An Overview of the Factors that Influence Purchasing Intentions in Online Reviews

Abstract

Consumer purchasing behaviour is increasingly influenced by online reviews in the current internet era. Existing models have not fully explained the correlation between online reviews and consumer purchase intention in specific contexts. This study aims to analyse their relationship and propose inspiring viewpoints. The authors summarize current academic research from three perspectives: independent variables, mediating variables and moderating variables. The findings suggest that there are already well-developed studies on the independent variables, but there is still room for further discussion on the mediating variables; for the moderating variables, aspects of service, trust, and personal characteristics are common moderating studies at present. However, there are only a few studies on business service compensation measures and response methods. In addition, most of the existing literature adopts questionnaire survey and data analysis methods, and the content mainly focuses on mediating variables, so there is still room for further development of the study among the remaining variables. Therefore, this paper constructs an intermediate regulation model and proposes one new mediating variable: perceived fit and two new moderating variables: sales volume and business service quality, to investigate how they mediate and moderate the relationship between online reviews and purchase intention. Through an extensive literature review, the authors identified the limitations and shortcomings of previous models. This paper aims to complement and improve the existing research and provides a new research model to provide a basis for further in-depth research.