INTRODUCTION
Customer reviews have always been an indispensable part of any business. Before the discovery of the internet, to know about a product or business, one had to go around asking people presuming to find someone known and trusted who had knowledge or experience with the company or product. This type of study would usually take days, weeks, or even months, and often turned out to be futile. In most circumstances, one had to simply take a leap of faith and hope their purchase turned out to be what they desired (Sprague, 2019). However, with the invention of the internet, the world of customer reviews changed for once and for all. The advent of the Internet and information technology provided a new possibility for consumers to share their experience of a product online (Avery, et al., 1999). What was word of mouth earlier now became an electronic word of mouth (Yang, 2017). During the 1990s, when the world wide web went live, a large number of businesses started going online. They either bashed their competitors by giving bad reviews or joined hands with their allies and gave each other positive reviews to facilitate each other’s business. Albeit these reviews were aiding in downgrading or promoting a business, the chief purpose of these reviews got lost in the process. Since there were no checks on the quality of these reviews posted online, people were still stuck with the same predicaments they had before the time of the internet (Jones, 2020).
Amazon.com, when they started operating in the late 1990s, revolutionised online customer reviews [1] forever. As they grew, they incorporated customer reviews as a quintessential element of their business, and that gave reviews the essential role that it plays today in consumption decisions.
Amazon has had a very distinctive tactic on online reviews. Their method validates that the reviewer is authentic, based on credit card transaction that confirms that they had bought the product in question. Along with that, this online platform facilitates both good and bad reviews to be shared directly under the product. This ensured a customer the ease of online shopping without having to go through much trouble of finding relevant reviews. Initially, marketing experts were sceptical of Amazon’s strategy, but Amazon was steadfast on their decision stating they wanted to share the truth with their customers (Sprague, 2019).
Customer reviews are often known to have a direct connection with the rise in sales. Building online trust is a hurdle faced by the vast majority of online sellers, especially for those who are newly established or do not enjoy a brand reputation (Pengnate & Sarathy, 2017). Thus, sellers are tempted to incentivise potential customers or pay for positive reviews on their product, and this gives rise to the problem of fake reviews. Being the most comprehensive e-commerce site, Amazon too has to face the issue of fake reviews. Even after restricting the reviews to ‘verified purchasers’, the sellers on the platform kept purchasing fraudulent reviews.
Most of these sellers reach out to reviewers through groups on social networks and messaging apps and ask to give feedback in exchange for money or other compensation. The reviewers either receive a reimbursement for the cost of buying the products, an Amazon gift card or they resell the items on other websites such as eBay. This practice boosts the ranking of the products and goes on to mislead customers.
Although Amazon has been consistent in keeping a check on the reviews on its site, the current pandemic has created an added load. With customers resorting to e-commerce platforms like Amazon in this situation, sellers are falling back on to like fake reviews in order to alleviate their sales. Recently, Amazon deleted thousands of fake reviews after an investigation that showed that fake reviewers were regularly commenting on Chinese products to increase their customer rating as well as the merchants (Lee, 2020) (Kakrania, 2020).
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Electronic word of mouth (eWOM)
Due to the lack of tangible experience, online users quite often use customer review to infer the likely quality of the brand and develop an accordant leaning toward it (Utz, Kerkhof & van den Bos, 2012). Litvin et al. (2008) describes electronic word of mouth as all informal communication that takes place over the Internet between consumers, related to the use or features of goods or services or the sellers. The benefit that comes with this medium is that it is accessible by all consumers who make use of the online platforms to share their opinions and reviews with others (Huete-Alcocer, 2017). In eWOM, consumers report their experience with a product or service or a seller. The length of the review depends on the consumer. Most of the time, consumers leave an overall rating of the product (e.g. 1–5 stars). However, some people share their complete experience in descriptive text. A positive review usually stresses not only on the quality of the product but also its design, the seller’s accountability, the ease of understandability of the instruction manual, etc (Utz, Kerkhof & van den Bos, 2012). EWOM renders both positive and negative remarks from previous customers about products, services, or companies that influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase decisions (Abubakar, Ilkan & Sahin, 2016).
Challenges and opportunity of eWOM
The digitisation of WOM has presented itself with nascent possibilities and challenges for sellers. According to Dellarocas, 2003, with nearly costless access, eWOM can appear on an extensive scale, conceivably giving a different dimension to the market. However, on the other hand, problems associated with anonymity of communicators could knowingly or unknowingly lead to misleading messages and thereby negate the whole purpose of the pursuit. As said by Banerjee & Fudenberg, 2004, there is no hard evidence in WOM. When people tell you their opinion, they do not give you all of their reasons behind that opinion, and you do not observe the entire process by which the story comes to you. Moreover, you know that you must not believe everything everyone tells you, mostly because you know that other people also do not necessarily have hard evidence to prove their stand, and also because you know that people overlay their personal hopes and fears on what they report.
The stark difference between traditional WOM and eWOM is that information once shared through eWOM stays on the internet forever, where it is shared, (Gupta and Harris, 2010) unless intentionally removed. However, in the case of WOM, once the message has reached the recipient, it tends to disappear. In situations involving multiple communicators and receivers, reviews shared through traditional WOM often lose their credibility since the original message holds the chances of being altered or misrepresented. This gives eWOM an edge over WOM when used by consumers to influence their consumption behaviour mostly to obtain information before, during, and after consuming a given product or service (Huete-Alcocer, 2017).
Impact of eWOM
a) On online sellers –
Most consumers tend to base their consumption decision on the reviews about a product or service from their friends and family, which makes eWOM an essential tool for sellers (Hu, Wang, Jiang, & Yang, 2019). Customer reviews have been known to have a positive impact on the level of institutional trust as well as the level of competence trust that buyers have on an online vendor (Stouthuysen, Teunis, Reusen & Slabbinck, 2018). Customer reviews quite often have the potential to boost consumer visits, increase the time spent by customers on the site (“website stickiness [2]”), and create a sense of community among frequent shoppers. However, with an abundance of customer reviews the strategic focus shifts from the mere presence of customer reviews to the customer evaluation and use of the reviews to the sellers’ advantage (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010).
b) On consumer behaviour –
Most consumers today search on the Internet before they make any purchases (Smith, Menon & Sivakumar, 2005), and they not only search for product information provided by the manufacturer or seller, but also for reviews written by other consumers (Utz, Kerkhof & van den Bos, 2012). Compared to product description provided by sellers, consumer reviews are more user-oriented and thus have an added advantage in assisting consumers to find products suiting their preferences. Inexperienced or first-time consumers who are unlikely to buy a product just by referring to the product description provided by a seller cater to these reviews in order to make their consumption decision (Chen & Xie, 2008).
Dispositional trust and distrust
A business to customer (B2C) e-commerce can only be successful if consumers are prepared to make purchases from unseen and often anonymous online vendors (Wang, Lee and Wang,
1998). In the initial stages, people trust others because they have very little information by which they can assess the other party (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995; McKnight, Cummings and Chervany, 1998). Thus, the study of dispositional trust and distrust becomes crucial in a situation where a consumer is exploring new unknown online sellers (McKnight, Kacmar & Choudhury, 2004).
Dispositional trust is described as the propensity or tendency of a person to focus on the positive attributes of others in general. It is believed to be a relatively stable personality characteristic in humans. People having high dispositional trust believe that other individuals are generally trustworthy. In their experiment, Utz, Kerkhof & van den Bos, 2012, found out that high trusters showed higher levels of trust than low trusters when positive cues were present, for example, a positive review.
Originally, distrust was viewed as an antonym for trust (Rotter,1967) however, on further study, it was understood that distrust was independent of trust. (Jones and George, 1998; Sitkin and Roth, 1993) Considering, therefore, that distrust is the sharp opposite of trust, distrust alludes to not willingly become vulnerable to the trustee, having taken into consideration the characteristics of the trustee (McKnight, Kacmar & Choudhury, 2004).
According to Lewicki, McAllister and Bies (1998) trust and distrust can exist in a person simultaneously in correspondence to one subject. Referring to figure 1, a person might have high trust and high distrust together causing them to take a “trust but verify” stance (Quadrant 4). Similarly, people may also have low trust and low distrust who sense little fear about the internet and so are not concerned about the presence of institutional safeguards (Quadrant 1).
Positive Reinforcement
Fake Customer Reviews
One of the main reasons why online customer reviews may not be able to effectively communicate real information about the quality of a product, service or seller is because firms many a time manipulate reviews to create artificial high ratings. They make use of paid reviewers in order to do so (Li & Hitt, 2008). There are many occurrences of such manipulations. For example, in February 2004, due to a software error, Amazon.com’s Canadian site by mistake revealed the true identities of some of its book reviewers. It so turned out that a large portion of those reviews was written by the books’ own publishers, authors, and competitors (Harmon, 2004). The music industry was also known to hire professional marketing people who went through various online chat rooms and fan sites to post positive opinions on behalf of new albums (White 1999, Mayzlin 2006).
Firms often try to manipulate consumer choice by posting anonymous reviews that praise their own product, at a cost. All firms are assumed to be strategic, and they manipulate review forums to maximize their profits. However, consumers are smart and thus, even though they cannot directly distinguish legitimate reviews from fake reviews, they are aware that manipulation occurs and adjust their interpretation of online reviews accordingly (Li & Hitt, 2008).
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