HOW DO PRODUCT REVIEWS HELP REDUCE UNCERTAINTY IN ONLINE TRANSACTIONS? A DISCUSSION IN THE CONTEXT OF ELECTRONIC DEVICE PURCHASE

摘要

Products reviews have long been viewed as an important source of information for people toassess product quality in electronic business (e-business). Following a literature review of relatedconstructs, we propose a research model and collect data from a mid-western university in US.After testing hypotheses by running a structural equation model and several ANOVAs, we findthat 1) the concerns on potential losses have a significant impact on the overall risk perceptiontoward online transactions; 2) the average rating on products has a stronger impact on riskperceptions than the volume of reviews; 3) risk perception is an important antecedent of theuncertainty in online transactions.