Sales or reviews, which matters more to consumer preference and online advertising? – evidence from eye-tracking and self-reporting

Abstract

Sales volume and the percentage of positive reviews are viewed as learning sources in online shopping. This paper examines the relative effect of these two attributes and determines the underlying mechanism that can be applied to online advertising. We verify the existence of negativity bias in online reviews through an eye-tracking experiment. Consumers underestimate the rating of products with high sales volume relative to products with low sales volume due to negativity bias. However, presenting a percentage of positive reviews cue can eliminate the rating difference. Furthermore, when both the percentage of positive reviews and sales volume are high, consumers prefer products with lower sales volume but higher percentages of positive reviews rather than products with higher sales volume but lower percentages of positive reviews. The percentage of positive reviews is more diagnostic than sales volume, which can be used as endorsements in online advertisement to positively affect consumers’ preferences.

Keywords:

• Online shopping
• advertising
• sales volume
• percentage of positive reviews
• negativity bias

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the [National Natural Science Foundation of China #1] under Grant [number 71572205] and the [Major Research Plan of the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities #2] under Grant [number 16wkjc14].

Notes on contributors

Zhuomin Shi

Zhuomin Shi (Ph.D., Sun Yat-sen University) is a professor of marketing at Sun Yat-sen University, and a Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar (2017-2018) at University of Missouri. Her research interests cover Chinese consumer behavior, global marketing and internationalization of enterprises. Her research has appeared in Frontiers of Business Research in China, Asia Marketing Journal, and International Journal of Business and Social Science.

Caiyun Zhang

Caiyun Zhang is a Doctoral student at Business School, Sun Yat-sen University. Her research focuses on online consumer behavior, global marketing, and green consumption.

Liangyu Wu

Liangyu Wu is a Master student at Business School, Sun Yat-sen University. Her research focuses on online consumer behavior and global marketing.