The Impact of Contradictory Online Reviews on Consumer Online Purchase Decision: Experimental Evidence From China

Most consumers read online reviews before making online purchase decisions. Online reviews of a product usually include positive and negative contradictory online reviews (CORs). Previous studies have confirmed the impact of CORs on consumers' online purchase decisions. However, literature review showed that most of the conducted studies on the dimension of CORs are single dimension. Therefore, this study examined how CORs affected consumers' online purchase decisions from two dimensions: proportion of positive and negative reviews and emotional arousal. The results of a two (proportion of positive and negative reviews: high vs. low) x 2 (emotional arousal: calm vs. arousing) inter group experiment from 306 Chinese consumers showed that CORs have a significant negative impact on consumers' purchase online decision, and CORs affect consumers' online purchase decision by affecting perceived risk. The results of this study enrich literature of online reviews. Findings of this study provide important information to e-retailers on how CORs affect consumers' online purchase decisions. The theoretical and practical implications of the proposed study are also discussed.