Online Review Comments affecting Purchase Intention: A Pilot Study

ABSTRACT

The outbreak of COVID-19 since the end of 2019 has led many people to work for home, reducing economic activity in many countries except online shopping, which is thriving during the pandemic. However, shopping is not take-and-go activity,as it needs references to help make the decision. Buying goods online is not as convenient as buying at physical stores where the customers can check the actual state of goods, obtain recommendations from the clerks or compare it with other similar goods. All these physical activities are persuasions. However, the main references for buying online are online third-party comments and brand image. People noticed the comments online, whether positive or negative about the product. Consumers write comments on the Internet according to their different impressions on the brands. Therefore, how the brand image and online comments affect persuasion is worthy of study. This pilot study thus takes the purchase of mobile phones as an example to explore the factors of people's evaluation of comments and brand image. The analytical results of exploratory factor analysis show that the questionnaire design is suitable. The formal study can take these research results as a reference. © 2021 ACM.