The Impact Of Online Reviews On Consumer Buying Decisions For Different Perceived Risks

This study adopts the Mouse Lab technology of the decision process method, using the affair of buying clothes as the task to find out how the customers with different perceived risk about online shopping process the online comments.Preliminary survey is used to verify the effectiveness of the perceived risk questionnaire. According to the results, customers with different perceived risk are divided into three groups who are named high perceived risk group, middle perceived risk group and least perceived risk group. They were invited to the next experiment.There are nine experiment conditions with different online comments about the coustume. First, analyzing the effect of perceived risk(highest,middle, least) and comments(all positibve, all objective,all negative) on the information processing. The results show that:(1) When all the comments are positive, the processing time and the number of clicks of group with least perceived risk are significantly less than group with highest perceived risk. (2)When all the comments are objective, the processing time and the number of clicks of groups have no significant differences.(3)When all the comments are negative, the processing time of group with least perceived risk are significantly less than group with highest perceived risk. But the number of clicks have no significantly difference between groups.(4) When all the comments are positive, the purchase decision level of group with middle perceived risk are significantly high than other two groups.(5)When all the comments are objective and negative, the purchase decision level of groups have no significantly difference.Second, analyzing the how the perceived risk (highest, middle, least) behave under six kind of mixed comments on the processing of decision making. The results show that:(1) The processing time and the number of clicks of the three groups don’t have significantly difference under these six mixed comments. (2) when the negative comments are about size, color, social comments, seller attitudes, qualities, the purchase decision level of three groups have no difference.(3) However, when the negative comments is about product distribution,the purchase decision level of group with middle perceived risk significantly high than group with highest perceived risk.