Effect Of Inquiry Learning Versus Online Reviews On Purchase Intention:A Comparative Study

In recent years,due to the increasing emphasis on user-generated content,major e-commerce platforms have launched the ask-the-purchaser function,which is an effective way to obtain product quality information.According to the literature,potential consumers'behavior of asking the purchaser is“inquiry learning".The reply to inquiry learning and online reviews are both electronic word-of-mouth.Based on the review of electronic word-of-mouth,especially online reviews,this paper draws on the relevant progress of inquiry learning in pedagogy,and tries to improve the theoretical framework of electronic word-of-mouth and test whether there is a significant difference between these two electronic word-of-mouth influences on consumers'purchase intentions.This research consists of two parts,Part 1 is based on the existing online reviews research model and statistically analyzes the real data of 4,035 Amazon commodities.Part 1 constructs a theoretical model of the impact of inquiry learning and online reviews on consumer purchasing intentions.Using linear regression test to explore the impact of the number of inquiry learning and online reviews on the sales of goods and the moderating effect of the type of goods on the impact.In Part 2,three experiments were designed for 300 college students and under the premise of controlling the product information received by the subjects,the purchase intention of the subjects was analyzed under different levels of inquiry learning.The results of Part 1 demonstrate that both the number of inquiry learning and online reviews have a significant positive impact on Amazon's merchandise sales witch is moderated by the type of goods.Search products have more extraordinary effects than experience products.The results of Part 2 show that as the level of inquiry learning deepens,the polarization of consumers' purchase intentions increases,the willingness of consumers who ask questions to purchasers is extremely higher than that of online-reviews-reading consumers.This study theoretically expands the theoretical basis of electronic word-of-mouth and verifies the important influence of inquiry learning on consumers' purchasing intentions and purchasing decisions.Since consumers pay more attention to the content of inquiry learning than online reviews,in practice,related companies should improve online operation performance by means of inquiry learning.