prove that

customer service quality reviews affect consumer purchase intention.

Table 3

According to Table 3, the p-value is less than 0.01, indicating a significant correlation

between product quality reviews and consumer purchase intention. The correlation

coefficient is 0.959, and its absolute value is more significant than 0.8. It can be seen

that there is a strong correlation between product quality reviews and consumer

purchase intention, which can prove that product quality reviews affect consumer

purchase intention.

To sum up, this paper divided online reviews into logistics reviews, customer service

quality reviews, and product quality reviews. Through correlation analysis, we can see

that these three have strong correlation with consumers' purchase intention. Therefore,

to answer the research question in this paper, online reviews have an impact on

consumers' purchase intention.

Descriptive analysis
Based on the data collected in the questionnaire, this paper will use descriptive

statistics to analyze the frequency distribution of consumers' choice of online

comments affecting their purchase intention.

Figure1

According to Figure 1, 71.88% of respondents chose that reading logistics reviews

would affect their purchase intentions. Only 15.63% chose not to be affected, and

12.5% said they were not sure if their purchase intentions would be affected by

logistics reviews. We can see that the proportion of respondents who choose

"purchase intention will be affected" is the largest. Therefore, the vast majority of

consumers' purchase intention will be affected after browsing logistics reviews

Figure2
According to Figure 2, 51.13% of respondents have their purchase intention affected

after reading the customer service quality review. 31.25% of respondents chose not to

be affected, and 15.63% said they were unsure whether their purchase intention would

be affected by logistics reviews. Therefore, more than half of consumers' purchase

intentions will be affected after they browse the customer service quality reviews.

Figure3

According to Figure 3, 84.38% of respondents chose that reading logistics reviews

would affect their purchase intentions. Only 6.25% of the respondents chose not to be

affected, and 9.38% of the respondents said they were not sure whether their purchase

intention would be affected by logistics comments. We can see that the proportion of

respondents who choose "purchase intention will be affected" is the largest.

Therefore, the vast majority of consumers' purchase intention will be affected after

browsing logistics reviews.

Figure 4

According to Figure 4, 78.13% of consumers value product quality reviews, 12.5% of

respondents value logistics reviews more, and 9.38% of respondents value customer

service quality reviews. Therefore, the largest proportion of respondents choose

product quality reviews, which means that the vast majority of consumers pay more

attention to product quality reviews.

To sum up, according to the pie chart, we can see the distribution of consumers'

choice frequency. The vast majority of consumers' purchase intention is affected after

reading the three comments of logistics, product quality and customer service quality.

And when respondents choose the most important comment, the most respondents

choose product quality.

Conclusion

This paper collected data by issuing online questionnaires. According to the review

literature, this paper divided online reviews into logistics reviews, customer service

quality reviews, and product quality reviews to study whether online reviews affect
consumers' purchase intention. Through correlation analysis, this paper found that

these three online reviews have a strong correlation with consumers' purchase

intention, so it drew the conclusion that online reviews affect consumers' purchase

intention. According to the descriptive statistical analysis, the vast majority of

respondents chose "reading online reviews will affect their purchase intention",

reflecting the online reviews affect customer purchase intention. Due to the research

conclusion of this paper, online review is particularly important for an enterprise

because it has an impact on consumers' purchase intention. Therefore, enterprises

must attach importance to and make use of online reviews to continuously improve

the quality of products and services to reduce negative online reviews and attract

more consumers. This article also shows that consumers who value product quality

reviews account for the most, reminding enterprises to focus on improving product

quality to obtain more positive online reviews to attract more consumers to buy and

improve sales. However, this paper had some limitations. This paper adopted the

convenient sampling method to control the sample age between 18 and 30 years old,

and the sample size was also limited. Therefore, the results cannot be extended to

consumers of different age groups with different cultural and geographical

boundaries. There are many ways to divide online reviews, and more research can be

carried out on the impact of online reviews on consumers' purchase intention.

 References list
Andrew, B. (2020) How Consumers Really Use Online Reviews, the wall street journal ,25
October [online]. Available from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-consumers-really-use-online-
reviews-11603570504 [Accessed 12 January 2023]

Chang, H.H. and Wang, H.W., 2011. The moderating effect of customer perceived value on online
shopping behaviour. Online information review.

Choi, H.S. and Maasberg, M., 2022. An empirical analysis of experienced reviewers in online
communities: what, how, and why to review. Electronic Markets, 32(3), pp.1293-1310.

Dodds, W.B., Monroe, K.B. and Grewal, D., 1991. Effects of price, brand, and store information
on buyers’ product evaluations. Journal of marketing research, 28(3), pp.307-319.

Filieri, R., Acikgoz, F., Ndou, V. and Dwivedi, Y., 2020. Is TripAdvisor still relevant? The
influence of review credibility, review usefulness, and ease of use on consumers’ continuance
intention. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Fu, S., Cheng, X., Bao, Y., Bilgihan, A. and Okumus, F., 2020. Staying in a hotel or peer-to-peer
accommodation sharing? A discrete choice experiment with online reviews and discount
strategies. Internet Research.

Huang, J., Guo, Y., Wang, C. and Yan, L., 2019. You touched it and I’m relieved! The effect of
online review’s tactile cues on consumer’s purchase intention. Journal of Contemporary
Marketing Science.

Ismagilova, E., Slade, E., Rana, N.P. and Dwivedi, Y.K., 2020. The effect of characteristics of
source credibility on consumer behaviour: A meta-analysis. Journal of Retailing and Consumer
Services, 53, p.101736.

Lee, J., Park, D.H. and Han, I., 2011. The different effects of online consumer reviews on
consumers' purchase intentions depending on trust in online shopping malls: An advertising
perspective. Internet research.

Li, K., Chen, Y. and Zhang, L., 2020. Exploring the influence of online reviews and motivating
factors on sales: A meta-analytic study and the moderating role of product category. Journal of
Retailing and Consumer Services, 55, p.102107.

Luo, J., Rong, Y. and Zheng, H., 2020. Impacts of logistics information on sales: Evidence from
Alibaba. Naval Research Logistics (NRL), 67(8), pp.646-669.

Mo, Z., Li, Y.F. and Fan, P., 2015. Effect of online reviews on consumer purchase
behavior. Journal of Service Science and Management, 8(03), p.419.

Risselada, H., de Vries, L. and Verstappen, M., 2018. The impact of social influence on the
perceived helpfulness of online consumer reviews. European Journal of Marketing.

Shin, D. and Darpy, D., 2020. Rating, review and reputation: how to unlock the hidden value of
luxury consumers from digital commerce?. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing.
Statistics (2022) Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2026 [online]. Available
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January 2023]

Schneider, P.J. and Zielke, S., 2020. Searching offline and buying online–An analysis of
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Siddiqi, U.I., Sun, J. and Akhtar, N., 2020. Ulterior motives in peer and expert supplementary
online reviews and consumers' perceived deception. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and
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 Appendix

Questionnaire

The impact of online reviews on consumer buying intention

Dear Madam/Sir

Hello, thank you for participating in this survey! This survey aims to understand the
impact of online comments on consumers' purchase intention when they purchase
online. The content of the questionnaire is for academic research only and will not
disclose your privacy. Please fill it in with confidence. Thanks for supporting!

Before doing the questionnaire, please understand several definitions!

Purchase intention refers to the probability or possibility that you will buy a specific
product.
Logistics comments include other buyers' views on logistics speed, product damage
during transportation, and service of express delivery personnel, etc.
Customer service quality comments include other buyers' views on after-sales service,
the service attitude of the merchants, the reply speed of the merchants, etc.
Product quality includes the views of other buyers on color, quality, packaging,
practicality, etc.

1. what is your gender

○Male

○Female

2. Age

○Under 18

○18-30

○30-45

○Above 45

3. What is your monthly consumption expenditure on online shopping？

○Less than 50 £

○50-200 £
○200- 350 £

○350 - 500£

○Over 500 £

4. Your online shopping experience is

○Less than one year

○1-3 years

○3-5 years

○More than 5 years

5. Which apps do you use when shopping online ？

□Taobao

□Amazon

□Jingdong

□SHEIN

□Other

6. Do you read comments when shopping online?

○Yes

○No

7. When you want to buy an item online, do you read reviews about its logistics?

○Yes

○No

○Uncertainty

8. After you read the logistics reviews, will they affect your purchase intention?

○yes

○No

○Uncertainty
9. During online shopping, do you read comments about customer quality service ？

○Yes

○No

○Uncertainty

10. After you read the customer service quality comments, will they affect your
buying intention in the purchase?

○Yes

○No

○Uncertainty

11. During online shopping, do you read comments about product quality？

○Yes

○No

○Uncertainty

12. After you read the product quality comments, will they affect your buying
intention in the purchase?

○Yes

○No

○Uncertainty

13. Of the following reviews, which one do you value most？

○Product quality reviews

○Logistics reviews

○Customer service quality reviews

Regression results

Table1

Table 2
Table 3

Descriptive analysis
Figure 1

Male to female ratio 1:male

2:female
Figure 2

Monthly expenditure 1：less than 50 £

2：50-200£

3：200-350£

4：350-500£

5：over 500£

Figure 3

Online shopping experience 1: less than 1 year

2: 1-3years

3: 3-5 years

4: over 5 years
Figure 4

Figure 5
Figure 6

Figure 7