Why are you telling me this? An examination into negative consumer reviews on the web

Specifically, the different effects of consumers’ attention to negative comments seem to be moderated through gender with female consumers’ attention to negative comments being significantly greater than to positive ones. The current study provides a deep understanding of the underlying mechanism of how online reviews influence shopping behavior, reveals the effect of gender on this effect for the first time and explains it from the perspective of attentional bias, which is essential for the theory of online consumer behavior. It also found that consumers were not able to identify false comments. Furthermore, the study identified a significant correlation between the visual browsing behavior of consumers and their purchase intention. The results showed that consumers’ attention to negative comments was significantly greater than that to positive comments, especially for female consumers.

The research methodology involved (i) development of a conceptual framework of online product review and purchasing intention through the moderation role of gender and visual attention in comments, and (ii) empirical investigation into the region of interest (ROI) analysis of consumers fixation during the purchase decision process and behavioral analysis. This study investigated the impact of online product reviews on consumers purchasing decisions by using eye-tracking.

2School of Business, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia.

1School of Business, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.

126-139.Tao Chen 1 Premaratne Samaranayake 2 XiongYing Cen 1 * Meng Qi 1 Yi-Chen Lan 2 (2023), 'The power of numbers: an examination of the relationship between numerical cues in online review comments and perceived review helpfulness', Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Vol.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Numbers: NSFC 7127212152) and Research Grant Council of Hong Kong SAR (CityU 11502218) for financial support.

In addition, the research uncovers the underlying psychological responses that mediate the relationship between NC in review comments and perceived review helpfulness. Building on the previous literature, the work adds incremental knowledge on the role NC in online review comments play in affecting consumers' perceptions.

Why are you telling me this? An examination into negative consumer reviews on the web