Why should I believe this? Deciphering the qualities of a credible online customer review

Abstract

Online customer reviews have been shown to have a powerful impact on the sales of a given product or service. However, the qualities of a ‘credible’ online customer review are still subject to debate. Existing research has highlighted the potential influence of a range of factors on the credibility of an online customer review, but relies heavily on quantitative methods and a ‘top down’ approach. In turn, this can reduce our understanding of the influence of these factors into merely discerning whether one pre-determined factor is more influential than another is. This paper adopted a ‘bottom up’ thematic analysis of individual qualitative interviews with a purposeful sample of consumers who regularly utilised online customer reviews. The findings uncovered a range of factors that influenced the credibility of an online customer review that were attached to a reader’s personal experience and to the content of a specific review, and inferred the existence of a reciprocal relationship between the constructs of review helpfulness and review credibility.

Keywords:

• Review helpfulness
• review credibility
• online customer reviews
• electronic word-of-mouth
• consumer behaviour
• qualitative research

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the reviewers of this paper for their invaluable comments throughout the review process. These comments were instrumental in the development of this paper.