RESEARCH DESIGN OF NEGATIVE

ONLINE REVIEWS HAVE AN IMPACT

ON CONSUMER PURCHASE INTENTION

Submitted To:
Moinak Kanungo
ULAB School of Business.

Submitted By:
TasnimRaydaBinte Jahir
ID- 192051068

Date of Submission: 03/06/2021

Chapter 01

Introduction:
Online shopping has become a significant new channel because of its fast development and
wide application of the internet technology. As customerdata search gradually shift from offline
to online, online reviews of products have become more important. Research demonstrates
that most online shoppers examine online reviews from product users before buying. As one of
the most vital forms of dispersing awareness, online product reviews haveagrowingeffect on
customer purchase decisions and has slowly become acrucial issue in network marketing
research.Rational consumers are more anxious about the negative info of products than
emotional consumers. That’s why, negative information on goods plays a referencing role in the
buying attitudes. Consumers realize the shortcomings of goods from negative reviews and grow
psychological expectations.The insight of negative online reviews, purchase attitudes, and
behaviors are the issues considered in the study. Negative online reviews of clothing and
accessories retailed online and their impact on consumer purchase intention and attitudes are
examined.

Research Objectives:

Consumers depend on on others’ views to assist make their own decisions, and online reviews
have become an efficient tool providing consumers with information and even a vicarious
virtual consumption experience without actually buying the product. Logically, positive WOM
could improve the perceived quality of a product and consequent in a more positive attitude
and developed purchase intention, while negative WOM could lead to a less positive
attitude.This researchchieflyconcentrates on the relationship of negative online reviews,
purchase attitudes, and behavioral intentions. The main methods of regression analysis and
literature research are complemented by questionnaires to investigate the effect of negative
online reviews on customer purchase attitudes and behaviors.The study aims to ensure that
negative online reviews have an impact on consumer purchase intention/attitudes.
Chapter 02

Background Information:

Online Review:

Online consumer reviews are a major form of a word-of-mouth (WOM) networking. Consumers
buy, use, and evaluate products or services on the network, with respect to the information
released by their respective companies. Online consumer reviews reflect more real and
comprehensive information (Chevalier &Mayzlin, 2006).

Although some definitions about online reviews are dissimilar, the following points show
similarities. (1) Online reviews are the most competentways of communication. This type is
different from usual WOM and has unlocked a new path. (2) Online reviews
providegenuineness, accessibility and efficiency.

Negative Online Reviews:

Richins (1983) stated that negative WOM means that customers who are not pleased with
products will share to other consumers their emotional experiences. Liang and Chen (2006)
argued that the negative comments are founded on customers’ own dissatisfaction with
products and services and these customers passes their experiences with friends and relatives,
recommending them not to buy the products or services.

Purchase Attitudes:

Attitude is defined as consumers’ overall evaluation of a product whether good or bad (Low &
Lamb, 2000). Attitude individually holds some stable psychological tendencies on specific
objects (people, ideas, emotions, or events). Attitude is shaped from the perception of
information.

Secondary Data:

Secondary data are recognized to be readily available compared to that of primary data. The

data which have been used in this research are collected mainly from the internet which are
from external sources. Sources of secondary data includes newspaper, websites, research
papers, different social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.
Chapter 03

Qualitative Method Design:

Qualitative research is an open ended questions or conversational built research method that
deeply depends on the following market research approaches: focus groups, in-depth
interviews, and other innovative research methods. Qualitative marketing research is well-
defined as research which is not characterized by numbers, and is instead textualized, visual or
oral (Saunders et al., 2012). Babin and Zikmund (2016) further explain that qualitative data
emphases more on storytelling, meaningful characterizations and various expressive
descriptions, which simply cannot be exposed as easily and as simple through quantitative
information.

There are many ways of collecting data, all of which could have been used in this research.
However, this study uses qualitative data as the way of directing the research, therefore
methods such as focus groups and in-depth interviews become more appropriate. To conduct
qualitative market research usually, these research methods will be used:

Online Focused Group:

Focus groups waschosen as the most suitable research method to address and fulfill the
research questions of this study. Focus groups are a way of primary research, where a small
group discussion takes place in order to gain ideas and opinions from focus group participants
(Aaker, Kumar, George & Leone, 2011).
I will conduct an online focus group research method. There will be three focus groups such as:
1. Consumers who are heavily dependent on online reviews before purchasing a product
2. Consumers who don’t check online reviews before purchasing a product
3. Consumers who check online reviews occasionally.
The focus groups were directed with the use of semi-structured questions in order to address
the focus group participants. Accordingly, semi-structured questions have a relaxed format,
where points and topics are offered in an open manner to allow participants to share their
thoughts and ideas. As it can be quite difficult to note every single word or comment, all the
focus groups will be recorded through the use mobile phone recording applications. Each focus
group will be given information/images on paper, with both focus groups being given exactly
the same info.
Quantitative Method Design:

Quantitative Market Research is a method to ask questions to the target audience in a planned
way using surveys, polls or questionnaires. Received responses can be examined to make well-
thought decisions for improving products and services, that will in turn help grow respondent
satisfaction levels. Well-founded results can be attained in case a large sample size that signifies
a population is surveyed.Quantitative marketing research is defined as research which uses
empirical assessments, relying on measuring numerical measurement and analysis (Babin&
Zikmund, 2016).
As the name implies, Quantitative market research emphases on the quantity and structured
collection of data. It started with face-to-face techniques and now has evolved into online
surveys like those provided by QuestionPro. It is often used to capture data like customer
behavior, size of the market, identifying reasons for product repurchase. This type of market
research is usually founded on a large number of samples.

1. Online Survey:
Traditionally, surveys were directed using paper-based approaches and have progressively
evolved into online mediums. Closed-ended questions form a main part of these surveys as
they are more efficient in gathering quantitative data. The survey makes contain answer
options which they think are the most suitable for a specific question. Surveys are vital in
gathering feedback from an audience which is greater than the conventional size. A critical
factor about surveys is that the responses collected should be such that they can be generalized
to the whole population without important discrepancies.
Quantitative research begins with survey creation, designing, and distribution. After the survey
is sent out to the right people, data collection and analysis has to be completed to get desired
insights. To design a successful survey, I have to select the right set of respondents to whom I
will send the survey questionnaire. As I will conduct the survey on the online platform, I will
choose the respondents, consists of 30-40 people, who are connected with me on social media
platform and who uses the online platforms for purchasing goods.
Quantitative questions will be typically close-ended and will be simpler to analyze when
compared to the qualitative counterparts which are open-ended and much tougher to examine.
The questions will be easy for the respondents to response. Due to their close-ended nature, a
sizeable number of questions can be enquired without having to care about whether the
respondents will get annoyed by them or not.  Quantitative questions will begin with “how” or
“what” and can be used in questions such as “how frequently” or “how many” or “what are” or
“what is the extent”.
I will use the Likert Scale in this research. it’s a psychometric question to assess customer
opinions towards a specificstate with two polarities at each end of the scale. The Likert-scale
question has a statement and 5, 7 or 9 response options for the respondents to select from.

Data collection is the most crucial step in this survey research. The data gained through survey
questionnaire will be gathered in an organized way so that it will help in the analysis part.Once
the data is gathered, it needs to be analyzed. There are various methods of analyzing the data
but in my case, I will go the correlation analysis as this type of analysis will measure the
strength of association between two variables and the direction of the relationship.

2. Observational Research:

Observational research is developing more quickly than these other market research policies.
Sure, it still comprises watching how customers move through the brick-and-mortar store. But
consumers are now leaving a wake of digital data behind their every move, intelligence that can
be effortlessly collected, analyzed, and swiftly acted upon. What’s more, the data that
observational research proposalsis often more dependable than the data we will get through
other methods of primary research. That’s because it rests on what consumers actually do
not on what they claim to do.

The subject of observational research might know that data is being collected, they aren’t
clearly involved in collecting it.Online observation will comprise tracking devices and web
metrics to map consumer behavior. I will take help from Google Analytics. I will use the
disguised (or covert) observation in which the subject won’t know they’re being observed. Here
online tracking will help a lot.It will be a structured observation where it will be clearly
defined what behaviors will be observed, and the study focuses on that set of predefined, pre-
categorized behaviors.
Chapter 04:

Limitations and ways to overcome it:

The existing research consequences about negative online reviews are grounded on data
collected in Bangladesh. These results have formed some advanced research findings with the
help of empirical work on previous comprehensive and complementary studies. However, the
capacity of the research of the present work and the situationsshaped limitations.

(1) Excessively concentrated samples: The aforementioned descriptive statistical analysis

results are more focused on respondents who are college and university graduates between the
ages of 20–29 years. The data gained from these samples may not be representative which,
thus, could affect the general applicability of the results. This limitation can be overcome by
increasing the number of respondents from different countries.

(2) Negative reviews perceived: The shortage of consideration for the perception of negative
reviews and attitudes of shopkeepers of logistics and other services has upstretched questions
on the legitimacy of the measured items. Moreover, online goods reviews are limited. The lack
of consideration for this aspect may have resulted in data that are not
representative,whichcould influence the general applicability of the results. Moreover,
international perception of negative reviews would be diverse so that cultural perspective to
further research was required.

Conclusion:

The perception of negative reviews has a negative significant effect on the purchase attitudes of
customers. A higher perception of negative reviews results in a lower consumer purchase
attitude. Negative reviews perception straightlyeffects consumer behavioral intentions. A
perception of negative reviews corresponds to lower consumer behavioral intentions. Negative
reviews can be gained by inducing consumer attitudes toward indirectly affecting their
behavioral intentions and having a direct influence on consumer behavior.The spread of
negative online reviews should be given more care.