Research Note: The Influence of Recommendations and Consumer Reviews on Evaluations of Websites

Abstract

R ecommendations and consumer reviews are universally acknowledged as significant features of a businessto-consumer website. However, because of the well-documented obstacles to measuring the causal impact of these artifacts, there is still a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating their influence on two important outcome variables in the shopping context: perceived usefulness and social presence. To test the existence of a causal link between information technology (IT)-enabled support for the provision of recommendations and consumer reviews on the usefulness and social presence of the website, this study employs a novel approach to generate the experimental conditions by filtering the content of Amazon.com in real time. The results show that the provision of recommendations and consumer reviews increases both the usefulness and social presence of the website.

Trust transfer in the continued usage of public e-services

“…Recommendations help users manage the overwhelming amount of information and create a better understanding of the key features of a service [56], which supports more careful, contrasted evaluations of an e-service prior to continuance decisions. Especially for difficult evaluations such as e-services, information about important others is valuable, because the recipient knows that peers are unlikely to expose him or her to any undue harm.…”

Differential Impact of Web and Mobile Interactivity on E-Retailers' Performance

“…Person-to-person interactivity in the form of blog can significantly influence users' attitude toward the Website (Thorson & Rodgers 2006). In addition, online consumer review system is considered as one of the most powerful channels to generate online word-of-mouth (Dellarocas 2003), and the presence of consumer reviews on Website has been shown to improve consumer perception of the usefulness and social presence of the Website (Kumar & Benbasat 2006). Reviews have the potential to attract consumer visits, increase the time spent on the site ("stickiness"), and create a sense of community among frequent shoppers (Mudambi & Schuff 2010).…”

Design for Social Presence in Online Communities: A Multidimensional Approach

“…NA (Kumar and Benbasat, 2006) Social presence refers to the degree to which a medium allows an individual to establish a personal connection with others (Short et al, 1976). (Gefen and Straub, 2004) Customer review and recommendation Source Definition of SP Measures IT Artifacts (Lee et al, 2006) A psychological state in which virtual (paraauthentic or artificial) actors are experienced as actual social actors in either sensory or nonsensory ways.…”