THE IMPACT OF ONLINE CONSUMER REVIEWS' QUANTITY AND RATING ON BUYING DECISIONS: A PERSPECTIVE FROM ROMANIAN MARKET

In online environment, in order to evaluate a product, the visitors have special searching behaviors, looking for information that might infer the product characteristics. One of the cues used by buyers in this respect is represented by online customer reviews, a form of word of mouth communication which might have important implications on consumer behavior. The present study aims to understand the influence of reviews' quantity and rating on some behavioral variables: perceived quality, perceived value and shopping intentions. For this purpose, it was conducted a 2x2 marketing experiment on Romanian online potential buyers of an electronic product. The results highlight the predominance of reviews' rating over reviews' quantity, the first characteristic having a significant influence on the behavioral variables studied. These findings highlight the importance of online reviews as a mean to infer product quality or value and to increase shopping intentions. The managerial implications of the study regard the potential of customer reviews as a source of messages that could be used in firm's communication activities.