The Impact Of Negative Online Comments On Consumers’purchasing Intention

With the integration of the Internet into people’s lives,online shopping has become more and more popular with the vast number of netizens because of its convenience,such as Taobao,Amazon,Jingdong etc.increasingly become people’s preferred choice for shopping.Because of the virtuality and information asymmetry of online shopping,people often refer to online reviews on commentary pages.Considering the uncertainty of online shopping,consumers tend to pay more attention to negative online reviews in order to reduce the risk of shopping.In addition,the negative effects of negative online reviews on consumers’ purchasing intention are likely to be different because of the differences in consumers’ personal characteristics.At present,although businesses on the websites are aware of the importance of online reviews,especially negative online reviews,they are suffering from the lack of effective and reasonable countermeasures.Based on this,this paper chooses clothing consumers of Taobao as the representative research object,and studies the mechanism of negative online reviews on consumers’ purchase intention,as well as the moderating effect of consumers’ personal characteristics on it.Firstly,this paper reviews the relevant literature and establishes the research model according to the theoretical and practical background.The independent variable negative online reviews is divided into two dimensions: quantity and quality.The moderating variable consumer characteristics is divided into four dimensions: gender,brand recognition,product involvement and professional competence,and explore their influence on consumer purchase intention.Then,a large-scale questionnaire survey is conducted with the Maturity Scale,and the collected data is analyzed by SPSS software to verify the hypothesis.Two main findings can be drawn as follows:(1)Negative online comments negatively affect consumers’ purchase intention.Specifically,the quantity and quality of negative online comments will reduce consumers’ purchase intention,among which,for clothing consumer goods of Taobao,the quantity of negative online comments has a more decisive effect on consumers’ purchase intention.(2)There are significant differences in the above-mentioned impact processes due to the different characteristics of consumers.For consumers of different genders,women pay more attention to the quantity of negative online reviews,while men pay more attention to the quality of negative online reviews.For consumers with different brand identity,the lower brand identity,the stronger the impact of the quantity and quality of negative online reviews will be.For consumers with different product involvement,the higher product involvement,the stronger the impact of the quality of negative online reviews will be.However,the impactof the quantity of negative online reviews on consumers’ purchase intention is not significantly different.For consumers with different professional competence,consumers with high professional competence are more likely to be affected by the quality of negative online reviews,while consumers with low professional competence are more likely to be affected by the quantity of negative online reviews.Based on the conclusions of this study,some management implications are put forward for website merchants.Firstly,we should strengthen the attention and management of negative online comments,including taking reasonable measures to effectively reduce the quantity of negative online comments and control the quality of negative online comments.Secondly,we should understand the characteristics of consumers and adopt differentiated marketing measures according to different gender,brand identity,product involvement and professional competence.Finally,the author points out the limitations and shortcomings of this study,as well as the research directions that can be deepened and improved in the future.