Consumer Reviews and Consumer Attitudes: Honest Feedback and Confused Behavior?
Sumanth, aged 27 years, and Geeta, aged 24 years, were a newly married couple. Though hailing from Kerala, they decided to settle in Mumbai where Sumanth had recently joined a trading company. On a Friday night they decided to go out for dinner. But on account of being new to the place, they were aware of very few restaurants. However, the couple did not want to compromise on their dining experience and wanted to savor authentic Maharashtrian cuisine.
Geeta luckily had three of her relatives residing in Mumbai. She first called up her distant nephew, Girish, aged 23 years, who had joined an MNC bank 6 months back through campus recruitment post his completion of MBA from a reputed business school in New Delhi. Girish said that he liked a specific Maharashtrian dish served by a national food chain which had recently set shop in the city and in a shopping mall. Next, Geeta contacted her cousin, Pavithra, aged 40 years, who had been residing in Mumbai for the last 10 years and was employed as a Deputy Manager with a public sector bank. Pavithra said that she occasionally visited, along with her husband and three children, a quasi-Udupi restaurant which also served Maharashtrian food as it was within her budget. Geeta also took the opinion from her uncle, Ganpathi, aged 58 years, who had been working in the city for the last 30 years. Ganpathi said that the only place he visited to have authentic Maharashtrian food was a restaurant run by the wife of a dabbawala. He was however apprehensive whether Geeta and her husband would like the restaurant as it had poor ambience.
Geeta told her husband about her conversations with her relatives but confessed that she would not be satisfied dining at any of the three restaurants. Sumanth told her to forget all three. He turned to his smartphone and opened a consumer review website for restaurants and searched for restaurants offering authentic Maharashtrian cuisine in Mumbai...............
Online Reviews by Consumers
Online consumer reviews are peer-produced product assessments posted on company or third party websites. Independent or third-party consumer review websites allowed consumers to post product or service reviews with content through numerical star ratings (generally hovering from 1 to 5 stars) and open-ended consumerwritten opinions about the product or service. E-tailers such as Amazon.com have allowed consumers to review products for several years. The other retailers followed suit by providing this facility to consumers in the last few years. Several websites offering consumer reviews related to specific themes such as travel and restaurants have come up.............
Popularity of Online Reviews
Various studies showed that online reviews had considerable influence on purchase intentions. A study found that online reviews had greater influence on intentions to buy online than other types of recommendations such as advertising, and, that for online marketers, consumer reviews and feedback were critical. Some of the surveys demonstrated the extent to which consumers referred to consumer reviews (Exhibit II).............
Why Online Reviews for Consumers?
Online reviews were normally trusted by consumers as they were from other consumers, particularly those with prior experience of the product or service (Exhibit IV). Consumers resorted to online reviews to mitigate the risks related to product or service purchase. They mostly believed that online consumer reviews and ratings aided them in making better-informed decisions..............
Why Consumers Post Online Reviews?
In the US, 61% of Americans posted some review or the other with Amazon being the most frequently used website for the same. The different motivations for consumers to post online reviews were found out to be personal motivations, social benefits, economic incentives and entertainment...............
The Emergence of Social Media
Social media offered a new tool to obtain product information by means of peer communication (Exhibit V). It also bestowed upon consumers the capacity to influence other purchasers by means of reviews of products or services that they had utilized. Social media transformed consumer behavior from merely garnering information to post-purchase behavior such as expressing dissatisfaction or any other opinion about a product or a company............
The Malaise of Fake Reviews
Fake reviews were a major factor testing the credibility of the mechanism of online consumer reviews. These reviews not just cheated the consumers but also negatively impacted the concerned review sites as well as the product/service referred to..............
Online Consumer Reviews Taking off in India
Several netizens in India were actively engaged in reviewing products and services post-purchase and referring to reviews prior to making a purchase. The gamut of goods and services reviewed had, over a period of time, increased in the country (Exhibit VIII)...........
What would change Geeta’s attitude towards online reviews?
“This isn’t convincing by any means,” said Geeta. Having used several times and for quite a few times being the reviewer himself...........
Assignment Questions
I. Are online consumer reviews popular? Why do consumers refer to online consumer reviews? Do fake reviews have an impact, and, if so, how do they influence consumer buying decisions?
II. Why do consumers post online reviews? Is social media a popular platform to post online reviews, and, if so, why? In the context of the growing popularity of consumer reviews, what should companies do?
III. ..............
Exhibits
Exhibit I: Consumer Buying Attitudes – Influences
Exhibit II: The Extent to which Consumers Referred to Online Consumer Reviews
Exhibit III: Popularity of Online Reviews
Exhibit IV: Online Consumer-Generated Information Vs Online Seller-Generated Information
Exhibit V: Consumer Buying Cycle Employing Social Media
Exhibit VI: A Facebook Post Underlining Gen Y’s Indulgence with Social Media
Exhibit VII: Indian Hotels taking Consumer Reviews Seriously
Exhibit VIII: Consumer Reviews – Products and Service Categories
