Online review trust factors. Characteristics and person-specific reputation (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2021 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1,0, Vienna University of Economics and Business (Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation), language: English, abstract: This thesis is about the Online review trust factors and the characteristics and person-specific reputation. Especially abou the question, "Which factors make online reviews trustworthy?"

Online reviews are more and more used by consumers trying to make an informed decision whether to buy a product or service. Trust plays a central moderating role in this decision-making process. However, specific factors that lead to the emergence of trust have not been identified and subsumed among scholars.

This thesis aims to fill this gap by addressing empirically proven conceptualizations of trust factors and evaluating them within an online setting and demonstrating these factors by descriptive visual aids. The results show that consumers essentially use review characteristics and person-specific factors to assess trustworthiness. The review length, its writing style, real pictures, and the review's extremity primarily influence trustworthiness. The number of submissions of a reviewer, certain review patterns, virtual badges, real profile pictures, and real names with contact information secondarily influence trustworthiness. If a review is perceived as untrustworthy, it gets discounted by consumers.