A study on the effect of multiple online reviews on the attitude of the recipient

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K03925
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Commerce
• Research Institution: Gakushuin University
• Principal Investigator: Shibuya Satoru 学習院大学, 国際社会科学部, 教授 (00333493)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: オンライン消費者行動 / オンラインクチコミ / 複数クチコミ / 確証バイアス / 正負比率 / 購買意思決定過程

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this research, we prepared a fictitious online English conversation school as an experimental stimulus and set two types of fictitious word-of-mouth related to the school.In the first condition, multiple word-of-mouth was presented to the participants as "comments posted on a neutral word-of-mouth site unrelated to the school." In the second condition, the word-of-mouth was presented to the participants as "multiple word-of-mouth posted by the school's students on the school's site." In reality, the contents of both were identical.
As a result, regarding the participants who referred the word-of-mouth that was posted onto the neutral site, the intention level to attend the school was significantly higher among the participants who saw the word-of-mouth after forming their attitude in advance than the participants who referred to the word-of-mouth without forming their attitudes in advance.

Free Research Field

消費者行動

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

消費者が購買意思決定過程のあらゆる段階でネット上のクチコミを参照するようになった。これに対応して、企業も消費者間のネット上のクチコミを自社のサイトなどに取り込みマーケティングに利用しようとする動きが活発である。本研究はこのような事態を実験室に再現し、企業が提供するクチコミと消費者間で交換されるクチコミの影響力を比較した点で社会的意義がある。
学術的には、消費者の購買意思決定過程のどのような段階で、クチコミ参照による影響がどのように効果を及ぼすかを明らかにした点、およびまだ研究があまり進んでいない複数のクチコミを同時に参照することが消費者行動に及ぼす影響の解明に取り組んだ点に意義がある。