The Influences Of On-line Bookshops' Customer Reviews On Purchase Attitudes

With the Word of Mouth (WOM) Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), the paper used empirical research methods to explore the impact of online bookshop customer reviews (including four elements:reliability, timeliness, interaction and participatory) on customer attitudes (including the influence path, the influence intensity, the related intermediary and regulate role).The paper mainly did these following works:First, WOM Theory in Communication was introduced into the study to test whether customer reviews influenced other customers' purchase attitudes. Second, the ELM was introduced to analyze the differences between influence ways on customers according to their different levels of involvement. Third, Customer Perceived Value was introduced as a mediator to analyze its intermediary effect between customer reviews and customer purchase attitudes. Fourth, Customer Involvement was introduced as a moderator to analyze the effect between customer reviews and purchase attitudes.The research data was collected through direct surveys and web surveys and analyzed through factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis,the intermediary role in regulating effect of testing procedures and analysis methods (Zhong-Lin Wen, et al) was also referred to.The paper concluded three major conclusions:(1)Every element of customer reviews of on-line bookshops had significant positive impact on customer purchase attitudes, but had limited explanatory power as to the overall customer purchase attitude.(2) Every element of customer reviews influenced varied customer purchase attitude through Customer Perceived Value as an mediator.(3)Customer Involvement played a significant negative role between customer reviews'reliability and customer purchase attitudes, but had no significant regulatory relation with customer reviews' timeliness, interaction,or participatory.There were five suggestions for online bookshops' management can be drew from the conclusions of the study:(1)To enhance the reliability of the customer reviews, and encourage customers to provide well-argued reviews. (2)To focus on the timeliness of customer reviews, and provide the reviews in chronological order. (3)To enhance the interaction and communication between online bookshop and customers and customers themselves by provide convenient facilities. (4) To Emphasis on the intermediary role of Customer Perceived Value and to enhance the positive impact of it.(5)To pay attention to the regulatory role of customer involvement of the user comments to the relationship between customer reviews and customer purchase attitude, and understand the ways in which customer involvement impact customer purchase attitude.The defects of this study were:(1)For different online bookstore, it lacked horizontal comparison of the relation between customer reviews and customer purchase attitude.(2) The questionnaire was designed mainly referenced to foreign literature, lacking applicability analysis in china context. (3) The sampling method may result in unrepresentative data, and the sample size is inadequate.