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http://dx.doi.org/10.21219/jitam.2018.25.2.053

Research on the Influencing Factors of the Usefulness of the Online Review and Products Sales : Based on Chinese Online Shopping Platform Data  

Hwang, Chim (School of Business, Hanyang University)
Kwon, Young-Jin (School of Business, Hanyang University)
Lee, Sang-Yong Tom (School of Business, Hanyang University)
Publication Information
Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management / v.25, no.2, 2018 , pp. 53-72 More about this Journal
Abstract
This empirical study explored characteristics that affect the usefulness of online reviews, in the China e-commerce platform, and implemented multiple regressions to find factors that significantly influence on product sales, ultimately. Till now, prior studies have continuously revealed what factor affects usefulness of online review or product sales, only in respective terms. The point of our study is that we built two-level regression models, thereby being able to comprehensively analyze these two different targets. Before plunging into running regressions, we carefully collected 192,764 online review data for 200 products extracted from the Jingdong, the second biggest e-commerce platform in China. Also, we gathered "review sentimental scores" variable from each review and used that one as a core variable in our regression model, thus we were able to implement both quantitative and qualitative research. The evidences from the two-level regression models showed that the extent to which a product is experience good positively affects both usefulness of a review and product sales, again the usefulness of a review contributes to product sales in sequence. Also, the property of experience good has interaction effect on both for two-level regression models. Our main findings highlight the importance of role of online review to business performance of e-commerce firms.
Keywords
China e-Commerce Platform; User Review; Experience Goods and Search Goods; Crawling; Sentimental Analysis;
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Times Cited By KSCI : 1  (Citation Analysis)
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