The effect of word of mouth on sales: Online book reviews

Authors Chevalier, Mayzlin
Journal Journal of Marketing Research
Year 2006
Type Published Paper
Abstract The authors examine the effect of consumer reviews on relative sales of books at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. The authors find that (1) reviews are overwhelmingly positive at both sites, but there are more reviews and longer reviews at Amazon.com; (2) an improvement in a book's reviews leads to an increase in relative sales at that site; (3) for most samples in the study, the impact of one-star reviews is greater than the impact of five-star reviews; and (4) evidence from review-length data suggests that customers read review text rather than relying only on summary statistics.
Keywords Earnings conference calls, investment decisions, nonnative accents, impressions of CEOs
URL https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.43.3.345
Tags Archival Empirical  |   Consumer Decisions  |   Media and Textual Analysis