The impact of online reviews on purchase intention: A case of an emerging country

Abstract

Consumers take into consideration their past experiences and/or of their friends/family to form an opinion about a product. Online platforms provide reviews that offer relevant data which consumers consider before decision making as per their criteria for evaluation of the product. All these factors, along with the consumer’s own personality have an effect on the final purchase decision. (Engel, Blackwell, and Kollat, 1968). This research study takes into account the factors that impact the decision-making process of the consumer, specifically, in today’s economy where the consumer is bombarded with multitude of online reviews. Many of such reviews are not consciously sought out but random exposure is huge due to presence and heightened use of social media. A survey was carried out to explore the impact of online reviews on young consumers whose usage of social media is high and thus is the influence of social media. A sample of 300 respondents was taken. As the questionnaires were self- administered so the acquired data resulted in the valid final sample of 300. There were five hypothesis statements to be tested. Regression analysis was applied to test the hypothesis statements. The results showed that all hypotheses were supported and held statistical significance. The results from the regression analysis supported the existence of relationship between Consumer’s Personality and Purchase Intention while being moderated by factors such as Amount of Online Reviews, Length of Online Reviews, and Social Media Influence; and being mediated by the consumer’s Opinion of Online Reviews.