Impacts of Online Additional Reviews on the Sales Volume of Cross-Border Pharmaceutical E-Commerce Platforms

ABSTRACT

Recently, additional reviews, as a new form of online reviews, have attracted attention among the academia. However, it remains unclear whether the existing findings from initial reviews apply to the additional reviews. Based on the attribution theory, this paper explores the impacts of different attributes of online additional reviews on the sales volume of cross-border pharmaceutical platforms, and the moderate role of country-of-origin. Using addition reviews data and product information from Alihealth.tall.com, this paper successfully tests these hypotheses. The results show that the number of additional reviews and the interval between initial and additional reviews have significant positive effects on sales, and moderated by country-of-origin. However, the number of super members making additional reviews is not associated with product sales. Our findings have several implications: firstly, the additional reviews still is an important information for consumers, while attributes has different effects on products sales; secondly, information of country of origin associated with additional reviews can influence the evaluation of products.

KEYWORDS:

• Online review
• additional reviews
• cross-border e-commerce
• credence products
• country of origin

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was also supported by Kunming E-commerce and Internet Finance R&D Center (KEIRDC[2020]), the Prominent Educator Program (Yunnan [2018]11), Yunnan Province Young Academic and Technical Leader candidate Program (2018HB027) & Yunnan Provincial E-Business Entrepreneur Innovation Interactive Space (2017DS012), National Natural Science Foundation of China [71402159].

Notes on contributors

Yumei Luo

YUMEI LUO ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management Science at School of Business and Tourism Management, Yunnan University. She received her Ph.D. in Management Science from Fudan University. Her research interests include IT business value, IT innovation, and electronic commerce. Her work has been published in journals such as Computers in Human Behavior, Information Technology & People, and Global Information Technology Management, International Journal Environment Research and Public Health, Journal of International Consumer Marketing.

Yuwei Li

YUWEI LI ([email protected]) is a postgraduate of technical economy and management, Yunnan University. Her current research interests include healthcare e-commerce, healthcare supply chain, information system management and tourism e-commerce.

Qiongwei Ye

QIONGWEI YE (Corresponding Author: [email protected]) is a professor of Electronic Business. He received his PhD from SEM at Tsinghua University and serves as a member of the College Teaching Steering Committee for E-Business under the Ministry of Education of China, the vice president of China Information Economics Society and the director of the Internet Economy and Cross-border E-Business Division and the director of the Key Laboratory of E-Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Yunnan Province. His research interests include E-Business Behavior Science, Business Intelligence, AI & Big Data Analytics, and Digital & Experience Economics.