Research On The Impact Of Online Review Richness On Consumer Online Purchase Decisions

With the development of information technology,the Internet in China has been able to develop rapidly,and consumers tend to purchase products online as well.However,since online shopping does not allow consumers to check the appearance and quality of products in person,it is essential for consumers to seek more cues from websites before purchasing products,and e WOM has emerged.Among many forms of e WOM,due to their non-commercial feature(originating from previous purchasers rather than merchants)and high correlation with the quality of goods or services,online reviews significantly promote consumers’ online purchasing decisions.In recent years,some online reviews with richer information forms(e.g.,videos and follow-on reviews)have appeared on various e-commerce platforms,but research on the commonalities among these review forms and the mechanisms of their influence on consumers’ online purchase decisions has not yet attracted sufficient attentions from scholars.To address these gaps,combined with theories such as information richness,this study defines online review richness as the ability of online reviews to change consumers’ product perceptions within a time interval,and conducts an in-depth study of online review richness in two dimensions: breadth and depth.The breadth of online reviews refers to the diversity of online review presentation methods,including text,pictures,and videos,etc.The depth of online reviews refers to the level of information contained in online reviews under the same presentation method.And video and follow-on reviews are used as representatives of the breadth and depth of online review richness,respectively,to give a detailed definition of online review richness in both extensional and intensional perspectives.On this basis,based on the perspective of consumers’ online purchase decisions process,this study analyzes the basic process of consumers’ online purchase decisions and divide consumers’ online purchase decisions into three stages,i.e.,online purchase motivation,intention and behavior,and constructs a theoretical framework on the impact of online review richness on consumer online purchase decisions.And the impact of online review richness on consumers’ online purchase motivation,intention,behavior,and the whole process is analyzed further.Finally,countermeasures and suggestions for using online review richness to promote the development of China’s e-commerce industry are proposed as well in this research.First,this study defines the concepts of online review richness and consumers’ online purchase decisions and determines the theoretical framework of the impact of online review richness on consumers’ online purchase decisions.This research defines online review richness by combining information richness.In addition,referencing related theories,the online purchase decisions is divided into three stages,i.e.,online purchase motivation,intention and behavior.Besides,the impact of online review richness on the three stages and whole process of online purchase decisions is analyzed.On the basis of this,the theoretical framework of the impact of online review richness on consumers’ online purchase decisions is constructed.Second,the impact of online review richness on online purchase motivation is explored.Based on the technology acceptance model,a conceptual model of how online review richness affecting online purchase motivation is constructed,and online review richness is taken as the antecedent variable,with perceived usefulness,perceived security,and time pressure as mediating variables.The direct and indirect effects of online review richness on online purchase motivation are explored in depth.Besides,questionnaire surveys and regression analysis are conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.Third,the impact of online review richness on consumers’ online purchase intention is studied based on attribute substitution theory.Based on attribute substitution theory,this study analyzes the generating process of consumers’ online purchase intention,and explore the mechanism of the impact of online review richness on consumers’ online purchase intention,and investigates how utilitarian/ hedonic product type and negatively/ positively commented product type moderate the impact.Online experiments on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform which compares the difference between text-only reviews and rich reviews on consumers’ online purchase intention,are used to test hypothesis and conceptual models about consumers’ online purchase intention.In addition,placebo tests and robustness checks are used to check causal effect and robustness of online review richness on consumers’ online purchase decisions.Fourth,the impact of online review richness on consumers’ online purchasing behavior is explored.With reference to previous studies,this study uses product sales in e-commerce platforms as the overall dimensional measure of consumer online purchasing behavior.Besides,this study uses Python to collect related data from Jingdong to further demonstrate the effect of online review richness on consumer online purchasing behavior and the moderating effect of utilitarian/ hedonic product type and negatively/ positively commented product type.In addition,the results of the empirical study show that the hypothesis and conceptual model proposed in this paper can be verified by the real e-commerce platform data,further proving the validity of the research.Fifth,the impact of online review richness on the whole process of online purchase decisions is dissected.First,this study quantifies the richness of online reviews based on the difference in information level received by consumers between richness and text-only information.Secondly,this study quantifies consumers’ online purchase decisions process by combining the characteristics of consumers’ online purchase decisions and constructing the utility functions of consumers’ online purchase motivation,intention,and behavior.And this study also demonstrates how online review richness impacts on the whole process of online purchase decisions in a quantitative perspective.An agent-based simulation model is constructed as well to further analyze the impact of online review richness on the whole process of online purchase decisions when considering the heterogeneity among consumers.Finally,countermeasures and suggestions for using online review richness to promote the development of China’s e-commerce industry are proposed.Based on the research results,the countermeasures and suggestions for using online review richness to promote the development of China’s e-commerce industry are proposed from three perspectives: the county,e-commerce platforms and online retailers.