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ABSTRACT
Consumers frequently rely on online reviews in forming purchase intentions, but at the same time have increasingly expressed reservations with regard to the credibility of online reviews in recent years. Given the lack of empirical research investigating how consumers assess the credibility of online reviews, this study examines determinants of online review credibility and its effect on consumers' purchase intentions. Drawing upon elaboration likelihood theory, we develop a research model and empirically test it by means of structural equation modeling with data collected from 282 users of the online review website Yelp. Our findings suggest that factors based on argument quality, including accuracy, completeness and quantity of online reviews, as well as peripheral cues, including reviewer expertise, product/service rating and website reputation, both significantly impact online review credibility, which in turn positively influences consumers' purchase intentions.
Keywords: Online reviews; Credibility; Purchase intention; Elaboration likelihood model; Structural equation modeling
1.Introduction
The developments in information and communication technologies and particularly the Internet have opened up new opportunities for service providers and consumers to share information among themselves. In this context, online reviews, a special form of electronic word of mouth (eWOM), have emerged as a new communication channel and have become increasingly popular among citizens (Kuan et al., 2015; Park and Nicolau, 2015; Wang et al., 2018). Today, online reviews are among the most influential sources of information for consumers when forming a purchase decision (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006; Lee and Shin, 2014) and provide great benefits to them (Hamby et al., 2015; Krishnamoorthy, 2015; Zhang et al., 2014; Zheng et al., 2013). Most importantly, they enable geographically dispersed consumers to share independent opinions on products and services, helping them to reach informed purchase decisions (Racherla et al., 2013). In addition, online reviews also hold great value creation potential for companies. As a source of product and service improvement, they can increase revenue and foster long-term relationships, thus also playing a significant role in the marketing efforts of companies (Chang et al., 2015). The growing popularity and provided benefits of online reviews have attracted much attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years (Cheung et al., 2012).
Previous research suggests that information created by consumers, such as online reviews, is more persuasive than information created...