• Information Systems Review
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.45-68
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• 2021

As the influence of online reviews on consumer decision-making increases, concerns about review manipulation are also increasing. Fake reviews or review manipulations are emerging as an important problem by posting untrue reviews in order to increase sales volume, causing the consumer's reverse choice, and acting at a high cost to the society as a whole. Most of the related prior studies have focused on predicting review manipulation through data mining methods, and research from a consumer perspective is insufficient. However, since the possibility of manipulation of reviews perceived by consumers can affect the usefulness of reviews, it can provide important implications for online word-of-mouth management regardless of whether it is false or not. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed whether there is a difference between the review evaluated by the consumer as being manipulated and the general review, and verified whether the manipulated review negatively affects the review usefulness. For empirical analysis, 34,711 online book reviews on the LibraryThing website were analyzed using multilevel logistic regression analysis and Poisson regression analysis. As a result of the analysis, it was found that there were differences in product level, reviewer level, and review level factors between reviews that consumers perceived as being manipulated and reviews that were not. In addition, manipulated reviews have been shown to negatively affect review usefulness.